Depot

The depot at Waratah Park is not the building most people picture when they think of this site. That would be the Ranger Headquarters, built in 1967 as the centrepiece of the Skippy the Bush Kangaroo television production: timber-framed, verandahed, recognisable to a reported weekly global audience of over 300 million viewers across 128 countries. The depot is something more prosaic. Rusty rails run along a concrete floor thick with eucalyptus leaves and debris, disappearing into a pit at the far end of an open-sided shed. Corrugated roofing spans wooden beams overhead, white panelled walls line one side, and a small electrical box is mounted on a post to the left. At the far opening, fallen branches and dense bushland press in. Waratah Park occupies 12.6 hectares of bushland at Duffys Forest, NSW, on Crown land adjacent to Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. The NSW Government granted permission to use the site for filming in 1967. Fauna Productions, formed by Lee Robinson, Lionel "Bob" Austin, and John McCallum, built the Ranger Headquarters and supporting infrastructure that year: roads, power, water connections, a helipad. The television production ran until September 1969, completing 91 episodes across three series. From January 1970 the site reopened as a public wildlife park, operating under successive operators including Waratah Park Pty Ltd from 1976 and Waratah Park Earth Sanctuary from 1995 to 2000. The park closed in 2006 when the business failed. The Minister for Lands cancelled the lease to the then-operator in 2010, and on 28 August 2014 ownership transferred to the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983. The site was listed on the NSW State Heritage Register on 27 February 2015 (listing #01944). The listing recognises the Ranger Headquarters as the structure of State significance. The depot and other outbuildings are assessed as variable in condition and not significant to that listing. What the 2017 photograph records is what the bush does to a structure left without maintenance. The rails oxidise. The leaf litter builds up over the concrete. The shed fills with light and quiet. The surrounding bushland, which required no construction and no maintenance, continues on its own terms.