Entrance

The entrance to Waratah Park sits at the edge of Namba Road in Duffys Forest, NSW, where the bitumen meets the bush and a rusting metal frame marks the threshold between the two. By 2017, dense foliage had taken back the path, the gatehouse largely obscured by vegetation. The entrance frame, corroded and listing, is all that announces the site from the road. Waratah Park occupies 12.6 hectares of Crown land on the western edge of what is now Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. The NSW Government granted permission to occupy the site in 1967 to allow Fauna Productions to build the filming location for Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Roads, power, water, a helipad, and the Ranger Headquarters were constructed that year. The series ran for 91 episodes across three series before production wound up in September 1969. In January 1970, the site officially opened to the public as a wildlife park. The octagonal gatehouse and other tourism structures were built around that period to handle the visiting public. For more than three decades, the park operated under successive management arrangements, including Waratah Park Pty Ltd from 1976 and Waratah Park Earth Sanctuary between 1995 and 2000. When the business failed in 2006, wildlife was progressively removed and the gates closed. Ownership of the land was transferred to the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council on 28 August 2014 under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983. The site was listed on the NSW State Heritage Register on 27 February 2015. The Ranger Headquarters remains standing. Sydney Wildlife operates a rehabilitation facility on site, supported entirely by donations. The photograph records what the entrance looked like in 2017: rust, foliage, and the slow, quiet return of the bush that was always there.