Ku Ring Gai Chase

At Waratah Park in Duffys Forest, a built structure stands partially consumed by the native bushland of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. Moss has worked across its surfaces. Vegetation presses in from every side. Whatever order was once imposed on this corner of the 12.6-hectare site, the bush has been quietly undoing it. The site became Waratah Park when Crown land west of Namba Road was granted to Fauna Productions in around 1967 for the filming of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. The series ran for 91 episodes across three series, with production winding up in September 1969. The bushland setting was not incidental to the production; access to approximately 500 acres of adjacent Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park was negotiated with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. For a reported weekly global audience of over 300 million viewers across 128 countries, Waratah Park became the defining image of the Australian landscape. In January 1970, the site opened to the public as a wildlife park, with kangaroos, koalas, dingoes, emus, and wombats on display. It continued operating in various forms under successive operators until 2006, when the business failed and the park closed. By 2010, all wildlife had been removed, and the lease held by the then-operator was cancelled by the NSW Minister for Lands. Ownership of the site transferred to the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council on 28 August 2014 under the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983. The site lies within traditional lands of the Garrigal and Terramerragal clans. Since the closure, the Duffys Forest Residents Association has contributed over 3,500 volunteer hours to bushland restoration, and Sydney Wildlife operates a rehabilitation facility on site entirely without government funding. The bush that once served as a backdrop for a television fiction now advances on the structures left behind. This photograph, made in 2017, records that process.