Back Steps

The back steps of the Ranger Headquarters at Waratah Park sit between two worlds: the red-painted weatherboard of a building constructed as a television set, and the scrub that has spent nearly two decades reclaiming the ground around it. Brick paving below the steps is cracked and stained. The bush presses in from every side. The Ranger Headquarters was built in 1967 on Crown land in Duffys Forest, NSW, as the primary filming location for Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, a production by Fauna Productions. The company was co-founded by Lee Robinson, John McCallum, and Lionel "Bob" Austin following their collaboration on the 1966 film They're a Weird Mob. The site occupies 12.6 hectares adjoining Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park to the north and west. Filming ran from 1967 to September 1969, producing 91 episodes across three series. The park opened to the public in January 1970 as a wildlife park, with actor Ed Devereaux appearing in his ranger uniform at the official opening. It operated as a tourism venue until the business failed in 2006. The Ranger Headquarters remained standing but run-down. In February 2015, Waratah Park was listed on the NSW State Heritage Register (#01944), recognising the Ranger Headquarters and its interior TV set as the site's structures of State significance. The SHR assessment described the building as in sound condition but "somewhat run-down." The interior set was conserved by International Conservation Services in 2014 and stored off-site pending building security improvements. By 2017, when this photograph was made, the rear of the building looked as it does here: the steps, the weatherboard, the cracked paving, and the bush. The fictional Waratah National Park of the television series had long dissolved back into the actual bushland that surrounded it all along. This photograph is part of the Waratah Park series.