Balcony

The Ranger Headquarters at Waratah Park sits within 12.6 hectares of bushland in Duffys Forest, on the northern fringe of Sydney. Long timber planks run the full width of its back deck: a simple wooden table near the railing, the reddish-brown cladding reflected across the large windows, a chain-link fence lining the structure below the deck rail and a pale-barked eucalypt rising close beside the building on the left. From here the bush presses in on every side, continuous with the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park that borders the property to the north and west. The building was constructed in 1967. Not as a ranger station, but as a television set. Fauna Productions, formed by Lee Robinson, Lionel Austin, and John McCallum the previous year, had secured permission from the NSW Government to occupy approximately 10 hectares of Crown land west of Namba Road. Filming of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo commenced in May 1967. Power, water, roads, and a helipad were installed. The Ranger Headquarters went up. The fictional posting of Matt Hammond, head ranger of the fictional Waratah National Park, was open for business. The series ran for 91 episodes across three series, ending production in September 1969. It was broadcast in 128 countries, dubbed into 25 languages, and reached a reported weekly global audience of over 300 million. In January 1970 the site reopened as a public wildlife park, with Ed Devereaux, who played Matt Hammond across all 91 episodes, appearing in character at the opening. The park operated in various forms until 2006, when the business failed and the site closed. By 2017, when this photograph was made, the Ranger Headquarters was standing but run-down. The table remained on the deck. The railings held. The canopy below was uninterrupted, the same bush that appeared behind every exterior shot of the series, the one element of the production that required no construction and no maintenance and no careful handling. The NSW State Heritage Register listed the site on 27 February 2015. The building and its original interior TV set are the only elements considered of State significance. The bush around them predates the listing by considerably more than 7,400 years.