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Adventure Island is an Australian television series for children which screened on the ABC from September 11 1967 to December 22 1972 (repeats of the 1969-1972 episodes ran from 1973-1976). The show typically aired from Monday to Friday and each story would stretch across a full week, reaching a resolution on Friday.

Adventure Island was a joint production of Godfrey Productions and the Australian Broadcasting Commission, pre-recorded on videotape at the ABC's studios in Ripponlea, Melbourne. Production was usually five weeks ahead of broadcast. It was a pantomime-style series set in the kingdom of Diddley-Dum-Diddley. Hostesses were Nancy Cato (not the noted author) from 1967 to 1968 (her final pre-recorded episodes aired at the beginning of 1969) and Sue Donovan from 1969 to 1972.

Characters

Regular characters included:

• Liza (Liz Harris)
• Clown (John-Michael Howson),
• Mrs Flower Potts (Brian Crossley),
• Percy Panda (Jack Manuel),
• Dodo Panda (1967-1969) (Marion Edward),
• Betty Bruin (Carole Walker),
• Jim (James Smilie).
• Baddies including Fester Fumble (Ernie Bourne), Miser Meanie (Colin McEwan (1967-1968), Robert Essex (1969-1972), Captain Crook (Ernie Bourne), Giggles Goblin (Peter Homewood) and Squire Squeezum (Burt Cooper).

Other characters were played by guest artists such as Vivean Gray (playing Mother Sparkle, who became Mother Tinkle - more famously Mrs Jessup in The Sullivans and Mrs Mangle in Neighbours), Patsy King, Brian Hannan, Frank Rich, Mary Hardy, Angela O'Toole and Lindsay Edwards.

Pre-production

Following the May 1967 announcement of the imminent axing of the highly popular Independent Television System programme The Magic Circle Club, the ABC immediately approached its producers with a proposal to immediately take over production of the show. This was very quickly thwarted when Reg Ansett refused to relinquish his network's rights to the show's name and premise, forcing Philipp and Howson to devise a lookalike.

Adventure Island's creation was credited to both Philipp and Howson, but Liz Harris recalls Howson verbalising the show's entire premise and setting, as well as naming all the characters, during a short promotional aeroplane flight in mid-1967.

Writing

Whereas on The Magic Circle Club Howson shared scriptwriting duties fairly equally with Peter Homewood and Max Bartlett, for Adventure Island Howson wrote most of the scripts, with others contributed by Peter Homewood.

Howson also wrote four illustrated storybooks based on the show which were given a single limited print run. They quickly sold out and are extremely difficult to find.

1967-68

The 1967-68 years could be considered the Nancy Cato era. Now fully recovered from the on-set accident which saw her leave The Magic Circle Club dramatically in 1966, Nancy was Adventure Island's first hostess.

Each show would begin with Nancy in an enchanted wood (one of the show's few concessions to The Magic Circle Club). In early episodes, Nancy would sit down behind a tree-stump lecturn on which was poised a magic book, open the book and begin to read the story. The story would be based on a place called Adventure Island and the residents of its town of Diddley-Dum-Diddley, and viewers would see the story played out by the characters themselves.

In later episodes, Nancy would begin the show by bantering with puppets Gussie Galah, Crispian Cockatoo and Matilda Mouse, then read from the book.

At the conclusion of each chapter Nancy would talk to a cat puppet, which was named Samson in a viewer competition early in the show's run.

1969-72

Sue Donovan took over the hosting role in 1969 after Nancy Cato's unexpected departure. The show's basic structure remained, but each episode instead began with a conversation with a house (Mister House, later named Serendipity House in a viewer competition - voiced by Jack Manuel and sometimes Ernie Bourne). Sue would then walk into the house where she would ad lib with Crispian Cockatoo and Gracie Galah on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and with Maxie Mouse (Ernie Bourne) and a vertical waveform called Chi on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A chime would sound to indicate it was time for Sue to read the book.

Each show would close with Sue talking to Samson the cat, but on Fridays she would click her fingers and magically transport herself to Diddley-Dum-Diddley for a sitdown chat and a cup of tea with all the characters.

Premise

The show was highly moralistic with a strong "good over evil" motif in every story.

The scripted part of the show - a story serialised over five days, Monday to Friday - usually involved the inhabitants of Diddley-Dum-Diddley being set upon or tricked in some way by one or more of the "baddies". On many occasions the usually dimwitted Clown (with sawdust for a brain and an appalling memory) would save the day with his uncanny ability to see through disguises, a skill not possessed by the other residents of the town.

Some weeks' episodes would include no baddies at all, but instead centre around a visitor to Diddley-Dum-Diddley, often a relative of one of the characters, or a business-person or entrepreneur of some sort.

Aware that some children may become upset by the mischief created by the baddies or the dilemmas faced by the Diddley-Dum-Diddleys, it was common at times of high drama for a cast member to remind the young audience that "it always turns out all right on Fridays".

The highly melodramatic, overplayed tone of the show was rooted in very traditional camp and pantomime traditions, and utilised a genre of light entertainment and humour appreciated by children for its simplicity and by adults for its escapism and sly nods.

Music

In true panto style, music was an essential element of Adventure Island.

Nearly every moment was accompanied by instrumental improvisation. Each episode contained two original songs relevant to the show's plot. The lyrics for these were typically written by the week's scriptwriter (either Howson or Homewood) and set to music by musical director Bruce Rowland. After Rowland departed the show in 1971 many of the songs he had written were reused in later episodes. Rowland found great fame and respect during the '70s and '80s in the field of movie soundtracks. His replacement was Alan Teak.

The songs were almost always pre-recorded on Thursdays, then pressed to acetate and given to the actors to take home and learn so they could be accurately lip-synched during taping.

A notable exception to the pre-recording rule was John Michael Howson's outstanding and moving live-to-camera performance of A Clown Without A Smile in episode 1174.

Puppets

In each episode's unscripted segments, the hostess would converse with puppet characters. It was at these points in the show that viewer contributions (drawings, riddles, jokes, etc.) would be aired.

The puppets which appeared on Adventure Island were:

Gussie Galah, operated by Colin McEwan (1967-68)
Crispian Cockatoo, operated by Ernie Bourne (1967-72)
Matilda Mouse, operated by Marion Edward (1967-68)
Samson (cat), operated by Ernie Bourne (1967-72)
Gracie Galah, operated by Brian Crossley (1969-72)
Maxie Mouse, operated by Ernie Bourne (1969-72)

A female version of Samson, operated by Liz Harris, appeared for several weeks in 1971 when Ernie Bourne was forced to take a break for health reasons.

Gussie is probably the most notorious, but least remembered, puppet character on Adventure Island. A brilliant McEwan creation, his intensely squawking voice, disruptive manner and constant teasing of Nancy Cato took the hilarious whining of Leonardo de Fun Bird (from The Magic Circle Club) to a completely new level. When McEwan left the show, Gussie was replaced by a more cultured female galah, Gracie, who was slightly taller in stature.

Samson was a large hand puppet, similar to a Muppet. All the other puppets were mechanical creations. The operator would pull down on a rod, either underneath or inside the body of the puppet, to open the mouth or beak.

The show's puppets were superbly constructed by Axel Axelrad, who was typically named in the credits simply as "Axel".

Magic

As in The Magic Circle Club all of the characters in Adventure Island, including the hostesses, possessed magic powers which they could call upon if the need arose. These were used sparingly - possibly because of technical difficulties in performing videotape drop-edits.

Each Friday episode generally concluded with the hostess visiting Adventure Island and sitting with the characters to discuss the week's adventure. She would transport herself there by clicking her fingers.

Samson (the pussycat) was actually a magic cat who would be invisible until Monday afternoon's episode. To make him appear, the hostess would need to answer a question he would ask from "beyond". He would disappear again on Friday afternoons by sneezing.

Colour

No episodes of Adventure Island were produced in colour. A popular belief by many viewers that the show was in colour could be attributed in large part to the brilliant sets which, for most of the show's run, were designed by Paul Cleveland.

Howson has said that in 1971 an American network expressed strong interest in the show and were only reluctant to make an offer due to its monochrome format. Howson proposed a solution to the ABC in which the entire five shows would be restaged on Tuesdays but this time filmed in colour - the cast and crew now totally familiar with the scripts, having performed them for the videotaped version on Sunday and Monday - but his proposal was met with total disinterest by the ABC and was never considered.

A brief piece of colour footage (actually an offcut from a 1972 ABC magazine show story on the show's closure) was aired for the first time in 1996 as part of an ABC 40th anniversary programme.

Awards

Adventure Island won the first TV Week Logie award in the newly-established category of Best Children's Show in 1969 (for programmes broadcast in 1968).

In 1971, Sue Donovan won the Logie for Best Female Personality (Victoria).

For his contribution to Australian children's television, Godfrey Philipp won a special Logie award in 1973. (In 1979, Godfrey's programme Rainbow won a further Logie for Outstanding Contribution To Children's TV.)

Cancellation

The show's axing, announced in mid-1972, was highly controversial and an unprecedented flood of public protest ensued. A group of MPs headed by David Kennedy launched a "Save Adventure Island" campaign during which questions were asked in Parliament. However the campaign was unsuccessful and the final episode, number 1175, aired on December 22 1972. Godfrey Philipp had been the mastermind behind the Australian Labor Party's successful "It's Time" campaign, which in 1972 brought about a change in government in Australia for the first time in 22 years, so the decision to cancel Adventure Island may have been politically rather than economically motivated.

In Popular Culture

The costume for Percy Panda was used in a semi-regular segment on the ABC comedy The Late Show titled Shirty, the slightly aggressive bear, a send-up of children's television, in which the Shirty character would commit various violent atrocities. In the final Shirty segment, it was revealed that the occupant of the bear suit was Russell Crowe as his character from Romper Stomper.

In the first episode of The Micallef Program, host Shaun Micallef introduces the supporting cast as being recycled from old ABC television programs, stating that viewers may recognise cast member Roz Hammond as "the horribly mutilated corpse from the final episode of Adventure Island. I think Clown is revealed as the psychopath in that one."

In Memoriam

Several cast members of Adventure Island have died in recent years.

• Colin McEwan - August 22, 2005 (64)
• Marion Edward
• Peter Homewood - December 22, 2008 (79, one day short of his 80th birthday)
• Ernie Bourne - January 21, 2009 (82)

On January 22, 2009, the day after Ernie Bourne's death, the following notice appeared in Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper:

BOURNE, Ernie - A dear, lovable and funny man who brightened the lives of children around Australia and his fellow Cast Members in the Magic Circle Club and Adventure Island. Goodbye Sir Jasper, farewell Fester Fumble and Samson.
- Flower, Clown, Percy, Betty, Lisa, Sue, Miser, Hep Cat, Marlena, Fredd and Feefee, Godfrey, Bruce and the Boys in the Band.

External links

• Adventureisland.com.au
• Adventure Island at the National Film and Sound Archive
• Adventure Island Opening with Sue Donovan 1970 on Youtube

• Articles needing cleanup from May 2007
• Cleanup tagged articles without a reason field from May 2007
• Misplaced Pages pages needing cleanup from May 2007
• Australian children's television series