Cirrus@Austlit

New Zealand-born producer Roger Mirams followed his earlier children's television programs The Terrific Adventures of the Terrible Ten and The Magic Boomerang with this ship-based adventure series, which, as Don Storey points out in his Classic Australian Television, was one of 'three Australian half-hour adventure series [that] were set on boats' during the first twenty years of Australian television.

Adventures of the Seaspray followed the adventurers of a widowed journalist who is raising his three children on a schooner in the South Pacific (aided by a Fijian crew member, Willyum).

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, 'The 26 half-hour stories have all the adventure material that children love - haunted islands, rescues, shipwrecked sailors, hidden treasure, smugglers and primitive tribes all filmed in exotic Pacific locations.'

Storey concurs with this analysis, and adds

Seaspray was notable for several achievements, apart from a high standard of production. It was filmed on location in an international setting; it was the first Australian television show to be filmed in colour since the 1955 series The Adventures of Long John Silver (made before Australia had television); it was the first co-production with an overseas company; and it had a Fijian native in a lead role, the first Australian series to give such prominence to a non-white person.

Roger Mirams's second children's program for Pacific Film Productions had a strong element of fantasy: a teenage boy living on a sheep farm in Victoria finds a magic boomerang that, in flight, stops time for everyone but the thrower, allowing him to circumvent the nefarious plans of various villains.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, this program contained similar elements to Mirams's earlier program: 'the self-contained world of children, a large element of fantasy, several of the same children acting in the lead roles and weekend location shooting (this time at Woodend). However, the series was more conscious in its deployment of universal symbols of Australia, and this undoubtedly helped its overseas marketing'. Don Storey, in his Classic Australian Television, also notes that the program was progressive in its treatment of gender roles, so that the protagonist's cousin Penny 'was portrayed as a resourceful girl making a positive contribution to whatever situations occurred.'

Of the second series, Storey notes that 'there was little relevance to the original series. The new series was produced in colour, and there were significant changes to the cast, characters and setting, with a shift in emphasis from adventure to a more light-hearted show with an element of comedy.'

Funny Things Happen Down Under is 'a musical in colour, based on a group of Australian children who accidentally discover a method of turning sheep's wool into different colours.'

Source:

'Australian Films on Show in Britain', Canberra Times, 5 August 1965, p.24.

A short children's adventure program, which (according to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series) 'concentrated in a pleasant, innocent fashion on a group of children who created their own make-believe town, taking on such jobs as firefighter, police officer and so on'.

The program was the first Australian production for New Zealand-born Roger Mirams, who had arrived in Australia in 1956 to work as a cameraman for the Olympic Games. After this series, Mirams, in Moran's words, 'became an active force in the industry, especially children's drama, over the next 30 years'.