Cirrus@Austlit

Set in the fictional Waratah National Park (NSW), the Skippy series focuses largely on the adventures of a young boy, Sonny Hammond, and his intelligent pet kangaroo, Skippy. Sonny is the youngest child of Head Ranger Matt Hammond. Matt was left a widower in his early forties when his wife Mary died not long after Sonny was born. Other principal characters are Sonny's older brother Mark, Flight Ranger Jerry King (the park's helicopter pilot), and Ranger Clancy Merrick, the teenage daughter of another park ranger.

'Prelude to Harvest tells some of the story of Sydney's early days when Phillip, determined to make the Colony a success in the face of crop failures, convicts unrest and the threat of famine.'

Source: 'PRELUDE TO HARVEST', The Canberra Times, 26 Jan. 1963, p. 16.

A daytime soap opera (like its predecessor, Autumn Affair), The Story of Peter Grey follows a young clergyman newly appointed to a large parish.

According to a contemporary newspaper report, the television play 'concerns a mature man who throughout his life been has dominated by his mother.'

The report also paraphrases producer/director Christopher Muir as noting that 'preparation for the drama entailed visits to the Police department to study criminal detection techniques–and conferences with leading psychologists.'

Source:

'Psychological Drama', The Age, 18 February 1960, p.12.

'Radio serial of the story of two brothers. Two men who loved the same woman. Alice Lang is a young English hospital nurse who flies to South Africa to marry Andrew Miller, the senior Game Warden of a wildlife sanctuary which he opens with his brother Rusty. Against a primitive background, haunted by crime and witchcraft, Alice learns to know her own heart and body, her capacity for fear and suffering and for courage with which to face her final ordeal.' (National Film and Sound Archive Australia)

The first television series produced in Australia was based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, but drew its shape and tone more explicitly from two Disney films--Treasure Island (1950) and Long John Silver (1954)--particularly in the shift of Long John Silver from the morally ambiguous villain of the novel to the loveable rogue of the series. Both films used largely the same cast as the television series, and the latter film had also been produced in Australia. Though cast and crew included a number of American and English actors, directors, and script-writers, Australia did contribute cast and crew to the series, as well as funding and resources.

Don Storey notes in his Classic Australian Television:

It is somewhat ironic that this should be Australia's first television series, as pirate adventure had nothing to do with Australia's history, and television had not yet commenced here - the series could have been filmed anywhere. It was in effect a 'crossover' of the 1950's Australian film industry to television. (Most Australian films of the 1950's were produced by overseas companies - it was television, and in particular the series Homicide, which later provided a foundation for the revival of the Australian feature film industry in the 1970's [...]).

For a full list of episodes and authors, see Film Details.

'A fascinating sequel to the well-remembered feature "Nurse White"... "Nurse Lorimer" is a heartwarming, intimate story of hospital life."

Source: 'TWO NEW SHOWS ON 2GB TODAY', The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 Aug. 1953, p. 5

A thirty-minute crime drama offering thrills, suspense, and excitement. 

'About a girl who makes the front pages of every newspaper, but not in the way she had dreamed.'

Source: 'Notes on Radio', The Sunday Herald, 22 Jul 1951, p. 12.

'A fine dramatic play about an old housekeeper and her two sisters who are living at the same place. The landlady asks the two sisters to leave, and the housekeeper, hoping to keep the two sisters in the house, kills the landlady.'

Source: '2WL Radio Round-up', South Coast Times and Wollongong Argus, 28 May 1951, p. 3.

'It is a tense drama of a young man's infatuation for a girl which actually grows into an obsession.

It tells the story of Ned Hardlestone, a young farmer who goes to a nearby town one night and meets Myrtle Gray. He becomes blindly and desperately infatuated with her. The girls does not return his love and plays on his infatuation for her own ends.'

Source: Source: '2WL Radio Round-Up', South Coast Times and Wollongong Argus, 30 Apr. 1951, p. 3.

'It's all about the Layton Family--four people whose adventures, joys and sorrows reflect much of the world we live in to-day. Yes, it's the story of a family that might well be yours--true-to-life, exciting, humorous. You'll like the Laytons and the people they meet as their saga unfolds.' 

Source: '"The Layton Story"', Mayborough Chronicle, 15 Jan. 1951, p. 4. 

The story of a women who must overcome the heartbreak of leaving her newborn baby to work as a nurse.

'Bitterness, shock and misery form the background to this very human story - a story that will tug at the heartstrings of every listener.' 

Source: 'Advertising', The Age, 23 Sep. 1949, p. 7