Cirrus@Austlit

Three students (one Australian, one German, and one Singaporean) become close friends while studying at a Singaporean boarding school. Disappointed by their inevitable separation at the end of the school year, they are delighted when a fortuitous combination of mobile phones, computers, and a thunderstorm transports them bodily into an Internet chatroom and, from there, into each others' houses. The three spend their days moving freely between Australia, Singapore, and Germany.

The program's official website describes it as 'a vibrant, engaging, contemporary comedy-drama aimed at "tweens" throughout the world.'

Source: Official website (http://www.agurlswurld.com/about/). (Sighted: 23/2/2012)

'Seven 15 year-old surfers have been selected from around Australia and overseas to take part in an intensive 12-month residential school program at Blue Water High. At the beachside school they join other pupils in a normal year's academic work as well as receiving special coaching in surfing. At the end of the year, two of the seven will qualify to surf the pro-circuit and win a three-year sponsorship contract. The series is a race into the finals for the wild card, a race to get through the year, and a race to grow up. The seven teens, forced to live, study and train together—at the same time become best friends and greatest competitors.'

Source: Australian Television Information Archive. (Sighted: 20/8/2013)

A secret portal links a child in Perth, Australia, with a child in Galway, Ireland.

'In England a recently bereaved widow and her two children discover that they've inherited a property in Australia. With some reluctance they head to Australia to claim their inheritance only to discover that the profitable sheep station they've imagined is in fact a rather out of the way wildlife park full of Australian native animals. What's more it has human occupants as well - a distantly related trio of grandchildren who have been bequeathed lifelong rights to live on the property. As well, there's an Australian born Vietnamese animal handler who's somehow the only one who has real expertise in dealing with native Australian animals.'

Source: Screen Australia. (Sighted: 23/5/2014)

Spellbinder II: Land of the Dragon Lord is something of a sequel to the earlier Spellbinder, also written by Mark Shirrefs and John Thomson. However, the only recurring characters are Spellbinder's antagonist Ashka and her offsider.

In this series, teenager Kathy Morgan is, like Paul in the original series, pulled into a different world: however, where Paul is pulled into an alternative Europe in which the Industrial Revolution never happened, Kathy is pulled into an alternative China (the land of the Dragon Lord), in which the empire is controlled by advanced technology. She finds enemies not only in the land of the Dragon Lord, but also in Ashka's world (the original world of the Spellbinders).

Spellbinder II was the last major collaboration (thus far) between Mark Shirrefs and John Thomson, who had previously collaborated on such important Australian science-fiction and fantasy children's television programs as The Girl from Tomorrow, The Girl from Tomorrow Part II, and Spellbinder.

After a prank at a school camp goes horribly wrong, Sydney schoolboy Paul finds himself transported into a parallel world where the Industrial Revolution never took place and where power is wielded by the Spellbinders, whose power suits allow them to manipulate and create static electricity. Though the Spellbinders are largely benevolent, Paul and Riana (the inhabitant of the Spellbinder world who aids Paul) manage to cross Ashka, an ambitious Spellbinder who craves absolute power.

The series is evenly split between Paul's experiences in Riana's world and Riana's confusion when she crosses over to Paul's world.

Spellbinder was another program to arise from the collaboration of Mark Shirrefs and John Thomson, who had previously worked together on The Girl from Tomorrow, The Girl from Tomorrow Part II, and Mission Top Secret.

A sequel to The Girl from Tomorrow, The Girl from Tomorrow Part II: Tomorrow's End begins with Alana returning to her own time with Jenny, who has been badly wounded and needs the advanced medical treatment Alana's people can offer. But with both Silverthorn and Jenny out of their own time, Alana's people begin to fear that their time travel experiments are affecting the course of history. They restore both Silverthorn and Jenny to their own times and return once again to 3000AD--to find it a radioactive wasteland. Alana must trace the cause of the disaster, which leads her to 2500AD and Draco, malevolent controller of GlobeCorp, the company that controls all resources in the polluted, unhappy dystopia that is 2500AD.

Likes its predecessor and the later programs Spellbinder and Spellbinder II: Land of the Dragon Lord, The Girl from Tomorrow II was a collaboration between Mark Shirrefs and John Thomson, although in this case Thomson is only credited with the story and Shirrefs with the actual screenplays.