South West Australia Coast Australia

During centuries of sea voyages, the South West of Australia

was often the first or the last sighting

of the great island continent beyond.

This has been country for the Noongar people for 50,000 years.

More recently, the first European colony

on the western seaboard took root here.

The southwest corner of Australia is resolute as it is remote,

where the warm expanse of the Indian Ocean

crashes into the menacing swell of the Southern Ocean.

Joining me on this journey,

historian Alice Garner discovers a faithful link

between two villages forged in war.

The Germans knew the monks were harbouring Allies.

But they wouldn't touch the monks,

but they certainly slaughtered a lot of Cretan people.

Landscape architect Brendan Moar

unearths the incredible life of an intrepid botanical collector.

The lords and ladies back in England

were going wild wanting the stuff that she'd sent.

Professor Tim Flannery hunts for terroir with a note of coast.

I don't know quite what it is about it,

but something about it reminds me of the sea.

And for me, the bizarre true story of high drama on the high seas.

"You fire on us, you're firing on America.

"Do you want to start a war?"

This is Coast Australia!

Our journey along Western Australia's southwest coast

takes us from Perth to Rockingham,

down to Margaret River,

and its most southerly point, Augusta.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

This elegant little square-rigger is a replica of the Duyfken -

the first known European ship to visit Australia.

She's the most accurate seagoing duplicate of a 16th century vessel.

With a shallow hull,

and at 25 metres from beakhead to stern,

it was shorter, more manoeuvrable and faster

than other ships of its day.

To think that in 1606 a dauntless little vessel like this one

sighted and charted the northern cape of this vast continent.

Dutch explorers rode the Roaring Forties east

from the Cape of Good Hope, then north to Batavia

in the lucrative pursuit of spices and gold.

Landfalls along this arid, desolate coast were inevitable,

even if unplanned,

and thus, the beginnings of New Holland

and, eventually, the map of Australia.

This reproduction is testament to the dedication

of passionate individuals who relish a challenge.

-Haul it.

-Good job.

Well done.

'Renowned Western Australian sailor John Longley is one such man.

'As well as being an America's Cup racing veteran,

'he's also chairman of the Duyfken Replica Foundation.'

How authentic is this vessel?

Well, she's incredibly authentic.

This ship has been built by the same techniques

that were used in the 16th century,

which is this plank first method of construction.

So you don't build a skeleton and flesh it -

you build the skin,

and then, if you need an internal skeleton, you do that last.

That's right, so the concept of building the internal skeleton

was a development after the construction of this vessel.

What do you learn from being on board a vessel like this

that you don't learn from any other kind of sailing?

We're so much in the 21st century,

if we need to go somewhere we get on a plane - whisht! -

get in the car - whewtt! - whatever.

On a ship like this, you just cannot go where you want to go

until the sea and the wind allows you to go.

So, there's that whole concept of patience

and letting things flow, and the natural order of things.

Does it reset your clock?

It absolutely resets your clock -

it's very good for your soul.

When you first encounter a vessel like this one,

it can seem like a relic -

an artefact from a much more primitive era.

But if you spend any time aboard, you gradually realise

that it was the absolute cutting edge of technology,

this is the space shuttle of its time,

and that the people aboard were travelling to the very limits

of human imagination - and even beyond.

Sweeping south from the port of Fremantle,

Cockburn Sound hooks around to Garden Island.

A large ocean inlet,

it hosts Australia's biggest naval base

and many of Perth's maritime industries.

One of which is a pioneering energy project

that marine ecologist Professor Emma Johnston is eager to investigate

at its source.

Never been a great surfer,

but even moderate success in the surf is exhilarating

for the power that you're tapping into.

Harnessing that energy

and converting it into electricity is the next logical step.

But how does one go about it -

and how do you do it at a commercial scale?

I'm about to find out with an engineer who's doing just that

not far from here.

How to tap into the perpetual ebb and flow of waves?

That's what Jonathan Fievez has been working on,

and he's using a model to show me

that it's not about the swaying back and forth,

but the up and down motion that counts.

The wave itself has pressure,

which pushes down on the buoy and pulls up on the buoy.

Ah, I can see it's moving.

-As it pushes down, the rod retracts...

-Mm-hm.

..and so, you can see, as the waves push and pull on the buoy,

we get this pumping action, which pumps the fluid back to shore

and turns the turbine which generates the electricity.

I'll just show you how this is going to work.

-So, the wave will have transmitted the energy?

-Exactly.

-And that will pump the fluid through the piston?

-That's right.

Back onto land. You're doing that?

Yep. And we're turning our turbine,

and our turbine's generating the electricity.

You're actually getting electricity here!

That's right.

And here, at the Australian Maritime Complex, is the real deal.

The giant wave energy capture machine, called Ceto,

after the Greek goddess of the sea.

11 metres in diameter and five metres high,

these huge buoys are made of steel, with internal float chambers.

The company is deploying three buoys as a test to provide energy

for the WA naval base at Garden Island.

If it works, large wave energy farms would comprise of 25 buoys or more -

all bobbing around just below the waterline.

How much power can this unit generate?

This has a capacity of 240 kilowatts.

To give you an idea of how that would translate,

if you had a kilometre of coastline,

there's enough energy hitting the coastline to power 20,000 homes.

-Phenomenal.

-Yeah.

Wind and solar energy industry, we've heard a lot about.

Is it harder to actually capture wave energy?

It's a very challenging environment.

You know, in the salt seawater, with the ocean waves, huge forces.

Er, you know, difficult to access from a maintenance point of view.

So, I think all those things

are the challenges that made it quite a slow process.

A slow start in modern times, but the blueprints for wave energy

have been around for a long time.

It was Napoleonic Paris

where the first patent for a wave energy machine was reportedly lodged.

Since then, the idea of capturing the sea's infinite supply of energy

has fired the minds of inventors the world over.

This Western Australian innovation

will be the world's first wave farm

using large scale wave energy convertors.

The great thing about the West Australian coast in this area

is that the oceans swells are coming from thousands of kilometres away

near Antarctica, and so they're high energy swells,

and it also never stops,

so at night-time, of course, we continue producing.

With a successful test, the wave farm should have a prolonged future

harnessing an endless supply of energy from nature.

Now THAT is making the most of the coast.

Western Australia's epic coastline

is distinguished by long stretches of desolate beauty

and the finite wonders of human enterprise.

Burdened by distance and an unforgiving environment,

WA's feats of engineering are therefore all the more significant -

evidence of the ambitious reach of a few resolute visionaries.

I've come to Fremantle

to find out about one of them...

..and his story of professional triumph and personal tragedy.

Fremantle's role as a port

began with the foundation of the Swan River Colony in 1829

by explorer Captain James Stirling.

Now, at that time, the mouth of the Swan River

was partially blocked by a limestone bar

that made the entrance virtually impassable for seagoing vessels,

and made cargo handling on the long jetty impractical.

One ship's captain of the time wrote the following -

"It is no place to put a vessel -

"certainly the worst place I or anyone else ever saw.

"No place to send a ship of this size.

"Any man who would come or send a ship a second time is a damned ass."

By the 1890s,

population and prosperity flowing from WA's gold rush

demanded that Perth provide a sheltered harbour

and safe anchorage.

Western Australia's first premier John Forrest

hired an engineer for the job -

Irishman Charles Yelverton O'Connor.

I've joined Fremantle harbour master Captain Allan Gray

to find out about the formidable challenges that faced O'Connor.

So, what path did ships try to take in those days,

you know, to get into the shelter that was available?

They would come from the southwest,

and they would try and take a turn

close to the southern side of the harbour.

They had to take quite a dramatic turn

to get around both sets of rocky outcrops.

But when you've got severe winds, breaking seas,

that's a difficult manoeuvre under sail.

O'Connor's design did away with the rocky outcrops

that were damaging ships

and implemented two massive breakwaters known as moles.

They get a safe entrance, and it protects them,

the swell from coming in, and affecting ships alongside.

It's quite simple what he was wanting to do,

but what did he have to achieve?

Well, many of the engineers at the time

reckoned it was the sheer cost of the exercise back in that time.

He had to get rid of that rocky bar,

and that meant blasting and then dredging after that,

so it was an engineering task,

it wasn't a simple task of just removing some sand.

After much criticism of the plan,

work began in 1892,

and five years later, the official opening of the inner harbour

was celebrated with the entry of the oceangoing steamer SS Sultan,

Premier John Forrest's wife at the helm.

It was a new era for shipping in Western Australia.

O'Connor wasn't finished with big public works.

When Premier Forrest had offered him the job of chief engineer

back in 1891, O'Connor asked what the job would entail,

and the telegram back from Forrest

said, "Railways, harbours, everything."

They were building a state, and CY O'Connor relished the challenge.

His next task took him inland,

to the barren desert centre that was Kalgoorlie's booming goldfields.

His plan?

Merely to pipe water 530 kilometres from Perth - uphill.

I've come here to meet Mike Lefroy, great-grandson of CY O'Connor

on a beach named in honour of his famous ancestor.

It was a huge project - in fact, probably still

the longest steel pipeline in the world,

and the longest freshwater pipeline in the world.

O'Connor copped prolonged criticism by the press

and local parliamentarians.

These were expensive projects,

and having lost his staunch supporter John Forrest

to federal politics,

O'Connor took the politically motivated flak personally.

His critics accused them of misuse of funds, extravagance -

is there any evidence that he was guilty of any of that?

There's none whatsoever, and when he died,

all that criticism just faded away very quickly.

He died with less than £200 to his name.

And what do we know, precisely,

about the circumstances of his death?

Well, we know the pressure was building up to a point

where something had to break.

He wasn't sleeping. Huge anxiety was racking him.

As a way of shredding that anxiety, he used to ride.

He'd ride every morning to this point here, which is Robb Jetty.

It appears what happened then...

that he stopped his horse,

he got off the horse,

he let the horse go.

Ever the economist and the engineer,

he took his false teeth out of his mouth, put them in his pocket,

took out his revolver and shot himself.

Just a man at the end of his rope?

That's right.

He was only here for 11 years,

and it's remarkable, even in today's terms, the way projects are done,

remarkable what he achieved in those 11 years.

In 1903, the "pipe dream" became a reality

when fresh water gushed into Kalgoorlie's arid goldfields.

Like the success of Fremantle Harbour,

the pipeline is still in operation today,

delivering water to mines, farms and more than 100,000 people -

engineering feats that are tributes to O'Connor's foresight and skill.

Named by explorer Nicolas Baudin in 1801,

tranquil Geographe Bay and Cape Naturaliste are reminders

of the Napoleonic French chapter in this region's history.

Dunsborough sits towards the cape's point,

where anthropologist Dr Xanthe Mallett

is using her forensic experience for an unusual dive mission.

Today I'm working with a very special division

of WA police on a very specific training exercise -

body recovery underwater.

-Good morning, gentlemen.

-Morning, Xanthe, how are you going?

-Good to see you.

-Welcome aboard.

-Thank you very much.

'The dive squad from Fremantle Water Police

'is here for operational training,

'to test new technology

'and hone their skills in a challenging environment.

'We're on our way to the wreck of HMAS Swan,

'two nautical miles offshore from Eagle Bay.

'After 27 years of service with the Royal Australian Navy,

'the ship was scuttled in 1997.

'Now she sits in 31 metres of water, and is a purpose-built dive site

'perfect for training operations.

'Sergeant Rod Veal is heading up this exercise.'

What kind of incidents would the water police attend out here?

A lot of our time is spent recovering evidence

such as knives and firearms

and jewellery from burglaries and things like that,

but also we do get involved

with the investigation of deceased persons -

whether it be suicide, or whether it be some sort of foul play.

So that could be, what, a ferry disaster,

it could be a shipwreck, it could be a plane, it could be a swimmer?

Exactly. It could be a diver that's trapped in a wreck,

like we're simulating today.

'Collecting evidence for the coroner and investigating authorities

'is crucial - and, just like land-based police,

'this elite team are trained to observe every detail underwater.

'Using a dummy and a simulated scenario,

'the team will test their equipment, and their mettle -

'and I'm going down for a closer look.

'Helmets are fitted with microphones and cameras

'allowing the topside crew to monitor the operation.'

Topside, diver one. Penetrate wreck when ready.

Roger, topside entering now. Over.

Topside, diver one, do you see the deceased?

Topside, deceased located. Over.

'24 metres below,

'the divers have to move carefully inside the wreck to avoid snags.

'Then they go about collecting forensic evidence in situ.

'The body has been located and the evidence checked -

'but you can see that conditions aren't great today.

'A lot of silt's been kicked up which complicates the body's retrieval.'

Topside. Diver one and two, you can now recover the body.

'Back on deck for a closer look at the corpse.'

-So, there's our deceased diver, Xanthe.

-Mm-hm.

-Or our dummy.

The first thing I would look for is the contents gauge.

Immediately we can see that there's no air in that cylinder,

so it gives me the indication that either a line's ruptured,

or someone's turned off the gauge,

or something drastically has gone wrong

to cause that air to be depleted.

The regulator's a very important piece of kit to look at, as well,

to make sure that air is coming through the regulator.

But another indicator is on this mouthpiece piece, here -

if there's bite marks on that mouthpiece,

it gives me the indication that he's been in a stress situation.

'Established in 1958,

'WA's police divers have a coastline beat of 13,000 kilometres.

'They can spend more than a third of the year underwater,

'averaging seven hours a day in the gloom below

'searching for missing persons and probing the macabre results

'of major crimes, including murder.'

We turn the body over,

and we can see that we've got a cylinder on the back here -

well, it's only a seven kilo cylinder for that 24 metre depth -

it's probably not a lot of air.

So, little things like that can go wrong very quickly.

Well, it was a great learning experience for me.

I've seen body recovery all over the world

from lots of different environments -

-never anything like that, so it's certainly been an eye-opener.

-Yeah.

Fremantle was the location

for Australia's most audacious prison break.

In 1876, an elaborate plan was set in motion.

It had taken seven years to organise,

it was spread over three continents,

and it's remembered by history as the Catalpa Rescue.

In the 1860s, the British prison system was buckling under the weight

of Irish political prisoners from the Fenian Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood was engaged in an armed struggle

with the British Establishment over question of Home Rule.

When hundreds of soldiers and civilians were tried and convicted

of conspiracy and treason, many of them found themselves

aboard transport ships bound for Western Australia.

Famed writer John Boyle O'Reilly was among them.

In 1866 he was convicted and sentenced to death,

which was then commuted.

As an Irish Nationalist, a Fenian who had served in the British Army,

he was given a life sentence to be spent here in Fremantle Prison.

Hello, Luke.

-Hi, Neil, how are you?

-Very well.

'Luke Donegan's in charge of heritage conservation here.'

So, the Irish arrived, and you had this small group of educated men

with a bunch of, you know, murderers, violent criminals,

who weren't getting their pardons,

and they didn't want to be in this building with those guys.

You probably, by our standards,

-we would call them prisoners of conscience now, wouldn't we?

-Yeah.

They were here for disagreeing with the British government, essentially.

At capacity, a thousand people were packed in here.

Their cells, as you can see, were very, very cramped.

-I mean, it's not much bigger than a grave.

-Exactly.

They were facing the prospect of the rest of their lives...

-Yeah.

-..for much of their time, in a space like that.

Essentially, yeah.

As a trusted prisoner, John Boyle O'Reilly was permitted

to go on work gangs where he made connections with free Irish citizens

who eventually helped him to escape by boat to America.

As a result, security tightened on the other Fenian prisoners.

Conditions were getting quite bad for these guys.

One of them wrote a letter to a man called John Devoy

who was the head of the Clan na Gael in America.

So that's the Irish independence movement transplanted to America?

Yes, and at that point John Devoy got in touch

with John Boyle O'Reilly, and together they planned

how they could help these Fenians still here get out.

They used the emotive letter by James Wilson

to raise money for a rescue mission

that involved a whaleboat called Catalpa.

Here at Rockingham Beach,

about 20-odd kilometres south of Fremantle,

the plan was that James Wilson and the others

would meet with Captain George Anthony -

a Quaker, and a man who believed in justice.

Author and educator Joy Lefroy has spent 11 years

researching the daring escape from the work gang,

and the gripping aftermath.

Once the Fremantle six run away from their work gangs, what happens?

OK, when they actually came out,

there was this mad race through this bush down here -

cos this was all bushland at the time.

And what awaited them here?

Yeah, so meanwhile, Captain Antony is sitting onshore here

with a little whaleboat,

and he was waiting for these people to come through the bush

in their carriages to pick up the men, put them into the whaleboat

and row them out to Catalpa,

which is out behind the island over there.

The police were in hot pursuit.

Shots were fired from shore, and the weather was closing in,

but Captain Anthony and the escapees needed to get to the Catalpa,

moored much further out in international waters.

After rowing through a storm for a good 20 hours, they finally make it.

And the Fenians, once they're on board,

they go, "Yep, fabulous, now we'll have a meal proper meal,

"we'll celebrate, it's all wonderful."

But their jubilation was short-lived.

The Georgette,

a steamship commandeered by Police Superintendent Stone,

had caught up with the Catalpa, and there ensued a dramatic stand-off.

Superintendent Stone on the Georgette comes up and says,

"OK, we know you've got these prisoners, hand them over."

Superintendent Stone says, "I'll give you 15 minutes to think about this,

"and then we're putting a cannonball through your mast."

So, Antony points up to the Stars and Stripes,

which are up on the mast at the back of the ship,

and says, "This is the American flag.

"You fire on us you're firing on America.

"Do you want to start a war?" Words to that effect.

So, it had the potential to turn into something violent?

Oh, extremely, it could have done.

But as it was, the luck of the Irish proved true.

The Georgette ran out of steam, the wind changed and Catalpa got away.

Four months later, she arrived in New York to a hero's welcome.

This memorial of geese in flight remembers those Irishmen

who escaped from here all the way to the United States of America.

Like many stories that have a happy ending,

it's dependent in equal parts on bravery and pure good luck.

But were those Irishmen

heroes who threw off the yoke of tyranny,

or were they criminals who evaded justice?

Three hours south of Perth, the Margaret River region

sits within a square-faced peninsula that juts into the Indian Ocean.

Topped and tailed by two capes,

this hundred kilometre ocean stretch

is known as

the Leeuwin-Naturaliste ridge.

Its beautiful, surging coastline belies an unforgiving hinterland

of towering stands of karri and jarrah hardwoods.

Nowadays, the Margaret River is known

for great wine and great surfing.

But the intrepid pioneers who made their way here in the 1920s

faced an altogether different and daunting prospect.

After World War I, English migrants flocked here,

lured by the promise of ready-made farms,

in what was known as the Group Settlement Scheme.

While the scheme was designed to reduce Western Australia's reliance

on imports, it also had an unspoken agenda of keeping Australia white.

But it was a disaster.

Instead of rolling pastures, new settlers were confronted

by vast swathes of intractable virgin forest.

On top of that, most migrants lacked farming experience

and struggled to eke out an existence.

When the Depression hit, people abandoned their properties,

and the scheme was abolished in 1930.

It would be another 30 years

before Margaret River truly came to life.

Tim Flannery is investigating

how this one-time agricultural wasteland

has become premium winemaking country.

In the world of viticulture,

the French word "terroir" refers to all of the factors

in the natural world that influence a wine as it's being produced.

That includes the topography, the climate and the soils.

In the 1960s, Perth-based agronomist Dr John Gladstones

noted similarities between Margaret River's climate

and that of France's legendary wine region, Bordeaux.

Ironically, the infertile Precambrian soils

that defeated the first settlers,

when combined with this maritime climate,

proved perfect for growing grapes.

What was needed now was risk-takers.

Enter, stage right, a trio of GPs.

Tom Cullity took up the challenge with first plantings in 1965,

along with Bill Pannell and the Cullens, Kevin and Diana.

In their favour was a familiarity with European wines,

their strong scientific background, and, importantly, off-farm incomes.

Vanya Cullen grew up among her parents' vines,

eventually taking over their winery in 1989.

So, I'm guessing, in the early days,

there would have been quite a bit of scepticism

about growing grapes down here - but no-one had ever tried it before.

Yeah, I mean, Mum's comment that everyone said,

"What are you doing, putting those sticks in the ground?"

We planted in 1971, and it took...

1979 before we really got a decent amount of crops,

so, you know, "How do you make a small fortune?"

It's, "Start a vineyard with a large one."

So, given the atrocious conditions they faced in the early days,

what was it that got your parents to stick with it?

The three doctors really had a great dream to make great wine,

and you read the letters that they wrote to one another

and about great wine, and, you know, the potential for Margaret River -

I think they were very, very passionate.

It's the most isolated wine-making region in the world,

blessed with an equitable climate.

This place is really unique.

I mean, this Leeuwin current here -

it's the only warm current coming down the west coast of the continent,

and it buffers this place almost like a layer of cotton wool,

you know, it moderates everything.

Yeah, the climate here is Mediterranean maritime -

it's very even temperatures throughout the year,

and that makes it very good for quality grape growing.

And one of the most unique things is the purity of environment,

you know, the quality of the air.

There's nothing in between here and Reunion Island except the ocean,

and that pure air and pure rain comes all that way

and, um, we bask in it.

And this extraordinary ancient soil that's derived from rocks

that were laid down before there was any complex life on earth.

It's quite an amazing coincidence of factors, really.

'At Vanya's vineyard, I'm keen to take a closer look

'at this prehistoric soil...'

It's quite stony soil, isn't it?

It is, and that's part of why it's so great for growing vines,

is cos the rocks give it drainage.

'..and understand its role in the process from vine to wine.'

That's the 500 million-year-old sort of soil,

and that's an ironstone, or laterite,

which makes it great for growing Cabernet Sauvignon.

So the vines get their taproots right through the topsoil

into the ironstone and then into the clay,

and the clay gives the water,

and the ironstone gives a flavour to the wine which we can see later.

So this is all essential to what people call a terroir of a region?

The terroir is everything.

-It's the soil, it's the vine, it's the air - it's the sea air.

-Yes.

It's the people, the insects, it's everything.

-The context, almost.

-The context - terroir is a wonderful word, cos...

-It is.

-..it's about connection,

-and about everything that goes to make a place.

-Mm. Mm.

Context is important but, ultimately,

can I detect this coastal terroir in the wine?

On a blind tasting,

I'm going to try and identify Vanya's red from another, inland, wine.

-Oh, that's interesting.

-Mm-hm.

See, I think - now I'm only guessing,

but, to me, that might have a sea... a slight coastal thing.

I don't know quite what it is about it,

-whether it's...

-Mm-hm.

..but something about it reminds me of the sea.

-It feels like the sea, yeah.

-Yeah.

Yeah. Do I tell you whether you are correct or not?!

Oh, well, please!

-Well, you are. Yeah.

-Oh, OK.

It's also got that ironstone, too.

Some people say iodine,

which is also, like, it's a seaweed sort of...

-So that's possibly a sea association as well.

-Exactly.

So, the next one is from a different place in Australia.

OK.

Wow, that is SO different.

I don't know anything about this wine,

but it does taste to me more of the inland,

-it doesn't have the sense of the ocean that...

-Mm-hm.

..the flavours of the earlier one.

-This one has got the dust of the inland plains...

-Yeah.

-..in it, I think.

-Uh, huh. Nice.

This one, crispness. I don't know, the ocean, maybe.

Yeah. Oh, beautiful.

The industry that Vanya's parents helped create here

has well and truly taken root and flourished.

Today, Margaret River produces 20% of Australia's premium wines,

with over 150 winemakers, and 5,000 hectares under vine.

This southwest coast of Australia can be a harsh, even a violent place.

It defeated the first pioneers that came here.

But, paradoxically, it also fostered a unique wine industry

that's thrived year after year on the stable climatic conditions

that have allowed it to produce some of the best wine in the world.

The small township of Prevelly lies at the mouth of the Margaret River,

and Dr Alice Garner has come here to investigate a history

that binds this coast to one in the Mediterranean.

20 years ago, while travelling around the island of Crete in Greece,

I visited an unforgettable place.

It was the Monastery at Preveli.

Today I've come to another Prevelly in Western Australia

near Margaret River to find out about one Australian soldier's homage

to a monastery on the other side of the world.

Young Geoffrey Edwards' family migrated to Western Australia

from the UK in 1923,

and settled in Peel Estate on the Margaret River coast.

On 11th November 1939,

at the age of 21 and looking for adventure,

Geoff Edwards joined the war effort.

Private Edwards, machine gunner in the 2/11th Battalion,

Australian Army.

His first posting was Greece.

20th May, 1941, and World War II

spilled into the Eastern Mediterranean

in what became known as the Battle of Crete.

Germany's invasion of the island of Crete

marked the final phase of the conquest of the Balkans.

Under the command of General Kurt Student,

the Luftwaffe's Flieger Parachute Division landed on Crete.

At the time, it was the largest airborne attack in history.

One Allied commander watching them parachute down

described them as, "Tumbling lines of little dolls."

These "dolls" were, in fact, elite paratroopers

who eventually took the island

after heavy fighting and many casualties on both sides.

In the early hours of June 1st, 1941,

Gunner Geoff Edwards found himself a prisoner of war on Crete.

But it wasn't long before he started to plan his escape...

..with best mate Bill McCarrey, pictured here, to the left of Geoff.

-Sam, hello.

-Hi.

Later in life, Geoff recounted their daring escape

to close friend Sam Naomis.

In the prisoner of war camp,

they made their escape with only biscuits, a water bottle,

a haversack and a rough map of Crete,

and their plan was to go down to the Monastery of Preveli

on the south coast of Crete,

cos they'd heard that the monks had been harbouring Allies down there.

It was an amazing journey -

I mean, they had to go over the snow-capped mountains,

the White Mountains, which is 2,500 metres high

on goat tracks, basically, so it was really rugged country,

aided by shepherds and village people

who looked after them, sheltered them.

When they finally arrived at the Monastery of Preveli,

the monastery itself was the headquarters

of the Greek underground,

and there was about 200 Allies holed up in the caves

around the monastery, surrounding villages,

and the womenfolk and children

and men of those villages would take them food at night.

Did the villagers suffer

for the risks they'd taken in helping the men?

The Germans knew that the monks were harbouring Allies,

but they wouldn't touch the monks -

but they certainly slaughtered a lot of Cretan people.

Records show that something like 8,000 men, women and children

were killed.

On the night of 28th July, 1941, Geoff Edwards was one of a lucky few

who escaped Crete on a British submarine.

About that night he wrote this -

"Now came the time to say goodbye to our Cretan friends

"who had come down to see us off.

"There were emotional scenes as we thanked them

"for what they had done for us.

"They had proved true and trusted friends

"as they had so little, yet they had shared it willingly with us.

"We had nothing to offer them,

"yet they had risked their very lives for us.

"I promised them that I would never forget them."

And he didn't.

After the war, Geoff married and came home to coastal Margaret River.

He bought a parcel of land and named it Prevelly Park Holiday Resort,

and overlooking it, he built this chapel.

His daughter, Marilyn Sadleir, was three years old when they moved here.

I grew up here. And it was a very lonely, remote place in those days,

just a fishing track in here, initially.

but it was just a beautiful childhood.

What does this place mean to you now?

Oh!

Um, it's really quite emotional,

because it's the achievement of what my parents did,

and my father's vision,

and the desire to thank the Cretan people,

and to thank the monks at the Monastery of Preveli.

Today's a special day at this chapel.

We're commemorating the Battle of Crete,

and the congregation has gathered to remember and give thanks.

CONGREGATION SINGS

There's not enough that we could do to thank Geoff

and all those, of course, who fought and fell in the Second World War.

After the service, in true Greek style, there's food, wine and talk.

Freedom or Death - Eleftheria i Thanatos.

It's the old rallying cry of the Cretan resistance fighters.

And this chapel is Geoff Edwards' tribute

to the extraordinarily brave villagers

who lived that creed literally, who risked everything

to feed, shelter and befriend Edwards and his mates.

Prevelly Chapel,

where the Margaret River meets the Indian Ocean,

keeps those memories alive -

those acts of friendship forged under fire.

After establishing the Swan River Colony in 1829,

Captain James Stirling turned his gaze 300 kilometres south,

to land a second colony at Augusta.

Brendan Moar is casting his own expert eye on the landscape

and its effect on the short but remarkable life of one woman.

When Captain John Molloy and his young wife Georgiana

left the UK bound for Western Australia in 1829,

neither could have guessed that she would claim a unique place

in Australian history.

When Georgiana Molloy arrived aboard the Emily Taylor in May 1830,

the water's edge was dense coastal scrub just like this.

That was the least of her worries.

After bouts of dysentery, mosquitoes and the heat,

she landed here nine months pregnant and tragically lost her first child

a few days after birth on the beach -

a tough new life for these strangers in a strange land.

But Georgiana was built of sterner stuff,

as author and historian Bernice Barry tells me.

The first urgent thing was to clear land to grow crops.

She dug potatoes, she fed the pigs, she trimmed the vines,

she collected fruit, she made all the clothes that they wore.

More tragedy followed.

Her second child, her only son, drowned,

and she suffered a further miscarriage.

Through all the heartbreak, her passion for gardens remained strong,

and, indeed, intensified.

In 1836, English naval captain and botanical collector James Mangles

asked that specimens of Western Australia's native flora

be collected and sent back to London.

Georgiana accepted the challenge -

even though she felt local flowers didn't compare well

with her memories of British blooms.

She really, basically, found them not very interesting,

because there were only three or four that actually had any fragrance

and it really wasn't until she began collecting for Mangles

that she became fascinated with their beauty.

You didn't think I was

going to see it, did you?

I hoped you'd notice it.

There you go.

That's a White Bunny orchid.

-Eriochilus dilatatus.

-Yes.

From Georgiana's point of view -

this would have been the first orchid that she would see,

because this exactly the time

of year that she arrived.

Quickly her name began to appear

in botanical books and publications,

and botanists and growers and gardeners and lords and ladies

back in England were going wild, wanting the stuff that she'd sent.

'Finding plants and seeds was one thing -

'transporting delicate specimens like this

'to London's Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew was another challenge.

'Its Herbarium has the largest collection

'of historical plant specimens in the world.

'Kew Gardens is about as prestigious as it gets in the plant world.

'And I'm meeting former director - and Kew's first non-British CEO -

'Western Australian botanist Professor Stephen Hopper.'

What sort of collector was Georgiana?

Georgiana was outstanding for the 1830s.

She was meticulous in terms of the specimens she collected.

They were beautifully pressed,

and preserved under very difficult circumstances.

Georgiana relied on 500-year-old technology

to preserve those specimens.

Each plant placed between paper sheets and heavy boards

and left to dry.

Was this a difficult thing to do?

In her day, absolutely.

Now, just consider, paper in colonial Western Australia

in the 1830s - very hard to come by,

and paper is essential for drying the specimens.

So, her attention to detail was without par.

She became one of the best collectors

that Australia has produced.

In fact, many plants she collected remain perfectly preserved

at Kew Herbarium to this day.

Western Australia has 8,000 plant species,

half of which are found nowhere else on earth.

'This nondescript-looking tree is one of them.'

Why is this tree so important?

It's a flowering mistletoe,

and the aborigines here, the Noongar people, know it as Mooja,

it's a very special and sacred tree to them.

It's special because in 1627 a Dutch ship sailed along the south coast

of Western Australia,

and from off shore saw splashes of gold on the hills,

and what they were viewing was this tree in full flower.

It's called the Western Australian Christmas Tree,

because, in December through February, it flowers,

-and it flowers like this.

-Wow, look at that!

With the help of local Aboriginal women,

Georgiana Molloy became the first person

to collect the seeds of this vibrant species.

But tragically, her work would be cut short.

In April 1843, aged only 37,

after embarking on what had become her life's work,

Georgiana Molloy died

a few months after giving birth to her seventh child.

I think this tree represents the botanical gold

that is South Western Australia,

and Georgiana as a young woman from Cumberland

coming here, settling in Augusta, married to a man twice her age,

going through the tragedy of losing her infant son from a drowning,

was looking for something to do that could rejuvenate her,

and the native flora just captured her heart

in the same way that Noongar people regard it as fundamental

to caring for country.

It is part of them.

It's a very tight spiritual connection -

partly because you can't find anything else like this on earth,

except here.

After all of Georgiana Molloy's contribution to botany

it was only recently, in the last 40 years,

that her work was officially recognised.

And in her honour this species was named after her.

It's Boronia molloyae.

It has a beautiful pink red flower,

and it grows in the sand soils of the southwest coastal regions

of Western Australia - and that was the place that Georgiana called home.

Journey's end at Cape Leeuwin,

with its stark and untroubled aspect.

You can understand those who cherish a life

independent from the noise and certainty of urban backdrops.

At this point, there's nothing between me and Africa

but several kilometres of open ocean.

This coastline posed the heartbreaking challenge

for the first settlers.

It demanded of them nothing less

than the utmost tenacity and stubbornness.

But those who gained a foothold and put down permanent roots

realised at the end that they had found for themselves another Eden.

Next time, we're off to the Torres Strait.

Professor Tim Flannery enters the realm of the head-hunters...

Under each shell is meant to have a skull.

Right, a human skull under every one, wow.

..Dr Xanthe Mallet examines an infamous maritime disaster...

This must have been terrifying.

Unim... Unimaginable.

..Dr Alice Garner is on a different kind of border patrol...

No X-rays or scanners here.

..and I find out what happened when war came to paradise.

This was the only indigenous battalion

ever formed by the Australian Army.