Documentaries
The Lucky Country has 60,000km of coastline, so it’s not surprising that Neil Oliver has turned up again for a second season of Coast Australia (Prime, Sunday, 7.30pm).
There are eight new coastlines to explore, from Torres Strait in the north to the mainland’s southernmost point, Wilsons Promontory.
With its usual mix of ancient and modern, Coast Australia begins with a trip out to an oiland gas-drilling platform in Bass Strait, then segues to the site of Australia’s first dinosaur find at Cape Paterson. Palaeontologist Tim Flannery is on hand to explain the 1903
discovery of the toe-bone of an allosaur and his student work in the 1970s.
Historian Alice Garner meets a man who was on Cheviot Beach, Victoria, on December 17, 1967, when Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared while swimming. Oliver explores Phillip Island, famous not only for the motor-racing circuit but also for the little penguins that were threatened with extinction by a subdivision.
Most spectacularly, Oliver takes a helicopter ride to Skull Rock, a large island structure that has been cut off from the mainland for 18,000 years.
There’s so much to explore: subsequent episodes cover northern NSW, the southwest of Western Australia, Torres Strait, Norfolk Island, southern NSW and, finally, the Pilbara in northern WA, where there is the highest concentration of rock art in the world.