Sixteen Hours Of Kangaroo-packed Adventure!
So who remembers Skippy - The Bush Kangaroo? Extra points if you can also hum the theme song. Altogether now:
Skippy, Skippy,
Skippy the bush kangaroo,
Skippy, Skippy,
Skippy a friend ever true.
Skippy was one of those TV programmes I remember from my childhood and always associate with eating fish fingers, chips and a one half of a salted tomato. It was about an Australian boy called Sonny and his adventures with a pet kangaroo. Sonny's Father - Matt Hammond -was the Head Ranger in a National park and patrolled the danger-laden bush in his jeep or by helicopter.
What I remember most is the big shortwave radio in the ranger station. Matt Hammond used it to communicate with the other rangers, but Sonny also needed it because he was a student in the . This was a pioneering form of distance learning which connected scattered children with a teacher as well as each other.
My pals all thought the jeep and helicopter looked like fun, but I, typically, fantasised about the big radio set. Imagine if you didn't have to turn up at school every day! You could note down your lessons, race through your homework and then head out into the bush to see if Skippy had found anyone trapped down a well or being menaced by poisonous snakes.
It's been years since I thought about Skippy but today I was leafing through a copy of the Radio Times and a pile of advertising bumph fell from the pages and onto my desk. One was a 30 page catalogue of box-set DVDs and there, on page 27, was the blurb for the complete first season of Skippy as originally broadcast in 1966.
That meant 39 episodes or - and here I take my hat off to the genius blurb writer - "over sixteen hours of Kangaroo-packed adventure!"
I was almost tempted. But not quite.
If only they'd mentioned the radio.
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