South Australia Coast Australia

We're in South Australia where the icy winds and towering grey waves

of the great Southern Ocean crash into this island continent.

We're here to examine the stories that shaped its history.

Of those long since passed and those who live here now,

drawn by an intangible connection to this dramatic and timeless coast.

Joining me on this journey,

Professor Emma Johnston dives deep into ancient coastal caves.

So, we just swam through a 5 million-year-old Gothic cathedral?

-That's right, yeah.

-Absolutely stunning.

A close encounter for Professor Tim Flannery.

For the Europeans of 200 years ago, this coastline here

was about as unknown as the dark side of the moon.

Dr Alice Garner gets a taste of the gold rush.

This is California all over again.

While I take to the air to search and destroy.

Can we go and attack a submarine now?

LAUGHTER

This is Coast Australia.

In Coast's first trip to South Australia

we journey from Port Adelaide, around Kangaroo Island,

down through the Coorong,

to the Limestone Coast.

Historically, its distance from Europe shaped Australia's destiny.

Now the future of this island continent is tied to Asia.

And with 60,000km of coastline,

the tyranny of distance is a boon and a curse.

It's a challenge that requires sophisticated eyes and ears.

Not so much on the land but on the sea and in the air

and that's where I'm going to investigate.

In South Australia,

the Royal Australian Air Force has two roles to play.

One, defence. And the other, rescue.

Key to their success is the Orion P-3.

Capable of flying 3,600 nautical miles in a single mission

it's recognised as the best maritime surveillance plane in the world.

Today, I get to go up in one of these magnificent machines,

giving me a glimpse of the colossal responsibility

that is Australia's coastal defence.

That's us, then. Ready for the off.

Where can I plug this in?

For a maritime nation like Australia,

attack by submarine is a real threat.

First up in today's training exercise

is a drill to locate underwater invaders

using the Orion's state-of-the-art sonar and radar.

So, the idea is that somewhere in this area there's a submarine

and you need to know where it is and what it's doing?

That's right. So we're using radar, primarily, to find

where the submarine is, track it and hopefully achieve a mission kill.

OK.

'Once deployed, the Orions operate well below

'the standard cruising altitude of 35,000ft.'

-Are we the double white circle?

-That's right.

So, this circle here - there's a line coming off,

which is the way that we're pointing

and the pilot's operating. That's quite a low level.

What do you call low level?

A really low level is about 100ft and that's quite sporting.

-I would do that operationally.

-Will we do that today?

-Perhaps, yeah, hopefully. Definitely.

-Great.

The squadron's motto is, "Shepherd or destroy."

So, along with torpedoes to sink the enemy, the Orions carry

critical gear for search and rescue missions.

101ft of wingspan, we're only 100ft above the waves,

so somewhere out there the wingtip is just above the water.

The sea is close enough to touch.

To mark the position of survivors,

smoke canisters are fired into the sea.

Yep, there's the smoke. Clear as day, trailing from right to left.

So that would be marking the position of someone or something

in the water, the smoke makes it easy to find again.

60 seconds. Clear to open the door, stand by the drop.

In a highly co-ordinated manoeuvre, the crew open the cabin door.

Door open.

Drop now.

And throw out a specially packaged life raft and supplies.

-BOTH:

-Door's closed.

Back in surveillance mode, these firing tubes

double as launchers for sonobuoys,

sensitive listening devices that work in tandem with the radar.

Stand by buoy. Buoy away, now.

Two buoys.

So, as soon as one of those is in the water you can eavesdrop

on whatever's going on on the vessel that it's beside?

Sort of. We're listening to all the mechanical noises,

pumps of engines and propellers, all that sort of stuff.

From that we can determine what sort of vessel it is

and how fast it's going.

Copy, radar, check.

Our vessel of interest,

pilot's intentions will be to do a recon on this content.

'Along with submarine hunting,

'the crew monitors surface vessels, as well...'

Stand by.

'..tagging suspected vessels with a specialised long-range camera.'

Did those ships know that you were coming?

-Had you given them advance warning?

-No.

As a matter of routine you just go

-and have a look at vessels that are in Australian waters?

-Absolutely.

-Just see what they're doing?

-Yep.

They could be a vessel that's polluting or suspected of polluting,

things like that are obviously quite important

cos you don't want pollution in the waters around here, obviously.

As a pilot, how do you rate this aircraft?

I think it's fantastic.

-Why?

-Just beautiful aircraft to fly.

Far as a pilot goes, this is back down to basics, you know,

this is raw flying which you just don't get a lot of.

'As if to prove his point,

'Crew Captain Daniel Evans blindsides me...'

You're in a nice position, I'm going to hand over to you.

So, when I say handing over, I'm going to get you to take the yoke.

'..and hands over control of the aircraft to me.'

-Am I now flying this plane?

-You are.

It's holding itself level at the moment so you can turn it

left and right, it's just like driving a car.

To the right.

-So, this is not a trick, this is me doing this?

-No,

this is you doing it.

Wow. I wasn't expecting to be in charge of something like this today.

DANIEL CHUCKLES

You're sure this is legal? Can we go and attack a submarine now?

HE LAUGHS

If there are any around.

-I'm just going to take over again.

-That's fantastic, OK.

Just release the yoke.

And then, right, so, I've got control of the aircraft again.

-Amazing.

-Good fun?

-Well, I've never done that before.

Not many people have.

Well, when I got out of bed this morning I was not expecting to spend

part of the day at the controls of a fully tooled-up military aircraft.

So, there you go. A definite first. And there's another thing.

These aircraft are coming to the end of many long years

of distinguished service.

But when the day comes,

and they finally go over the hill into history

and fly no more, I'll be able to say that,

if only for a few moments, I, too, once flew an Orion.

Were it not for a remarkable coincidence,

the towns and landmark along the rugged coast of South Australia

might not bear the names they do today.

In 1802, just off the coast here,

two of the world's greatest navigators met by chance.

At that time, their respective empires, France and England,

were fighting the Napoleonic Wars.

But this encounter was peaceful and even cooperative.

Professor Tim Flannery is setting out to investigate why.

In early April 1802,

this was still unexplored country.

But the great navigator Matthew Flinders

was fast approaching from the west.

He was the man that gave Australia its name. While from the east

there was a grand French expedition led by Captain Nicolas Baudin,

the greatest scientific exploring expedition of the 19th century.

The two were destined to meet just out there,

in a place that's been known ever since as Encounter Bay.

I'm here to meet an old mate, Adam Wynn,

and we've got a bit of a deal going about hats.

Unbeknownst to one another, both Flinders

and Baudin were exploring Australia's coast at the same time.

It was the race to chart Terra Australis.

At stake, a claim to this vast island continent

and all its many resources.

Monsieur la Captain.

HE GREETS HIM IN FRENCH

'His hat may look like French Captain Baudin's,

'but my mate Adam Wynn is as Aussie as they come.'

-It's fantastic to see you again, Adam.

-Nice to see you.

It's so wonderful. It's been so long. I know, 200 years,

I can't believe it went so quickly.

'Adam's a talented winemaker with a penchant for history.'

So, Adam, this is Encounter Bay. Why have you brought me here?

Well, this is where an extraordinary meeting took place

over 200 years ago between Flinders and Baudin,

-rivals, from rival countries.

-Was it right here, do you think, or...?

It was just about at this spot.

There was probably no two groups of people further from home,

when you think about it, and it would be like the Russians

bumping into the Americans on Mars. "What are you guys doing here?"

Just complete surprise and, of course,

at the time, the two countries were at war.

In the golden age of exploration,

charts and navigational knowledge were currency.

Highly-prized technology, that was the intel of the day.

But instead of killing one another,

Flinders and Baudin chose, rather, to exchange information courteously.

Flinders, of course, had already charted a great area

from the start of the bight to where we are now.

Baudin had charted unknown land from near the Victorian border

to where we are now, and they compared notes.

And it must have come as a bit of a disappointment to Baudin, really,

because he was charged with charting

the area that Flinders had just visited.

-Yes, so, you can just see on these maps.

-Ah, yes.

These maps, Adam, are of particular importance, aren't they?

Very much so, the information was vital for

so many things at that time.

The ships at those times plied the seas with fairly limited

navigational aids and often foundered,

often were lost, you know,

at huge expense to the merchants involved.

So the more accurate the charts,

the more easy was your flow of commerce

and the wealthier you became as a nation.

Imagine if Baudin had got there first and a stake had been made

on the colony, what do you think South Australia would be like today?

Well, it's fascinating to contemplate, isn't it?

South Australia could have been the Quebec of Australia.

What a huge difference that would have made to our history.

-What an intriguing thought, a French South Australia.

-Yes.

-Marvellous.

-Vive la difference!

-Vive la difference, mon Capitan.

Flinders and Baudin reached a gentleman's agreement to respect

the place names each had assigned to the territories they chartered.

Flash forward six years and Baudin is dead of tuberculosis,

Flinders, captured by the French, is detained in Mauritius -

their agreement broken.

All because Francois Peron and Louis de Freycinet,

two surviving members of Baudin's team,

neglected to mention the agreement back in France

and replaced Flinders' English names

with French ones on their map.

But France lost the Napoleonic Wars

and in 1836,

the British Empire proclaimed

South Australia as a colony.

Flinders' English names prevailed.

But because of that chance meeting and gentleman's agreement,

South Australia today has more French place names than

anywhere else on the continent.

Flinders and Baudin would never meet again

and Flinders died the very day that his great work,

A Voyage To Terra Australis, was finally published,

but the great tragedy of the expedition, I think, lies right here.

This is the Murray river-mouth and Flinders had been specifically

tasked by Sir Joseph Banks to find the great inland river of Australia.

He never saw the river-mouth,

neither did Baudin and so the chance for even further greatness

and exploration slipped from their grasp.

The mighty Murray is Australia's longest river.

Over 2,500 kilometres,

it's the gateway to three states,

traversing New South Wales,

Victoria, and South Australia.

But the shifting sands of the Murray mouth make this channel

impractical for shipping.

And even newly-invented, flat-bottomed paddle steamers

found the crossing extremely treacherous.

So here, the last bend before the river reaches the sea,

was selected as the place where the riverboats would unload

the cargoes, mostly bales of wool,

for transfer onto the ocean-going ships

out of Port Elliot and later Victor Harbour.

And a new era of commerce had begun.

Heading east from the Murray Mouth,

the coastline sweeps south along a 130km-long stretch

of desolate beach-fronted dunes and salt water lagoons.

This is the Coorong - one of Australia's largest wetlands,

immortalised in the classic feature film Storm Boy.

Based on the novel

by South Australian author Colin Thiele,

Storm Boy is a moving and evocative tale

that Brendan Moar remembers well.

Storm Boy was released in 1976,

and I remember first seeing it when I was seven years old.

I will never forget that infinite stretch of coastline,

those menacing, scary storm clouds and that sense of isolation.

It was the complete opposite of the stereotypical sun-bronzed Aussie.

This was a reflective, brooding coast.

The film charts the special bond between an isolated young boy

and the pelicans that breed here.

Want to see what Mr Percival can do?

This is my first visit to the Coorong,

and I wanted to see for myself what it is about this place

that inspired both the book and the film.

Storm Boy was photographed by Geoff Burton.

'He's one of Australia's most renowned cinematographers,

'and this moody film launched his international career.'

How important was the Coorong as a character in the film?

It's important in a story that is as wide-ranging

as the length of the events that occur in Storm Boy

to be able to see this landscape as threatening.

But at the same time,

using that same landscape in the context of beauty.

And, yet, it's the same pile of sand and the same bushes

and the same sky above.

Did you have any idea when you were making the film

you were effectively making an ode to this beautiful environment?

There was a period when there was a serious water shortage

in the Murray.

The pelicans were the first to go.

It looked as though at that stage

the Coorong was under serious threat.

I thought, "Storm Boy may end up being evidence of an environment

"that will no longer exist.

"This could be the best the Coorong is ever going to look in history."

Fortunately, the rains came and the whole thing was averted,

and water flowed down the Murray as it does.

Almost overnight, the pelicans came back and rookery was re-established.

The Coorong pelicans hold spiritual significance

for the local Aboriginal people, who claim them as a totem.

Storm Boy. You run like a black fella.

Like the wind.

The relationship between young Mike and Fingerbone Bill,

played by legendary indigenous actor David Gulpilil,

is another ground-breaking aspect of Storm Boy.

He was a man who had spiritual ownership of this land.

His story is the pelican's story.

That, sort of, concept had never been put

to Australian audiences before.

The film changed perspectives on the natural world,

and this was the 1970s, way before the environment became a hot topic.

Capturing this ethereal costal landscape on film

was a triumph for Australia's blossoming screen industry,

and, of course, its principal star - the Coorong.

Storm Boy captured this coastline in fiction.

100km west of here in Adelaide,

there's a real life maritime history waiting to be preserved.

While the colonies of New South Wales and Tasmania

were established as convict settlements,

in 1836, the founders of South Australia

proclaimed a different vision.

They imagined a colony of religious and political freedom,

and all of it supported by business and pastoral investment.

So unlike the rest of the continent,

South Australia would be built not by convicts but by free men.

Advertisements were placed in the British press

to attract the great and the good.

"Free emigration to Port Adelaide, South Australia.

"Married agricultural labourers, shepherds, blacksmiths

"wheelwrights, sawyers, tailors, shoe-makers, brick-makers,

"builders, and all persons engaged in useful occupations

"may obtain a free passage."

Strangely, they don't mention archaeologists.

But even if the travel costs were covered,

free settlers could hardly be expected to sail on convict barques.

So in 1862, a group of wealthy Adelaide merchants

commissioned a more enticing vessel.

Built in Sunderland and aptly named the City Of Adelaide,

she was a three-masted composite clipper, and the first of her kind.

-Peter, how are you?

-Hi. Good to see you.

Good to see you, and to see the City Of Adelaide.

Isn't it magnificent?

You do get that sudden sense, that shock

of how big a construction she is.

'Maritime enthusiast Peter Christopher

'is committed to preserving this iconic remnant

'of South Australia's maritime history.'

Genealogists have calculated

that about a quarter of a million people in Australia today

can trace their heritage back to this actual vessel.

From a technical point of view, then,

what is a composite clipper and why is it important?

Prior to this ship being built, ships were made wholly of wood.

The construction of this had an iron frame with wood over that.

That meant the ship was much more streamlined,

it could actually travel much faster.

Between 1864 and 1886,

the City Of Adelaide made 23 round trips,

carrying British and European migrants to South Australia,

returning to Britain with copper, wool and wheat.

This ship was so fast it was capable of cutting

a month off the journey to Australia.

A month off a journey that was how long anyway?

Some of the early ships took four, four-and-a-half months.

This ship could do it in under three.

That's like a quantum leap.

Superseded only by the age of steam, the City's sailing ended in 1893,

and she languished in a Glasgow dock for almost 100 years,

before finally sinking.

Raised, she was doomed to decay in a Scottish backwater

until Peter championed a lengthy and expensive rescue mission.

Peter, I have to ask - why go to all this effort for her?

In terms of maritime history,

this is one of the ten or so most iconic ships in the world.

So this is the mother ship for Adelaide.

It's very much the mother ship, yeah.

It's a grand old lady.

It took 14 years and 4 million

before the hull of this regal, old clipper

could finally be hoisted on to a purpose-built steel cradle

and transported by heavy-lift carrier back to Port Adelaide

and the city she helped build.

It's almost an uncomfortable feeling

being up against a ship's hull like this.

It ought to be in the water.

You're also reminded all the time that it was the work of people.

Every inch of this would have been touched at some point

as people either built it or maintained it

or put on the copper cladding.

I don't know.

You can hear the voices, because it represents the people

who built her and the people who were carried inside her.

You get a sense of them.

Pam Whittle is a descendent, a very special one.

This is the first time she's seen the City here in Adelaide.

-Hi, Pam, how are you?

-Hello, Neil! Good to see you.

Lovely to see you too.

How do you feel seeing this grand lady

for the first time in Australia?

I'm feeling absolutely amazed, very emotional.

-Mm-hmm.

-And...

I just feel it's almost a dream.

Pam's great-grandfather, David Bruce,

commissioned the building of this majestic old clipper.

This ship wouldn't exist without your ancestor.

I don't think it would have.

'In pride of place in photo albums

'are shots of her and her husband in Glasgow

'where, in the '80s, the City Of Adelaide served

'as a naval officer's club.

'Pam had the rare opportunity to spend a couple of nights on board.'

I can't get over the fact that you, as a descendant of the man

who commissioned and had the ship built, has actually slept aboard.

Yes. That makes me feel very shivery.

I imagine my great-grandfather David Bruce watching over me.

I had this feeling that there's some link.

Well, more than some. A lot of links.

Mm.

More money is needed to fully restore the City Of Adelaide,

and so, after 150 years, this hulking relic

of the golden age of maritime history

waits patiently in her new dock.

And for the descendents of the passengers who arrived aboard her,

her homecoming here is a new chapter.

It's about history being brought to life for a whole new generation.

In the footsteps of great explorers, like Flinders and Baudin,

humans have domesticated much of this wild and rugged landscape.

But the primal forces that gave this ancient coastline birth

are far, far greater than any of mankind's endeavours.

Hidden right here at Discovery Bay

on South Australia's remote Limestone Coast,

marine ecologist Professor Emma Johnston

is about to uncover one of nature's best kept secrets.

I'm here in South Australia on the very border with Victoria.

There's surf, sand, shore birds - all very typical.

But what's unusual, something I have never seen before, is this -

water bubbling out of the sand.

'To help me make sense of it is geomorphologist Grant Pearce,

'who's studying this natural phenomenon.'

-Grant.

-Hey, Emma. How are you going? Good to see you.

-Yeah, good, good.

-Hey, what's this?

-What's happening here, Emma,

is that these little bubbles coming out of here,

that's ground water coming up through the sand.

-Ah, this is fresh.

-It's lovely, fresh water. If you have a taste...

-Oh, it is.

-Apart from the sand, it's quite nice.

THEY LAUGH

So where has this come from?

Well, the rainfall that generates this

falls inland about 100km away from where we are.

And it's sunk into the earth?

It sinks into the earth.

It can take between 5,000 and 35,000 years to come out of this place.

I could be drinking 35,000-year-old water.

Fossil water. Yeah.

While these bubbling springs have taken 35,000 years

to travel through the ground to the beach,

their true origin began millions of years ago

when Tasmania split away from South Australia.

The great Southern Ocean rolled in over this Mount Gambier region,

littering the seabed with shells and decaying crustaceans.

These shells fossilised.

And over millennia,

increasing volcanic activity and gaseous venting

created the series of caves

that is South Australia's spectacular Limestone Coast.

This whole region is like a Swiss cheese of cove fixtures

all the way around this coastline.

So when we have a look into some of those coves, we can see the water,

which is what's sitting in there, which comes from further up north.

So behind us, behind this beach,

you'll find a landscape which is full of holes?

Absolutely, yeah.

Let's go and have a look.

So the secrets to this landscape are in fresh water,

but on a scale I wasn't expecting.

We've just come from the beach,

and now we're in what looks like a reedy grassland.

Yeah, we're entering one of Australia's most unique wetlands.

EMMA GASPS

Look at what we've got here.

That's stunning.

So this is Piccaninnie Ponds.

Unlike most wetlands, which are fed by surface water,

Piccaninnie Ponds is unique.

Here, the ground water seeps in from below,

eroding the limestone above it.

And when the thinning surface layer collapses,

spectacular sinkholes, or deep-water ponds, are formed.

The water is about 14 degrees Celsius,

'and I'm joining Grant for an afternoon dive.'

'Besides being a hazard to the passing drover and his dog,

'sinkholes were only ever a curiosity for snorkelers,

'until the invention of scuba and the Aqua-lung in the '60s.

'Since then, curious divers like Grant

'have taken to exploring these underwater caverns.'

How deep is this cave?

This cave goes down to about 110 metres.

'Like Flinders and Baudin, who first mapped the coastline,

'Grant and his colleagues are the new cartographers,

'continuing the explorers' legacy, probing the secrets

'of Mount Gambier's magnificent subterranean caves.'

Are we at risk of losing

these fresh-water ecosystems close to the coast?

Provided that they're managed properly,

this site will be able to be maintained well into the future.

'Placed here by cave divers,

'these tubular salinity probes monitor levels of salt

'at the fresh and sea water interface.

'This information is fed back to a station at Mount Gambier.

'where scientists use it to formulate water-management plans

'to protect these wetlands.'

How many years ago did that form?

We think that that formed about five million years ago.

So, we just swam through a five million-year-old Gothic cathedral?!

-That's right!

-Absolutely stunning.

Just inland from Piccaninnie Ponds

is the deep and mysterious

Kilsby Sinkhole.

The water is so clear.

-Why is it so clear?

-The limestone acts like a giant coffee filter

and it just filters out any of the impurities in the organics

and what you see here

is water that we can drink.

'And as science follows the cave divers,

'who knows what incredible breakthroughs might emerge,

'as modern-day explorers, like Grant,

'uncover sacred wonders, in these subterranean cathedrals of light.'

Just 200 years in the writing

and Australia's colonial history is rich with the achievements

of a tenacious people who have made a life most splendid along this

glimmering coast.

But behind this success story is a dark and ugly shadow.

Historian, Dr Alice Garner,

has come to the port town of Robe, 160 kilometres

from the Victorian border, to explore how one colony's

xenophobic tax was the making of another's coastal town.

In the 1840s and '50s,

Imperial China was fighting Britain and France

in the Opium Wars. It was a time of great economic deprivation

and political instability for the Chinese people.

And, for many, life was so grim that, in order to ensure the survival

of their family, they had to leave home, to seek work overseas.

In America,

the gold rush was winding down.

Word filtered through that the next El Dorado was in Australia -

specifically, Victoria.

Seeking better prospects, desperate Chinese left their remote villages

in droves, sailed on junks to Hong Kong and boarded European ships

to Australia.

But the Victorian government considered the influx

of Chinese fossikers a threat and, in 1855, imposed a £10 poll,

or head tax, on all Chinese landing

in Victoria - an attempt to keep them out of the colony.

It was a blatant act of racism,

because it applied only to the Chinese.

In response, Hong Kong shipping agents redirected their vessels

to South Australia,

where there was no Chinese landing tax - at least, not yet -

and unloaded their pasengers here, at Guichen Bay.

And so, in January 17th, 1857,

the sleepy town of Robe awoke to find a British ship

anchored in the bay.

265 Chinese disembarked that morning, the first of some 15,000 to pass

through Robe in the coming year.

When they set foot on dry land, they discovered they would have to walk

to the Victorian gold fields. That is more than 400 kilometres away.

'Writer and researcher Liz Harfull is the full book on Robe

'and its history.'

Liz!

Hello, Alice. Welcome to Flagstaff Hill.

This is the hub of where it all started for Robe.

Over here, we have Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders,

the two individuals that charted the coast.

Can you paint me a picture of Robe at the time the Chinese miners arrived?

It was a very small and isolated port at the furthest end

of the British Empire.

Less than 200 people lived here at that time.

-Were they welcomed into Robe?

-On the whole, they were,

because the locals soon worked out it was a fabulous

business opportunity.

Were they mainly men or were there women and children on board?

Overwhelmingly, men. In fact, census records show there are only

three women on the Victorian gold fields, well into the gold rush.

The Victorian gold rush was a jackpot for the townsfolk of Robe.

The Celestials, a name given to the Chinese,

needed to eat, sleep and prepare

for their arduous journey to the gold fields of Ballarat.

Robe locals were able to charge exhorbitant prices for goods

and services and, when the cash ran out,

there were exotic possessions to barter.

The local government even levied a 5% customs duty on opium -

legal, at the time - brought in to Australia by the Chinese miners.

I've got some essential supplies here, the kind of things

that the Chinese miners might have taken with them

for their walk. Of course, they also would have needed mining supplies

or equipment.

Oh! But I think this is heavy enough.

And now, having sailed from southern China...

..the journey is only just beginning.

It's over 400 kilometres to Victoria.

And so, burdened with kit,

they trekked to the Central Victorian gold fields,

over swampy trade tracks and in blistering 40-degree heat.

Tough times awaited the Chinese on the Victorian gold fields.

Most eventually went home, if they could afford it.

But many chose to carve out a life here and prospered

and changed this immigrant country of ours for ever.

Ferry journeys like this

are so reminiscent of so many journeys that I have made around

the British Isles, particularly in the west of Scotland,

but in fact, I couldn't be further from home.

We're heading for Kangaroo Island, 15 kilometres off the coast,

earmarked by Matthew Flinders

as a suitable location for the first settlement

of South Australia.

But the inclement conditions

forced those first settlers to abandon the island

and move to Adelaide.

There is a hidden history here,

swept over by the icy winds on this desolate shore.

And I have come to dig it out.

At least a decade before Flinders, Kangaroo Island was already a haven

for a community of wildmen - tough, flinty-eyed crewmen

who had jumped ship to escape appalling working conditions,

seeking refuge on islands like this.

They were hunting whales and seals, for oil and fur.

but it was another furry beast that gave this island its name.

In March, 1802, hungry and short on supplies,

Matthew Flinders and his crew on the Investigator docked here.

In fact, Flinders wrote that Kangaroo Island was so named

because it was these animals which saved them.

He was here for about six weeks and, during that time, his crew

augmented their diet by slaughtering

and eating over 30 of these poor beasts.

So, replenished, the Investigator sailed on, but as you can see,

the kangaroos remained, to provide a great deal of fascination

for Flinders' French counterpart, Nicolas Baudin, who was so

senamoured of these bizarre creatures that he took two of them

back to France, as presents for none other than Josephine Bonaparte.

Joined by escaped convicts, bringing abducted

Aboriginal women with them, the renegade wild men of Kangaroo Island

sold seal skins and oil to passing ships,

for rum, tobacco, firearms, tools

and other necessities.

It was the beginning of a profitable fur trade,

but easy pickings on the island

plunged seal numbers to the point of extinction.

Dr Keryn Walshe is an archaeologist who has been uncovering

some startling new evidence about this early colonial time.

Hi, Keryn!

Was there an Aboriginal population

on Kangaroo Island when the Europeans arrived?

-No, but they had been here.

-How do we know that?

Because of the stone tools that were left here by them.

And how recent... When did they leave?

Probably about 5,000 years ago.

'Keryn recently made a remarkable discovery - one that unlocks

'a previously unknown piece of the fur trade puzzle.'

So, you were just walking through here, just seeing what there was

-to be seen?

-Yes, that's right. I was looking for stone tools, really,

the record stone tools left on the surface by Aboriginal people,

-but instead, what I came across was this site...

-Uh-huh.

..which was covered in animal bone.

Bone does not last long on the surface,

so it had to be a recent site, which made me immediately think about

the whaling and sealing industry that was happening here

on Kangaroo Island, from roughly 1800, if not a bit earlier.

-But you could see right away that it was not seal bone?

-That's right.

It was not seal bone, so I was quite flummoxed by it in the beginning.

'Keryn had discovered an archaeological treasure trove

'of wallaby bones - brand-new evidence to prove

'that the wild men of Kangaroo Island

'adapted to declining seal populations

'by hunting wallabies for their fur.'

And why were they worth harvesting?

What is good about a wallaby?

The wallaby furs are quite good in themselves

but here on Kangaroo Island the fur is extra, extra thick

-because it's such a cold, exposed place.

-Right.

And so the furs from this island were preferred in the fur industry.

How does this compare to other sites of this sort elsewhere

in this part of the world?

This is the only site that I'm aware of in the whole

of the Southern Hemisphere. This is it.

I cover so many different kinds of stories on Coast

and it's always a pleasure, therefore, when I stumble across

something like this which is a story for an archaeologist.

It took someone like Keryn walking through this landscape,

trying to understand the archaeology of this place,

to notice the significance of a bone like this.

What she has unearthed is an industry that appeared

spontaneously in this part of the world

as people in extremis struggled to make a living and to survive

and to triumph over their circumstances on the coast.

The remarkable rocks fairly live up to their name.

Here we're in the presence of a masterpiece

on display in the world's most spectacular natural gallery.

But this rock art isn't the work of Picasso,

or even Salvador Dali.

The master sculptors here are sea, wind and rain,

a relentless trio who have burrowed, pounded and swept

around the 500 million-year-old granite,

smoothing its edges and elevating its form over function.

500 million years ago these remarkable rocks developed

inside the earth's crust

and their sculpted forms are unique to Kangaroo Island.

Island dwellers tend to value their independence.

I suppose it's something to do with the reassurance

of knowing there's a barrier between you and the rest of the world,

between you and authority.

That's why islands and islanders are just that little bit different.

The renegade wild sealers of Kangaroo Island

were a case in point.

They built a profitable fur trade in this harsh wilderness

but at great cost to the indigenous wildlife.

In just over 30 years, between 1803 and 1834,

at least 100,000 seal skins were harvested on Kangaroo Island alone

for export to Europe and Asia.

Here on the island the species was almost wiped out.

I'm joining sea lion specialist Dr Simon Goldsworthy

and ranger Clarence Kennedy

on a field trip to count the current population.

These are all sea lions, there's no seals here?

Sea lions are seals.

Is the species effectively still trying to compensate

for that big hit that was taken in the 19th century?

Yeah, exactly.

The first seals which were taken in huge numbers around Kangaroo Island

have undergone quite a spectacular recovery in Southern Australia

since about the late 1970s

but sea lions haven't undergone a recovery as we've seen...

So all these animals we can see here are sea lions

and that's the species that's struggling to bounce back?

That's right.

It's estimated that there are fewer than 15,000 Australian

sea lions alive.

85% of them live in South Australia

and Seal Bay is one of the largest breeding sites.

To track the colony's population,

the sea lions of Seal Bay are microchipped.

Here's a sub adult male.

Simon and Clarence monitor population growth every two months,

scanning the whole colony to identify newborns.

What is it, do you think, that's attracting

the sea lions and the seals to Kangaroo Island?

Why do the sea lions particularly like Seal Bay?

You don't find sea lions breeding on the mainland

-where humans can hunt them.

-Right.

So offshore islands are their domain.

We're just really fortunate that this site,

was a place that was very inaccessible,

and this is where they've hung on, basically.

But while hunting is no longer a threat to this protected

sea lion colony, human impact remains a clear and present danger.

Over the last 25 years here,

this population has declined by over 30%.

We discard seven billion tonnes of debris

into the oceans every year

and, furthermore,

sea lions get caught up in huge trawling gillnets.

Now what's happened in the last five years,

there's been some major changes in the way that fisheries operated.

Many animals would come ashore with gillnet wrapped around their necks.

So there's a ban of gillnet fishing to protect this colony.

So here's yet another species that has suffered so much

from contact with humankind.

It feels as if the cards are stacked against them.

It's why a place like Seal Bay on Kangaroo Island is so important

because it's at least a safe haven for some of the sea lions.

I'm not a train spotter, as such,

but there's no denying the romance of a railway that runs along

beside the sea, and this one's made even more intriguing by the fact

it's called The Cockle Express.

So I'm looking forward to a good lunch, as well.

Linking the seaside towns of Victor Harbour and Port Elliot,

to the mouth of the River Murray,

The Cockle Express is the oldest steel railed railway in Australia.

In the days before steam, a horse-drawn train would bring

the cockle hunters to Goolwa

and the little saltwater clams, or pipis,

are so highly prized that the tradition continues to this day.

The sandy beaches near the Murray River mouth are the perfect place

to find cockles, or pipis.

And Alf here is about to teach me the pipis dance.

So this is how you do cockling Australian style, yeah?

-This is the cockle shuffle.

-The cockle shuffle?

-Yeah.

-It looks more like the twist to me.

-It's the twist, the shuffle.

Does that just to disturb them?

-It lifts them up and you can feel them under your feet.

-Ah-ha.

Beautiful, good size.

-Millions of them coming up.

-Ah-ha.

-Millions of them.

Have the Australians always made food out of these?

Well, they've probably been popular for the last 20,000 years

for our local indigenous Aborigines up here.

The Italians came along and we perfected the recipe, I think.

-We introduced pasta.

-Ah.

So it's the Italian influence.

I get you, right.

-Right, shall we cook some of these?

-I'd love to.

-There's garlic and chilli in there.

-Yeah, lovely.

You can smell it. The pasta's looking good.

-For al dente.

-Al dente.

There's something brilliant about food you collect yourself

and cook yourself outdoors.

-There's just something...

-It's delicious, it's fresh.

Nature's gift. Cheers.

Oh, look at that.

-Oh, fantastic.

-Yeah, it's good.

-That is really good.

-That is beautiful.

Next time on Coast...

We visit Northern and New South Wales.

Dr Alice Garner goes to visit a most extraordinary jail.

There was a hive of activity.

There was a barber's shop, a tailor, a cobbler...

Tim Flannery uncovers a little-known tale of heroism

and exploration.

12 men, small rafts, total isolation for six months.

It takes a special kind of person to survive that.

While I discover the personal cost of a secret war.

The government certainly didn't want it to be public knowledge

in case the populace got panicked.