Skippy the Bush Kangaroo


Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is an Australian television series created by Australian actor John McCallum, Lionel Austin and Lee Robinson produced from 1967 to 1969 about the adventures of a young boy and his highly intelligent pet kangaroo, and the various visitors to the fictional Waratah National Park in Duffys Forest, near Sydney.
Ninety-one 30-minute episodes were produced. Additionally, a full-length film titled Skippy and The Intruders was released to theatres in 1969.

Plot and setting

The show's namesake star "Skippy", is a female eastern grey kangaroo, who is befriended by Sonny Hammond, younger son of Matt Hammond, the Head Ranger of Waratah National Park. The stories revolved around events in the park, including its animals, the dangers arising from natural hazards, and the actions of visitors The boy's mother is said to have died shortly after Sonny was born.
The series was often characterised as a kangaroo version of Flipper or Lassie.

Production

The series was shot in northern Sydney at the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and the adjacent Waratah Park.
Permission to film and build structures in the park was given by the then NSW Minister for Lands, Tom Lewis, before shooting of the series began in 1967, to showcase the new NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service government department he had just established.
The clicking sounds made by Skippy are vocal sound effects, rather than the natural vocalisations of a kangaroo, with chocolate, chewing gum or grass and, in some cases, an elastic band around the lower jaw used to make Skippy move her mouth. Between nine and fifteen kangaroos were used for each show. The apparent manual dexterity was often achieved by using separate arms in the hands of human operators.

Cast

The main characters were:

Broadcast history

Domestic

The show was produced for global distribution and filmed in colour. It premiered outside of Australia. The domestic premiere in Sydney and Melbourne was Monday evening, 5 February 1968.
The Nine Network readily repeated the series several times after Australian television switched to colour transmission in 1975. In 2009, the Nine Network began to rerun the series in a graveyard slot in the early hours of the morning.
In 2013, 9Gem started showing Skippy at 6:30am.

International

The Australian series was one of the most heavily exported programs. It was broadcast in all Commonwealth countries, including in Canada where it was adapted in Quebec for the Standard French market as Skippy le kangourou.
It was dubbed into Spanish in Mexico, where it is known as Skippy el canguro, and has been seen in most Spanish-speaking countries, including Cuba and Spain, where it became very popular. In Latín América, the show was broadcast on free TV in 1970s, and on pay TV vía Sundance Channel.
It was shown in the Netherlands, where it was first screened between 1969 and 1972. In Germany, it was known as Skippy, das Buschkänguruh, while in Italy was known as Skyppy il canguro and broadcast by RAI Television. The show was popular in Scandinavia, and in Norway a chain of shopping centres were named in honour of the programme. The series crossed the Iron Curtain and was aired in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s.
The series was also widely distributed in Ghana where is aired weekly on the GBC. The series was also broadcast in Iran.
When it was transmitted in the United States, Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo was largely shown as weekend-morning children's television.

''The Adventures of Skippy''

The series was revived in 1992 as the short-lived The Adventures of Skippy. This revival series focused on the now adult Sonny Hammond – having followed in his father's footsteps by becoming a ranger at a wildlife park – who now had his own family and a pet kangaroo named Skippy.
This version also aired on Animal Planet in 1997, and is currently airing in the U.S. on TBN's Smile of a Child TV children's network.
The complete series of 39 episodes has been released on DVD by Umbrella Entertainment.

Later history

In 1998, an animated spin-off series was produced, known as . It featured a version of Skippy, portrayed as an anthropomorphic kangaroo, working as a park ranger.
In 1999, Skippy starred in advertisements for the chocolate confectionery Rolo Cookies.
In September 2008, actor Tony Bonner sued the production company seeking residuals from merchandising and DVD sales from the series.
On 17 September 2009, a documentary Skippy: Australia's First Superstar was broadcast on the ABC in Australia and the BBC in the UK. The documentary was produced by Western Australian-based documentary production company Electric Pictures.

In popular culture

The original series was parodied in a recurring sketch as part of the British comedy series Goodness Gracious Me under the title "Skipinder, the Punjabi Kangaroo": the parody redubbed scenes from the original Skippy. The show was also parodied in the 1989 - 1992 Australian sketch comedy TV show, Fast Forward.

Home media

TitleFormatEp #DiscsRegion 4 Special FeaturesDistributors
The Complete Skippy: The Bush KangarooDVD91141 June 2011-Umbrella Entertainment
Skippy and The IntrudersDVDFilm011 April 2015-Umbrella Entertainment
Skippy: Australia's First SuperstarDVDFilm011 February 2017Bonus Scenes with Directors Commentary
The Academics' View
The Crews' View
Photo Gallery		Umbrella Entertainment
The Adventures Of Skippy DVD3954 April 2018-Umbrella Entertainment