Kangaroo to Kakadu: Australia

An exploration into the early history of Australian herding

Ray Martin goes on a grand quest to locate a mysterious outback rock formation he spotted and photographed from an airliner 37,000 feet in the air.

Robyn Davidson, famous for her solo expedition across the west Australian deserts by camel in the 1970s, presents this documentary telling the story of Australia's camels and the people who brought them here.

Nestled deep in the Australian Outback is the town of Larrimah and its 11 eccentric residents. When one of them mysteriously disappears into thin air, the remaining residents become suspects and a long history of infighting is unveiled.

Six years in preparation & three years in filming, World Safari 2 covers one of the largest Australian cattle musters, the wild New Guinea highlands and finally discover the terrorist controlled jungles of South America.

Shot mostly at Uluru, the rock in the heart of Australia. The extreme heat damaged the emulsion of the film which is subsequently incised by the filmmaker. A ceremonial death and rebirth. The soundtrack was made by the Orchestra of Skin and Bone comprising of Ollie Olsen and John Murphy. The aborigines were from Narwietooma Station. 16mm.

The Australian pelican is built for long distance travel. One of the largest pelicans in the pelican family, with a light skeleton and a wingspan of over eight feet, it can be airborne all day and deep into the night, riding far and high on rising thermals. When rare weather systems bring heavy rains, huge numbers of Australian pelicans abandon the sea and coastal waters and embark on a mass pilgrimage to a place a thousand miles inland. It’s the last place you would look for one of their kind, the Australian Outback, one of the driest, hottest places on the planet.

As the camera moves gently from afar into the very heart of the monolith, the magic of the holiest site of the Aborigines unfolds in shimmering nuances of light. Shot at different times of day, the close-up and panorama shots of this more than 500-million-year-old stone formation combine silence and acoustically altered birdsong to convey a feeling of timelessness into which a sense of loss is also inscribed. The somnambulistic moonrise in the great sky seems almost like an abstract painting and yet it is real. The areas of discolouration in the film material caused by problems in the developing process were deliberately left in the film as a metaphor for the looming threat to this natural environment through bushfires and tourism.

A 19-year-old high school graduate travels through Australia as a backpacker and accompanies his adventure with a camera.

Australia’s El Dorado was found by Lewis Harold Bell Lasseter – if we believe his claims in the late 1800s to have discovered a vast gold deposit in central Australia. This mysterious place has never again been found, and many believe it doesn’t exist. But one thing is certain: Lasseter was a larger-than-life character. Seen by some as an eccentric conman, he was ridiculed for his extravagant assertions, which he held until his tragic end. But Lasseter remains the embodiment of the Australian folk hero, who lived a life full of incredible adventures, tall tales and outrageous claims – including a possible faked death and his insistence that he designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

A stunning documentary capturing a once in a generation event – the flooding of Lake Eyre and the dramatic transformation of the dead heart of Australia. ABC News mounted two filming expeditions by helicopter to follow the floodwaters from north Queensland down the great outback rivers to Lake Eyre and record the amazing cycle of life, as the deserts bloomed and birds descended from far and wide to capitalise on the short lived boom.

Meet Lanz Priestley, a charasmatic homeless man, who owns nothing but a phone and a Facebook page. When Lanz discovers taps have run dry in drought-stricken outback Australia, he raises the money to deliver drinking water himself.

Not only has she got pink extensions, painted on eyebrows, glitter stockings and superman hotpants, Starlady’s a youth worker in some of Australia’s most remote and challenging places. And she reckons that hairdressing can improve people’s lives. Like a real life Priscilla, Starlady takes us on a Queen of the Desert journey to Areyonga, an indigenous community in Central Australia, where she’ll work with a group of curious and cheeky young people.

Follow filmmaker Don Meers on a paranormal road trip across the sunburnt landscapes of the Australian outback in hopes of solving one of Australia’s greatest mysteries: the Min Min light.

Michael Atkinson places himself in the historic predicament of two stranded German aviators in 1932 to see if the his skills as a survival instructor, pilot and adventurer will allow him to escape to the nearest civilisation.

Follows the incredible journey of Dave Welsman, a Sydney kids' magician determined to reboot his life with a grand illusion to make Uluru disappear. As Dave works alongside the Rock’s traditional owners and Indigenous Custodians to pull off this spectacular stunt, he discovers the profound cultural and spiritual significance of Uluru, and his own illusions about fame and success begin to disappear.

For millenniums, Aborigines used tracking to survive. Their ancient skills now help police capture murderers and save people's lives. Will modern technology replace an art based on the intimate bond between man and nature?

Capturing the essence of the Australian wilderness and its unique array of fascinating wildlife, Greg Grainger's documentary explores such diverse habitats as eucalpt forests, deserts, rainforests and coral reefs. Featuring action sequences of much loved Aussie icons the Kangaroo, Dingo, Platypus, Koala and Wombat, you'll also thrill to Coral spawning on the Great Barrier Reef, nest building Bower birds, mimicking Lyre birds, spiky Echidnas, snarling Tasmainian Devils and more. Natural Australia in a nutshell.

Fresh off the plane and in need of money, two Finnish backpackers find themselves the latest batch of “fresh meat” sent to work as barmaids at the only pub in a remote Australian mining town.

Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Australian desert and bushland, see life through the eyes of a very special Red Kangaroo as he struggles to survive drought, bush fires, dingoes and roo hunters.