Front Door

The front door of the Ranger Headquarters at Waratah Park stands ajar, paint lifting from its timber surface in long curling strips to expose raw wood beneath. Sunlight arrives at a low angle, pressing hard shadows across the dusty floorboards and leaving the rooms beyond in a dim quiet. The door frame itself shows the kind of wear that accumulates slowly: paint missing at the edges, the grain of the wood exposed where hands have pushed and pulled for years. The Ranger Headquarters was built in 1967 on approximately 10 hectares of Crown land west of Namba Road at Duffys Forest, NSW. Warringah Council and the NSW Government granted permission for the occupation; the purpose was a television set. Fauna Productions, formed in 1966 by Lee Robinson, Lionel "Bob" Austin, and John McCallum, constructed the building as the centrepiece of their new series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Roads, power, water connections, a helipad, and a helicopter-servicing area were installed on site that same year. The series ran for 91 episodes across three series. It was broadcast in 128 countries and dubbed into 25 languages. In January 1970, with filming complete, the site opened to the public as a wildlife park. Ed Devereaux appeared at the official opening in character as head ranger Matt Hammond. Visitors could walk through the interior of the Ranger Headquarters and see the original TV set with its props and furnishings. The park operated under successive management arrangements until the business failed in 2006. Ownership of the site transferred to the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council on 28 August 2014 under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983. The NSW State Heritage Register listed the site on 27 February 2015, recognising the Ranger Headquarters as the primary structure of State significance. Photographed in 2017, the door records a building still standing, the bush pressing in around it, the floorboards holding the light.