Tim Winton fronts a MAGICAL new doco about Ningaloo

“I live with my feet in the sand and my head in the salty wind, on an island where you can still feel the power and majesty of wild things and wild places. And the place that exhilarates me like no other is right here, on the western coast, where the desert has its feet in the sea,” says writer Tim Winton, as he introduces a worldwide viewers of tens of millions to a spot beloved of all West Australians: Ningaloo.

Ningaloo, or Nyinggulu as its historically identified, is someplace many on the west coast take with no consideration. We grew up tenting there, leaping into its pristine aqua waters, snorkelling with its unusual prehistoric-like megafauna. But for lots of the individuals within the 130 international locations worldwide who will likely be watching Winton’s chic new three-part documentary sequence, Ningaloo Nyinggulu, will probably be the primary time they’ll be listening to about this World Heritage-listed conservation success story.

And they’ll be listening to about it straight from Winton’s mouth.

“Making the show was a way of celebrating the place, and explaining to people around the world there’s this amazing treasure that Western Australia has,” says the acclaimed novelist and activist, who wrote and stars within the three-part doco, which can make its debut on ABC May 16.

“But also, I wanted to show what we have to lose …

“I feel so lucky to live (in Western Australia); somewhere where there are still wild places — I think we take it for granted, because we don’t understand how rare and precious it is.”

I’m talking to Winton from my spare room in Fremantle, an area that’s neither uncommon, nor valuable. We’re chatting by telephone, and it’s unusual, as a result of speaking to journalists shouldn’t be one thing the notoriously-private writer likes to do.

Like, ever.

“It’s kind of a bit of an odd trajectory, or an odd thing for me to do for someone who one of my great ambitions is not to be on the tellie, or talking to the media … Ha! That went well!” he laughs

And I chortle too. Because it is odd to be chatting to one in all our nation’s best residing authors about, of all issues, a tv program.

But Ningaloo is a spot that Winton has visited, liked, wept for, and passionately advocated for, for over thirty years. Through this documentary, he’s taking it to the world, performing as its very personal passionate tour information.

And, truthfully, as guides go, you’d be hard-pressed to discover a higher one.

Winton has been on the coalface campaigning to avoid wasting Ningaloo Reef, Cape Grange and Exmouth Gulf from growth for greater than twenty years. He helped spearhead a motion to avoid wasting the world from growth and was instrumental within the unique Save Ningaloo marketing campaign from 2000-2003, changing into patron of the marketing campaign to get the world World Heritage standing.

You might say he’s Ningaloo’s greatest advocate, one in all its closest buddies — and its best admirer.

“(I did the series) to help celebrate it, but also to create a sense of value and urgency around it — you can’t save a place unless you can tell people it exists, and to create and elevate its social value,” he explains. “That’s been my experience as an activist.

“In a strange way, the conservation movement kind of invented Ningaloo. All those years, we were essentially donating time like multi-million dollar tourism campaigns, that other people have been able to exploit.

“And I am happy about that — I want to live in a world where these places are still viable … it improves your life mentally and spiritually to know that there are still wild places that your children and their children might experience.

“Otherwise what are you doing? You are passing on a business that is trading insolvent; passing on a house that is essentially fully in debt, that’s not yours.

“So that is how I think about this — an old man’s legacy gesture, perhaps.”

And boy, what a gesture it’s.

The present is visually breathtaking, utilizing sweeping drone pictures to seize Ningaloo’s smudgy pink landscapes, the blue hues of its waterways; its burnt orange magnificence writ massive on the small display screen.

There are huge pictures of its flood plains, footage of manta ray migrations. There are whale sharks, dugongs, and teeny, tiny cave fish — a few of the rarest on this planet — flopping round in Winton’s palm. Schools of fish, turtles, coral forests, hovering vistas of a limestone ranges “running the spine of an enormous desert peninsula”.

And there, on the centre of all of it, is Winton, in a pair of boardies, waxing lyrical in his personal, distinctive Winton-esque model.

And it’s magic.

Episode one is known as Collisions, and it appears at Ningaloo’s historic origins, explaining “the role of the mighty currents, rainfall, wind, and waves still shaping it today”. The second ep is known as Connections, and it delves into the hyperlinks between ecosystems, tracing the human relationships and migratory pathways that proceed to maintain the world’s biodiversity. Winton talks with First Nations custodians to study extra in regards to the interconnectedness of land, sea, and life.

The ultimate episode, Choices, highlights the “the good decisions that have granted Ningaloo a cultural status and a level of management almost unrivalled in the world”. It additionally factors out the challenges the world nonetheless faces. As Winton explains, the ocean may shimmer a pristine inexperienced, however simply previous the horizon, the lights of heavy trade twinkle, threatening to inch ever nearer.

Through the doco, Winton is urging us to take care of vigilance — it’s the explanation he leant his title, his phrases and his face to this undertaking, his involvement beginning way back to 2018.

“I had gone back into the campaigning mode to try to save Exmouth Gulf from industrialisation, which is a bit of left-over business from our campaign 20 years before, when we helped spare the reef from a few disastrous developments,” he explains.

“We changed the planning laws, and helped get the place put on the World Heritage List.

“I published a story in The Guardian, about my wife and I swimming face-to-face with humpback whales in the gulf, and how rare it is to have these kinds of experiences with megafauna in a pristine place — Peter Rees, the director of this, and the guy who made Mythbusters, contacted my agent and asked if I would be interested in making a natural history show about Ningaloo.”