Ranger Headquarters

The Ranger Headquarters at Waratah Park was never a ranger station. It was built in 1967 on Crown land in Duffys Forest, NSW, as a purpose-built television set for the production of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. The timber-frame building, with its verandah and recognisable silhouette, formed the operational centre of the fictional Waratah National Park for 91 episodes across three series produced by Fauna Productions between 1967 and 1969. From January 1970, after Warringah Council granted land use access for an animal park and entertainment area, the building became part of a public wildlife park. Visitors paid to walk the grounds and view the interior TV set in the Ranger Headquarters. The site changed hands across several operators over the following decades before the business failed and the park closed in 2006. By 2010, all wildlife had been removed from the property. The building that once hosted a global television production now stands in a condition the NSW State Heritage Register, which listed Waratah Park in 2015, described as "somewhat run-down." The Skippy TV set itself was conserved by International Conservation Services in 2014 and removed for off-site storage pending building security improvements. This photograph, made in 2017, records what the Ranger Headquarters had become by that point. Light enters through a broken window and falls across the floor. Paint lifts from the walls and ceiling in uneven sheets. Disused fixtures remain where they were left. The room holds nothing else. The bush outside, home to glossy black cockatoos and eastern pygmy possums in habitat adjoining Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, continues in better condition than the building that once stood as its fictional twin.