- 2 days ago
Salt water crocs in the Northern Territories. Spear fishing in the Solomons. Liz explores the Great Barrier Reef. Turtle rehabilitation center. Looking for new species in Papua New Guinea. Gordon swims with sharks.
主持人们回顾了他们在澳大利亚及南太平洋诸岛的探险经历, 讲述了自己被空投至野生咸水鳄巢穴的经历——这是他做过的“最疯狂”的事情之一...
主持人们回顾了他们在澳大利亚及南太平洋诸岛的探险经历, 讲述了自己被空投至野生咸水鳄巢穴的经历——这是他做过的“最疯狂”的事情之一...
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TVTranscript
00:08For many years, we've travelled the world making wildlife programmes for the BBC.
00:14What an amazing animal.
00:17My name's Chris Packham.
00:19I'm Liz Bonnan.
00:20Oh, that's the lion's tail, McClack.
00:23I'm Steve Batshaw.
00:24Oh, not the ear.
00:28And I'm Gordon Buchanan.
00:30Oh, look at that.
00:34We may have spent a lot more time on home turf lately.
00:39But it's given us a chance to reflect on just how amazing some of those wild adventures were.
00:52And we want to share some of those memories with you.
00:58Go, go, go, go.
00:59The close encounters.
01:03Grueling expeditions.
01:10Oh, I don't believe it.
01:12The amazing discoveries.
01:15Thank you, thank you, thank you.
01:19And career-defining moments.
01:21I've just asked a wild beer for a kiss.
01:25We'll also hear from those behind the cameras.
01:28Just what it takes to capture the natural world in all its wonder.
01:38Join us as we look back on our adventures through Australasia.
02:00Not all wildlife filming is the same.
02:02So when you see an Attenborough program and you see those glorious, perfect images, it may have taken years to
02:10create that one perfect visual.
02:14For me, it's not like that.
02:16You know, I'm much more rough and ready in how I make my programs.
02:20We're in very small crews.
02:22Often it's no more than just me and the camera person.
02:25And we have been working together for a very long time and know what the other person is going to
02:29do.
02:30And that means that you can just run with it.
02:33Whatever happens, you can just fly by the seat of your pants and you know that the person behind you
02:38is going to be recording it.
02:41And that trust was vital on one particular trip to Australia.
02:48Whenever you go and film them in the wild, you've got in the back of your head quite what a
02:51powerful animal it is.
02:53Quite how much they have to be treated with respect.
03:05And she'd scream and wail down the phone at me for about 10 minutes.
03:09So I don't do that anymore.
03:12My cameraman, Graham, was apparently, after it all finished, just stood there in a field like grey, saying,
03:20That was just nuts.
03:21That was just nuts.
03:22I mean, I'll follow you anywhere, but that was just nuts.
03:25And when he called his family that night, apparently he totally lied about what he'd been doing
03:30and told them he'd been filming in a zoo all day.
03:32I'm not really that surprised.
03:46When I think back to the Solomon Islands, I think of the early mornings I would go out onto the
03:51beach
03:51and just watch the waves roll in and that sort of warm sea breeze hit you to face off.
04:02That knowledge that underneath those waves and beyond that, there's a whole other world.
04:20All the things on these shelves have a little story or a memory attached to them.
04:26My very, very first camera that I got when I was 17, a long time ago.
04:35Every time I look at each of these objects, it kind of makes you think of something in the past.
04:42Particularly this beautiful carving.
04:44I was gifted this in the Solomon Islands by the people of Aurigi Island.
04:59And when it's light and you can breathe, you think, wow, why was I so worried?
05:03But, you know, that's sort of part of the human condition.
05:07We are a social animal.
05:08We like to be around people.
05:10We feel most comfortable when we can see.
05:12So in the daylight we feel very comfortable.
05:15And we like to breathe air.
05:17And when you're diving off a reef and you can't see anything, it's night time.
05:22And you can't breathe because you're underwater.
05:24And you feel very, very alone.
05:27That's when those kind of monsters in your imagination sort of come and tap you on the shoulder.
05:33I'd survived the night, but I still hadn't truly faced my fears.
05:38All that was to come.
05:43When I think of the world down under, I think of the Pilbara Desert, where some of the most ancient
05:53life forms have been found.
06:09I think of the Blue Planet Live is undoubtedly the most ambitious life project I've ever been involved in.
06:17And when I heard I was going to the Great Barrier Reef, I was beside myself.
06:23But then I'll never forget when it struck me.
06:26Oh, hang on.
06:27If we have to be live on air in the UK at, I think it was 8 p.m., that
06:33means we were going to bed at 4 p.m.
06:38to wake up at 11 p.m. to go live for 6 a.m.
06:43Was it the hardest thing I've ever done on TV?
06:46Probably.
06:47I like my sleep.
06:54We are just off the jetty on Heron Island.
06:57It is a beautiful morning here.
06:59Check out the magnificent backdrop of HMAS Protector.
07:03Now, all this week, we've been looking at the activities of green sea turtles here.
07:07And I've positioned myself over what...
07:15When you film wildlife, you learn very early on in your career that you need to be prepared for every
07:22eventuality.
07:24We were just rehearsing camera shots for the lives of that.
07:28And as we're just rehearsing the shots, we saw movement in the nest.
07:41We were given the chance to join scientists at the Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Center to see the incredible effort they
07:51put into saving everything.
07:53We got to meet this green sea turtle.
07:57It was a really beautiful, emotional moment.
08:01But I couldn't help but think, we're releasing her back into the very same conditions that brought her here in
08:08the first place.
08:11So I know that Jenny has sent me a message.
08:18Dare, I hope, that Madhuri is doing okay.
08:23Hi, Liz. Jenny here. Hope you're well.
08:26Just giving you an update on what's happened to Madhuri.
08:29So when she was released, we put a satellite tracker on her and we didn't know where she'd go to.
08:34Her history was she was found south of where we released her and the satellite tracker showed us the actual
08:40track that she went on.
08:42So she didn't go south.
08:43She actually headed up north, as you can see from the map.
08:47She went up the east coast of Queensland and she ended up at a place called Princess Charlotte Bay.
08:53And Princess Charlotte Bay is a really safe area and it's very good feeding grounds up there.
08:58There's lots of seagrass beds.
09:00There's lots of safe areas for her.
09:03She did all of this in 76 days.
09:05She travelled over 2,300 kilometres in 76 days.
09:09And that's a fantastic journey.
09:11We know that she's safe and we know she's in a good area.
09:14So we can only hope that she's actually doing well up there and she's still going strong.
09:19So all round, it's a great story.
09:21It was a great release.
09:22And I hope you're doing well.
09:24And I'll speak to you later.
09:26Bye.
09:26Bye.
09:27It's a gorgeous smile on that woman's face.
09:31Wonderful to hear that after all of Jenny's hard work.
09:36There's hope out there, isn't there?
09:38And every now and then, there's a really good news story with wildlife.
09:43And Lord knows we need some of those.
09:55I have a long and checkered history with New Guinea.
10:03I've gained an extraordinary respect for the people.
10:07But also for the landscape, it's one of the most challenging you could ever hope to try and do an
10:13expedition in.
10:14And it's one of the most rewarding in terms of exploration and certainly in looking for new species.
10:35My first solo expedition in 1997 was trying to walk on my own across the island from north to south.
10:43And I failed horrifically.
10:45But I was there for three months and saw some pretty extraordinary things.
10:50I saw the Asmat people that make these war shields out of wood.
10:55And this was one of the photos I took back then of a tribal elder.
11:02And through his nose, he has this carved nautilus shell.
11:07It's supposed to give the intimidating impression of a wild boar because they're seen of as being some of the
11:13most frightening of the animals there.
11:16So it's somewhere that I know very, very well.
11:18I speak a little bit of the language and know an awful lot about the culture.
11:24And because of that, it's drawn me back again and again.
11:27And it is certainly the holy grail when it comes to exploration.
11:44So we were going to be working in very close contact with the local tribe who lived on the flanks
11:51of this giant volcano, Mount Basavi.
12:00Mount Basavi deserves to be one of the world's great natural wonders.
12:05It's an extinct volcano and as perfect as you'll ever see.
12:11This is what we do expeditions for, places like this.
12:15Unimaginably beautiful and totally unexplored.
12:19Very few places in the world left like Mount Basavi.
12:22It was an amazing feeling to be part of a team of naturalists, including my old friends, George McGavin and
12:29Gordon Buchanan, exploring one of the last great unspoiled jungles on Earth.
12:34I was the first to land and begin the hunt for undiscovered animal species.
12:40These are the walls of the crater rim.
12:43It's an almost perfect volcanic cone.
12:46And what we're looking at now is the inside wall.
12:53It's no wonder everyone's so excited about getting in this place.
12:57It's absolutely epic.
13:01The local people consider it a sacred place.
13:04They hardly ever go in there.
13:06Maybe once every few years if they're looking to hunt for a special sacred ceremony.
13:12And they had never allowed outsiders to go in.
13:15And it came to me as my great honor to be the very first outsider to head down into the
13:22interior of Basavi.
13:30The head of the clan that owns Basavi is bringing up some magic.
13:38He's singing us into the crater.
13:39He's opening it for us so that the nature will be allowing us in there and not angry with us
13:45for going into the crater.
13:46And we have to walk under the magic stick.
13:48And we have to walk under the magic stick.
14:20It's very steep and very wet.
14:26We're going to have to go very slowly.
14:31Well done.
14:33The clouds are just coming up to meet us down there.
14:39It's a genuine lost world.
14:43I just don't want to take a wrong step here anywhere.
14:52This plant is making life here absolute hell.
14:56They're everywhere and they're called a stinging tree.
15:00On the underside of each leaf are thousands of little hairs all filled with poison.
15:08And the sting actually can carry on going for two or three months.
15:14Ow!
15:19It's over, right?
15:22What was incredibly obvious right from the start was that it was full of wildlife.
15:26The animals were everywhere and had clearly never seen humans before.
15:35I was met by a rare tree climbing kangaroo.
15:40The fact that this animal is totally unafraid of humans, just wandered straight past us, means the wildlife here, you
15:47know, has never been hunted before.
15:48It hasn't seen people before.
15:50I never expected to have a tree kangaroo on our first morning that we've been up and running.
15:55This, you know, is a phenomenal start.
15:59A phenomenal start.
16:04Every inch of the undergrowth seems to be home to more and more unusual creatures.
16:12Sticking up out of this vine, lots of little twigs, except they're not twigs, they're leeches, just waiting for something
16:21to walk past.
16:22They're switched on by warmth and also by the carbon dioxide you breathe out.
16:26And if I just breathe on them, look at that, instantly feeling around with a source of it, looking for
16:39a blood meal.
16:40Oh, I hate them.
16:43But the leeches were a sign that there were more warm-blooded animals to be found beyond our tree kangaroo.
16:48We crossed our fingers and hoped for some undiscovered mammal.
16:54For me, the highlight would be the day that Chris Helgen, our mammologist, brought into camp a marsupial.
17:05And he said, this is new.
17:07It only occurs here.
17:12Oh, wow.
17:16Oh, my goodness, he's absolutely beautiful.
17:19Come on, little fella.
17:20I think it's our guy.
17:22He's got a very, very strong, but not actually unpleasant smell.
17:25No, but it does hit you.
17:29I'm calling this the wasabi cuss-cuss because I really think it has a lot of distinctive features.
17:34We're going to find out more as we look closer, but...
17:38I just, I can't even begin to describe how it feels to have an animal in my hands that is
17:43this beautiful and, in all probability, has never been seen before by science.
17:49I think what we have is a cuss-cuss that long ago has been isolated on this volcano and has
17:56just not been able to have any contact with any of its relatives
18:00and has become something here in isolation that is unique to wasabi.
18:05He's totally chilled out.
18:06He's got no idea quite how important he is.
18:10So gorgeous.
18:11Yeah.
18:12Little guy.
18:14You're a major scientific discovery.
18:18How about that?
18:21I travel the world looking for new species in many different places, and we find them.
18:25We find new mammals.
18:26It still does happen, but so many of them, most of them, are things like bats and rodents.
18:31And to find something, a marsupial, an animal that's this size, is really exciting.
18:37It's a cause for a major celebration.
18:40Crack open the champagne.
18:41I know, really.
18:42This is cause for celebration.
18:43Or crack open the bully beef.
18:47Holding it in my arms like a baby, feeling the softness of its fur, and knowing that, you know, we
18:54were the first people ever to see it.
18:57That's something really, really special.
19:00It's so incredibly rare that new species of mammals are found around the world these days.
19:06This has got to be one of the most incredible moments of my life.
19:13To me, this will always be, hard as it was, one of my most treasured expeditions.
19:19I think our total was well over 30, maybe even 40 new species of animals found in this area.
19:28And that, in this day and age, is something that no one will ever be able to take away from
19:34us.
19:48Of all the expeditions we did, I think it was the most remote, it was the most daring, it was
19:55certainly the most exciting.
20:00Six weeks in the jungle just to see what we can find, that was the excitement of it.
20:13That was such a difficult expedition, but produced wonderful results.
20:19And in a little way, we were sort of vying with each other, you know, what fantastic thing can you
20:25find today?
20:26So there was a certain amount of healthy competition.
20:30And I won.
20:32I'm kidding.
20:50It's like Lord of the Rings habitat.
20:53You'd expect orcs and elves appearing in a minute.
20:56The whole forest is just humid, 100% humidity, all the time.
21:02And this may look like solid, solid ground, but it's not.
21:07If you, look, I can go through there and beyond.
21:10I can put my hand back and go, probably, I can put my whole arm right through up to the
21:17hill.
21:17And that's just roots and soil and space.
21:21And that's what we're standing on.
21:23The whole thing is just a sort of a mirage almost of plants and soil.
21:30But the soil is really interesting because the soil isn't just here.
21:32It actually occurs up on the plants as well.
21:35So it's actually aerial soil.
21:37All of this is just growing on a single thin, thin branch.
21:42It's a huge carpet of moss and soil.
21:49It's almost like a different world.
21:54I mean, I haven't seen that one before.
21:58Absolutely amazing.
21:59I mean, decay just brings fungi, bacteria, mosses, just everything is feeding off what's here.
22:07And look at that.
22:08That is the most exquisite tiny fungus growing on a dwarf bamboo.
22:14And it is just incredible.
22:25Oh, look.
22:26Look.
22:27Good God.
22:28God, look at that.
22:29I just saw that there on the ground.
22:31It's huge.
22:33It's the flatworm.
22:35Well, that's exactly the sort of animal you'd expect to find in this constantly wet environment.
22:44Flatworms come in all shapes and sizes.
22:49That's the underside.
22:50But I have never seen a flatworm this big before.
22:55Absolutely amazing.
22:57Tiny little head end.
22:59That's the head end there.
23:01This habitat is incredibly special because there are animals and plants here, orchids and insects and other and higher animals
23:09you won't find anywhere else in the world.
23:12But also because it occupies a very, very small area and with increased global warming, that area will get smaller
23:18and smaller and smaller and eventually it will all be gone.
23:26Almost incredibly, I'm about six feet away from an ornate fruit dove.
23:32You couldn't normally get this close to birds, especially on the nest.
23:37She's camouflaged to perfection against the foliage.
23:41She's green with a little bit of blue at the back.
23:43This oakly head and a white bit underneath.
23:46She's being very vigilant.
23:48She's watching me very carefully and turning her head from side to side, just very slowly.
23:53Amazing.
23:54The thing about animals here is that they really aren't experienced.
23:58They don't know what humans are all about yet, which may be a problem for them.
24:06One of the things they wanted to do with me was to film me catching moths on the very top
24:11of the crater rim.
24:12So we filmed me spreading out his white sheet, and this was being filmed from a helicopter with a special
24:18camera.
24:19It was so far away, I couldn't even hear the helicopter.
24:23And then it panned back, revealing the extent of the jungle, this huge jungle with me just a little speck
24:31in it.
24:35The next night, which was our last night on the crater rim, we had to catch the moths.
24:40And I said to our director, because it had started to rain, and I don't just mean rain that you
24:45get in this country.
24:46I mean biblical amounts of rain, torrential, arc-building amounts of rain.
24:52And I said to him, look, sorry, mate, we won't be doing the moth trapping tonight because it's too wet.
24:58There won't be any moths around.
24:59And he looked at me and said, George, you're moth trapping tonight because we've just spent a large amount of
25:04money on that shot.
25:05And if we don't catch moths tonight, we can't use it.
25:08So you're doing it.
25:10I said, okay, anything for a quiet life, I'll do it.
25:18We started to film, and the moth just came out of nowhere.
25:27I'm just overwhelmed.
25:30I never imagined I'd see such a diversity of moths.
25:36I mean, some of these things I've never seen before in my life.
25:41The variety of moths here is absolutely staggering.
25:47There's nocturias, geometric pieces, there's hot moths, there's fruit-piercing moths.
25:51And it's raining, it's tipping it down.
25:54This shouldn't be happening.
25:56And these bulbs only work in a radius of about 200 yards.
26:02All this has come from a 200-yard radius of this bulb.
26:08Can you imagine how rich this forest actually is?
26:13Almost beyond my understanding.
26:16Look at that.
26:17I'm absolutely incredulous.
26:22My God, look at it.
26:24Look at that one, that grassy gold color.
26:30It was like people were standing off camera with bucketfuls of moths,
26:34throwing them at my head.
26:36It was unbelievable.
26:39I have never been anywhere where I've seen the diversity of moths that I'm seeing here.
26:44If you told me, I wouldn't have believed you, but it's here.
26:49There's a different one.
26:50That's a different hot moth.
26:52That's a different one coming now, just now.
26:54V-shaped wings, very fast flyers, really strong moths.
26:59Fantastic coloration there.
27:01Oh, look at that.
27:02There's a hot moth too.
27:03I've never seen that one before.
27:05What percentage of these will be new?
27:08It could easily be a quarter.
27:15So one of the moths, which is a thing called an arctid moth,
27:19they have a defense mechanism whereby they produce foam from glands in the thorax.
27:25Look at that.
27:26That is amazing.
27:28What a defense.
27:30And that tastes really foul.
27:33Well, if you say it tastes foul, you've got to taste it.
27:38So I took a little bit of my finger and tasted it.
27:48And of course it was foul.
27:49Brilliant.
27:50Even if I had to walk up here on my hands and knees,
27:53it would have been worth it for this.
27:54This one hour of moth mayhem.
28:00One of the things actually is quite hard when you come back from a trip like that,
28:04six weeks long, you're totally immersed in it.
28:08And then everything at home just seems a bit,
28:09you've got to lose shopping, you've got to pay the bills.
28:13And it's just, things can seem a bit flat.
28:17And it can be hard because your partners haven't experienced any of this.
28:22Then, of course, they might get a bit tired of hearing about it.
28:25And they go, yeah, yeah, we've heard, yes, we've, yes, we've heard about the log.
28:29Yes, yes, we, we know when you fell into the river, yes.
28:34And for us, it's the most exciting, wonderful thing on earth.
28:38And for them, it's just like, I've been away for a while, you know,
28:42and I'm back now.
28:44And George, could you put the bins out, please?
29:05These were a gift from Moses and Sosimo.
29:09Hundreds of tiny little shells in the space shop, pig's tusk here.
29:15And I was awarded them like an Olympian.
29:20There's so many memories that are kind of wrapped up in items like this.
29:24And it all comes rushing back.
29:29For me, you know, I grew up by the sea,
29:31but it wasn't so much of a way of life for me as it was for then.
29:39It is very, very windy today.
29:44Maybe not surprisingly, the nicest place to hang out on the island is the beach.
29:50It's where the kids hang out.
29:52And they are absolutely charming.
29:56They're gorgeous.
29:57They're always happy and smiling.
30:00I think living somewhere like this for a child is a really charmed existence.
30:07Very safe and secure.
30:10Which is odd, considering you're surrounded by an ocean that can be really quite dangerous at times.
30:17But I think everyone looks out for each other.
30:20On the first afternoon, all of the kids that we've seen to disappear,
30:23and I found them at the north end of the island.
30:25They were all surfing.
30:34Anyone in life that has a fear of anything,
30:37if you sort of brush that under the carpet or sort of tuck it back into the cupboard,
30:42that fear, no matter what it is, is always going to be there.
30:45So I'm a kind of strong believer in no matter what it is,
30:47no matter how ridiculous it might sound,
30:49no matter what that kind of worry or concern is,
30:52it's just sort of get it out in the open and deal with it if you can.
30:58It's my life advice.
31:01Next time, we'll be looking back at our wild adventures in Britain and Ireland.
31:12From orca to eagles, sharks and snakes.
31:18What a magnificent creature.
31:20I will treasure this forever.
31:23Our island nations have it all.
31:32Brian Cox's adventures in space and time next on BBC Two,
31:36with plenty of questions being asked and explored.
31:39It's all on top and survival instinct is kicking in
31:41when there's nowhere to go and all you've got is time.
31:45Over on BBC One, shortly.
31:47Over on BBC Two,