Bill Bailey’s Australian Adventure Sunday 9.00pm C4
Lucy Thackray - 16 November 2023
"There’s “a mysteriousness to it, an ancient quality”, says Bill Bailey of Australia’s vast and little-visited west. That enigma was punctured a little, admits Bailey, by someone “who wanders into shot in the first episode and says, ‘Oh, are ya making a docco?’” But the comedian, musician and 2020 Strictly winner’s new four-part travelogue, Bill Bailey’s Australian Adventure, nevertheless offers viewers a haunting trip through the pine forests, pink lakes and arid deserts of Oz’s biggest and most eccentric state. Here are his highlights.
NAMBUNG NATIONAL PARK MYSTERY FOSSILS AND SUNSETS
“In the desert north of Perth the most extraordinary natural sight I saw was the ‘Pinnacles’. It’s this phenomenon of what looks like fossilised trees or roots sticking up from the ground ‒ there’s some debate as to how they got there. Visually, they’re quite startling: I can’t quite think of anything I’ve seen like them. When you first arrive, you think they’re a man-made thing, similar to Stonehenge, but then you realise that the landscape just goes on and on, some of it quite ordered but some of it random. We arrived at sunset and it was just an incredible sight.”
NINGALOO REEF 60FT FISH AND BABY WHALES
“Ningaloo is a beautiful stretch of coast on a long peninsula, up in the north-west of Western Australia. Unlike the Great Barrier Reef, it’s very close to the coast ‒ so while you’d be getting in a boat and sailing out for a couple of hours or more for the Barrier Reef, you can see Ningaloo from the beach. Snorkelling there, you see this enormous profusion of fish ‒ huge grouper, lots of colourful reef fish ‒ and you get whales coming here to give birth; we saw a baby flapping its tail to try and copy the mum. You can swim with whale sharks, too – something I’ve dreamt of doing for decades. They’re fascinating creatures: the one I swam with was an adolescent and only 20 feet long – so still pretty big – but they can grow to be as big as 60 feet. Imagine jumping in the water with that! Luckily they’re filter feeders, eating algae and plankton, so no threat to humans.”
GETTING TO KNOW YOU INDIGENOUS GREETINGS
“One of the most fascinating things here was getting to know my Aboriginal and First Nations guides. I felt pretty ignorant at times. I had no idea that there are hundreds of Aboriginal languages, all different – my guide up in Port Hedland, Noel, said some are as different as Chinese and French. So travelling through Australia’s indigenous communities is something like travelling through Europe. He told me about when Europeans arrived in the country, and the struggles to communicate: the Aboriginal people have a two-handed greeting where they move their hands together to say, ‘How are you going? But then these Europeans turn up with their handshake. For the Aboriginal people, someone standing directly in front of them, sticking their hand out, felt quite threatening ‒ not to mention squeezing someone’s hand. It took a while to realise that it wasn’t an aggressive thing.”
MARGARET RIVER SHIRAZ, GNOMES AND TRUFFLES
“The southern part of Western Australia is much wetter and greener than elsewhere in the state, making it great for growing grapevines and truffles. Not only is there a well-known wine region around Margaret River, you can also visit truffle farms because the soil here is very rich. There’s even a Bill Bailey Shiraz ‒ no relation ‒ so of course I had to go and try it out. Shiraz isn’t my favourite wine, but this one was delicious; rather mature, much like myself. But the best thing in that area, among the many eccentric places I visited in the show, was a place called Gnomesville. It’s this spot between Margaret River and Perth where, for some reason, people began bringing garden gnomes several years ago. It’s got a bit out of hand really, with thousands and thousands of gnomes just clustered in this one bit of forest. Brilliant fun.”
LOOK TO THE SKIES SPLENDID WRENS AND ROADKILL RAPTORS
“Australia has around 850 bird species ‒ and 45 per cent of those are endemic, so it’s paradise for bird-watchers, because there are so many types you won’t see anywhere else in the world. Western Australia is home to these wrens that are absolutely tiny, and there’s a whole range of them; there’s a ‘superb fairywren’ but also a ‘splendid fairywren’, for example. They’re bigger and more colourful than our wrens, in an azure or electric blue. You don’t have to go anywhere in particular to see them, just pull in at some bog-standard roadside rest-stop. I also enjoyed the wedge-tailed eagle, the largest flying raptor in Australia. It’s slightly grim, but they’re attracted by the roadkill, so if you see a bit of that along the road, look out for a wedge-tailed eagle coming down.”
NAMBUNG NATIONAL PARK MYSTERY FOSSILS AND SUNSETS
“In the desert north of Perth the most extraordinary natural sight I saw was the ‘Pinnacles’. It’s this phenomenon of what looks like fossilised trees or roots sticking up from the ground ‒ there’s some debate as to how they got there. Visually, they’re quite startling: I can’t quite think of anything I’ve seen like them. When you first arrive, you think they’re a man-made thing, similar to Stonehenge, but then you realise that the landscape just goes on and on, some of it quite ordered but some of it random. We arrived at sunset and it was just an incredible sight.”
NINGALOO REEF 60FT FISH AND BABY WHALES
“Ningaloo is a beautiful stretch of coast on a long peninsula, up in the north-west of Western Australia. Unlike the Great Barrier Reef, it’s very close to the coast ‒ so while you’d be getting in a boat and sailing out for a couple of hours or more for the Barrier Reef, you can see Ningaloo from the beach. Snorkelling there, you see this enormous profusion of fish ‒ huge grouper, lots of colourful reef fish ‒ and you get whales coming here to give birth; we saw a baby flapping its tail to try and copy the mum. You can swim with whale sharks, too – something I’ve dreamt of doing for decades. They’re fascinating creatures: the one I swam with was an adolescent and only 20 feet long – so still pretty big – but they can grow to be as big as 60 feet. Imagine jumping in the water with that! Luckily they’re filter feeders, eating algae and plankton, so no threat to humans.”
GETTING TO KNOW YOU INDIGENOUS GREETINGS
“One of the most fascinating things here was getting to know my Aboriginal and First Nations guides. I felt pretty ignorant at times. I had no idea that there are hundreds of Aboriginal languages, all different – my guide up in Port Hedland, Noel, said some are as different as Chinese and French. So travelling through Australia’s indigenous communities is something like travelling through Europe. He told me about when Europeans arrived in the country, and the struggles to communicate: the Aboriginal people have a two-handed greeting where they move their hands together to say, ‘How are you going? But then these Europeans turn up with their handshake. For the Aboriginal people, someone standing directly in front of them, sticking their hand out, felt quite threatening ‒ not to mention squeezing someone’s hand. It took a while to realise that it wasn’t an aggressive thing.”
MARGARET RIVER SHIRAZ, GNOMES AND TRUFFLES
“The southern part of Western Australia is much wetter and greener than elsewhere in the state, making it great for growing grapevines and truffles. Not only is there a well-known wine region around Margaret River, you can also visit truffle farms because the soil here is very rich. There’s even a Bill Bailey Shiraz ‒ no relation ‒ so of course I had to go and try it out. Shiraz isn’t my favourite wine, but this one was delicious; rather mature, much like myself. But the best thing in that area, among the many eccentric places I visited in the show, was a place called Gnomesville. It’s this spot between Margaret River and Perth where, for some reason, people began bringing garden gnomes several years ago. It’s got a bit out of hand really, with thousands and thousands of gnomes just clustered in this one bit of forest. Brilliant fun.”