In this visually stunning series, actor Aaron Pedersen (Mystery Road) and writer Holly Ringland (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart) guide viewers through our land’s unique stories, inviting us to deepen our connection with nature.
Among the lush rainforest and cascading waterfalls of Springbrook National Park, on Yugambeh Country, this episode explores how nature affects us physically and spiritually.
Holly knows this area well, as it’s close to where she grew up.
The landscape was formed by the eruption of the giant Tweed shield volcano around 21 million years ago and, Yugambeh believe, by the creation ancestor Jabreen. Aaron and Holly walk past Springbrook Plateau to Rainbow Falls where, standing under cascading waters, both are refreshed.
In the Numinbah Valley we visit a World Heritage listed Gondwanan Rainforest, and the Natural Bridge, where rare glowworms live.
Looking over the valley, Aaron and Holly meet iconic Australian singer-songwriter John Williamson. He shares how this land inspires his creativity, and the birds that inspire his songwriting.
Walking to the highest part of the rainforest, Holly introduces Aaron to extraordinary, 2,000-year-old Antarctic Beech Trees, and they contemplate all the elements that support the trees.
Aaron and Holly meet Shaun Davies, a Yugambeh man and language researcher, who tells them about the concept of gaureima: by telling stories about country, we strengthen its spirit, and our own spirit too. Shaun also tells Aaron and Holly about the janjarri and the bunyun – creatures similar in description to the Yowie – who dwell in wagoi jagun, or ‘Spirit Country.’
Production credits: Back To Nature is a Media Stockade and Threshold Pictures production. The series was commissioned by ABC TV and funded in association with Screen NSW and The People and Parks Foundation.
Executive Producer: Aaron Pederson, Series Producer: Jane Manning (Threshold Pictures), Producers: Rebecca Barry and Madeleine Hetherton (Media Stockade), ABC Executive Producer: Frances O’Riordan, ABC Head of Entertainment: Nick Hayden.
There are more birdcalls in the lamington ranges rainforest than Eastern Whipbird
Back toNature 10/8/21
What a beautiful program. Begins to help us understand our experiences of the natural world and the reasons and ways we are connected.
Mind blowing combination of human nature, wild nature, geological and time nature, and spirit nature.
Absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. Too beautiful …so please do not encourage tourism of any description, yet so beautiful, it is a place that people somehow need to experience, to deepen their love and appreciation for what we need to preserve for Entirety!