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Tonight, we've got rather
a different programme for you.

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In 1954, David Attenborough

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embarked on a ground-breaking
television series.

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Watched by millions of viewers
across Britain,

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it became the most popular wildlife
programme of its time.

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And it launched David Attenborough
as a wildlife presenter.

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If you don't want this, I'm warning
you, I'm giving it to Robert.

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Zoo Quest filmed a number of
animal collecting expeditions,

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organised by the London Zoo.

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And brought to the screen

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places and animals that had
never been seen before.

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It was the first
natural history series on film

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that the BBC had shot.

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Zoo Quest was first broadcast
in the 1950s.

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Over a decade before
colour television came to the UK.

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So the entire series
was shown in black and white.

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A few months ago,
a remarkable discovery was made

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in the vaults of
the BBC Natural History Unit.

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An archivist was checking through

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some of the film cans
from Zoo Quest.

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She took a closer look
at these reels of film

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and realised that she had unearthed
a piece of television history.

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They were some of the original
films shot on location,

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over six hours' worth.

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Not only were they in
extremely good condition,

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but they were actually in colour.

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They show animals filmed
for the first time,

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as well as being a unique
cultural record of a bygone era.

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I was astonished to hear that they
had all this colour negative stock.

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I had never seen it.
Nobody had ever seen it, I think.

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It had never been printed in colour.

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And it had an extraordinary quality.

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Quite unlike modern colour film

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and certainly unlike
modern colour television.

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And now the best of this
original colour footage

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can be seen for the first time.

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And with it the story of how

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this pioneering television series
was made.

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I was astonished when someone said
we've got nearly all the film

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of the first three expeditions
you did in colour.

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I said, "It's impossible,
we shot in black and white."

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I hadn't seen a foot of that film
since it went out.

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And when it went out
it was all in black and white.

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And it looked pretty miserable.

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Using the latest technology to
remaster the original colour film,

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it can now be seen in
high definition as never before.

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I was absolutely staggered
at the quality.

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At its best, it's as good as
any colour you see now.

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And the big close-ups of animals,
the faces and the eyes.

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Quite staggering for the period that
it was filmed in. I was astonished.

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And there is a good reason
as to why colour film was used.

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It was all due to David's choice

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of using a lightweight
hand-held 16mm camera.

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I was insistent that
we would have to use 16mm film.

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Now, that was very much smaller
than the 35 mil which the BBC use.

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We couldn't take the very big
cameras into the bush in Africa.

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And the Head of Films at the BBC

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thought that 16mm
was beneath contempt.

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There was a bit of a row, so we had
a big meeting and eventually I got

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permission to use 16, which was the
first time ever for BBC Television.

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But the film department
had their own back.

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They said, "All right.
Well, if you use 16,

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"you will have to shoot it
on colour negative.

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"Because that will give you
much better definition.

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"It won't be as fuzzy as
black and white negative would do."

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I had to go and find somebody
who would shoot this.

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And I heard that
there was an amateur cameraman,

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a young chap who was very good
on 16 mil cameras.

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So I discovered his name,
which was Charles Lagus.

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I met this young man
called Attenborough

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who nobody had ever heard of before.

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And we got chatting.

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I said, "Look, I'm going to
West Africa.

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"Would you be at all interested
in coming?"

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And he said, "Well, I might."

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We seemed to hit it off
straight away.

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We laughed at the same jokes

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and so at the end of it I said,
"Would you like to come on holiday?"

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I said, "Well, am I actually
doing the job with you?"

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He said, "Well, yes,
of course you are!"

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David and I were really nobodies.

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Somebody who was going off with
16 mil film? They were amateurs!

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We were rebels, really.

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And rather sneered at, I think,

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by the Film department, certainly.

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I'd got to know a lovely man
called Jack Lester,

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who was in charge of the
reptile house at London Zoo.

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Jack was going to be the star.
I was the director.

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And so Jack, Charles and I
were the team.

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What we were going to do was to
film sequences in Africa

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of Jack Lester collecting things.

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He would pounce on a snake,
let us say,

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and then we would dissolve from that
film sequence to the snake

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in the studio, with Jack struggling
with it and explaining it.

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And that was the idea.

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The zoo agreed and the BBC agreed,

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and Jack and I both agreed.
Off we went.

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Charles and I set off with Jack
and a chap called Alf Woods.

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One of the senior keepers
from the birdhouse.

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And when we landed in Sierra Leone,
it was the first time

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I'd ever been to the Tropics
and I was absolutely knocked out.

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I remember very clearly
walking across the grass strip

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and then I saw something moving.
It was a chameleon.

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I though, "A chameleon in the hedge
here!" And there was a mantis.

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I was suddenly struck by the huge
proliferation of life

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which is characteristic
of the Tropics.

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That muggy air, that tropical air,
not only loaded with moisture

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but loaded with smells
from the earth and from the forest.

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'We set off in our lorry along
the dusty red earth roads which

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'cut through the thick tropical bush
on our way into the interior.'

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'But distances in Sierra Leone
are not only measured in miles,

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'they're also measured in rivers.

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'And the slow hand-pulled ferries
that cross them.

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'But, to us, the time spent
on ferries wasn't wasted.

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'We hoped to take back to London
a representative collection

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'of the whole of the animal life
of this part of Africa.

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'And the ferrymen, being the
biggest gossips in the area,

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'were just the people to tell us

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'if anyone had caught
any animals recently.

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'And to pass on
the extraordinary news

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'to all travelling along the road
that a party of Englishmen

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'were willing to buy animals
of all sorts

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'and were offering rewards to anyone
who could show them the nests

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'of some extraordinary
bald-headed bird.'

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I wanted an objective for our trip.

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I said to Jack Lester, I said,

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"Couldn't we make it a quest
for something?"

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He said, "I suppose we could."

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I said, "Well, isn't there something

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"that nobody has ever
seen before alive?"

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Jack had a fascination for a bird

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called Picathartes gymnocephalus.

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And I said, "Jack, you see,

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"A Quest For
Picathartes Gymnocephalus

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"is not a winning title."

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It was a very boring-looking
bald crow.

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"Hasn't it got another name?"

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He said, "Oh, yeah." I said,
"Great. What's the English name?"

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He said, "A bald-headed rock crow."

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I said, "Well, even
Quest For A Bald-headed Rock Crow

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"is not a crowd-pleaser,
particularly.

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"Not one to track them in."
So then we just called it Zoo Quest.

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'We came to our first
African village,

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'where life continues
in the same way

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'as it's done
for hundreds of years.'

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'An old man sits patiently
weaving his cloth

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'in the ancient traditional way.'

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'Women sit in the shade of the huts,

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'carding and spinning
the locally-grown cotton,

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'ready for the weaver.'

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'Cassava and rice has to be pounded
to flour in wooden pestles.

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'But here, as everywhere else,
there's time for beautification.'

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'Outside the village,

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'as outside every village
large or small in West Africa,

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'there was one tree supporting
a great chattering colony

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'of weaver birds.'

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BIRDS CHATTER

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Thanks to their convenient location,
these weaver birds were in fact the

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first wild animals ever to be filmed
for a David Attenborough series.

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'They're very destructive creatures,

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'causing a great deal of damage
to crops of grain.

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'But although it would be easy
enough to cut down the trees

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'and destroy the nests,

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'the villagers rarely take
any action against the birds.

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'For they believe that
if you drive away the weaver birds,

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'you will drive away prosperity
from the village.

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'And so the birds are left to strip
the leaves from their tree,

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'tear them into long ribbons
and sew and weave them

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'into their beautiful,
intricate nests.'

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'Our first duty on arriving
in the village

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'was to pay our respects
to the chief.

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'If he gave us
his official approval,

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'we could be sure of the help of
the best hunters in the district.

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'The chief came out of his compound
to meet us,

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'followed in procession
by some of his many wives.'

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'Everyone gathered round
to see what he wanted.

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'And we were the objects of
a great deal of curiosity,

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'not entirely unmixed with fear as
far as the children were concerned.'

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'Jack explained that we had come
to collect all sorts of animals,

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'and as we didn't know
the African names,

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'we carried pictures of the
creatures we particularly wanted.

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'This, the emerald starling,
the chief recognised,

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'though he would insist on
turning it upside down.

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'But picathartes,
right way up or upside down,

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'didn't mean anything at all to him.

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'"But did we like snakes?"
he said?'

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Jack was great with snakes.

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He would pick up
the most poisonous snakes

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that local people were terrified of.

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'A Gaboon viper,
just as deadly as the cobras.

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'It was crawling only a few yards
away from our hut.

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'It looked sluggish,
but it can strike like lightning.'

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And now its beautiful markings
can be seen in their full glory.

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They provide perfect camouflage

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when amongst the leaf litter
of the forest floor.

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'Our people had found it

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'and, like most of us,
they were terrified of it.

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'But when Jack heard of it,
he was delighted and came running,

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'anxious to catch
such a handsome snake

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'for his reptile house in the zoo.'

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A Gaboon viper
is a very formidable thing.

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Jack in fact catches it
either at the back of the neck,

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or indeed, rather more dangerously,
I think, picking it up by the tail

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and making sure he doesn't get
anywhere near where it can bite you.

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And then dropping it
in a box or a sack.

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Of course, 60 years ago,

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zoos regularly sent out expeditions
to collect live animals.

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00:14:04,960 --> 00:14:09,240
Nobody thought much about
conservation or really considered

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that animals might be
driven to extinction.

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00:14:12,320 --> 00:14:15,760
Of course, these days, you would
never dream of doing that.

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'People started bringing boxes
and cages to us in great numbers.'

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'The contents of this box
we wanted very much indeed.

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'For sticking her fingers
through the slats

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'and scratching anyone who came near

215
00:14:30,280 --> 00:14:32,880
'was a very young baby chimpanzee.'

216
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'Within four days, we had so won
her confidence that she would run

217
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'to take milk from Jack's lap.

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'And from then on,
Jane, as we christened her, was

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'the tamest and most affectionate
animal in the collection.'

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And it was so rewarding

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because it almost became
one of the family with us.

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It would put its arms around us
and just hug us.

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'She spent most of her time
climbing about in the trees

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'nearest to whichever hut
we happened to be staying in.'

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00:15:15,200 --> 00:15:17,400
In those days, it was quite common

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for people to have
baby chimpanzees as pets.

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Jane was quite young, actually,
and I looked after her

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and I became very fond of her.
She was a sweet creature.

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And Jane became a firm favourite
with viewers at home.

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Again, something you would not
possibly be allowed to do these days

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and again, quite right.

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00:15:48,280 --> 00:15:51,280
'Jane the chimpanzee
was always curious,

233
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'as to see what was going on.

234
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'And insisted on inspecting

235
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'each new addition to the collection
as it arrived.

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'Like this little antelope.'

237
00:16:09,960 --> 00:16:12,800
'This young mongoose didn't
appreciate her attentions at all

238
00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:14,160
'and give her a sharp nip.'

239
00:16:16,880 --> 00:16:18,720
As we built up a collection,

240
00:16:18,720 --> 00:16:22,800
somebody would have to look after
all these newly-captured animals.

241
00:16:22,800 --> 00:16:26,520
'At our base, Alf Woods, who came
out from the zoo's birdhouse,

242
00:16:26,520 --> 00:16:29,960
'was looking after
our rapidly-growing collection.

243
00:16:29,960 --> 00:16:32,960
'This small section
contains our sunbirds.

244
00:16:32,960 --> 00:16:35,600
'They live by sipping nectar
from flowers.

245
00:16:35,600 --> 00:16:38,120
'But in captivity
they will feed and flourish

246
00:16:38,120 --> 00:16:39,880
'on a mixture of honey and water,

247
00:16:39,880 --> 00:16:42,040
'which they sip from
these little jars.'

248
00:16:44,400 --> 00:16:46,400
'When a new one is first brought in,

249
00:16:46,400 --> 00:16:49,720
'it has to be shown that the jars
contain something worth eating.

250
00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:52,800
'So Alf always held it in his hand,
dipped its beak into the honey

251
00:16:52,800 --> 00:16:54,480
'and he drinks.

252
00:16:54,480 --> 00:16:57,880
'His threadlike tongue flashing
in and out at an enormous rate.'

253
00:16:59,560 --> 00:17:03,560
The way things got looked after,
it was amazing.

254
00:17:03,560 --> 00:17:07,440
And I don't think
we ever lost an animal.

255
00:17:11,120 --> 00:17:14,480
'In this tin, we had two
little African bush rats,

256
00:17:14,480 --> 00:17:16,840
'which were even younger.

257
00:17:16,840 --> 00:17:20,240
'They were so small that
they couldn't tackle solid foods,

258
00:17:20,240 --> 00:17:22,800
'so we fed them with milk
from a pen filler.'

259
00:17:30,480 --> 00:17:34,440
David and Jack,
and in the early days Alfie Woods,

260
00:17:34,440 --> 00:17:38,520
knew exactly how to look after
everything that we caught

261
00:17:38,520 --> 00:17:40,840
and they were
just amazing with them.

262
00:17:43,400 --> 00:17:47,080
'A great difficulty with all these
youngsters is to keep them warm.

263
00:17:47,080 --> 00:17:50,240
'And at first we always put
little bottles of hot water

264
00:17:50,240 --> 00:17:52,080
'inside their tins overnight.

265
00:17:52,080 --> 00:17:53,800
'This young ground squirrel,

266
00:17:53,800 --> 00:17:55,960
'though very weak
when he first arrived,

267
00:17:55,960 --> 00:17:59,760
'did well under this treatment and
ate vast quantities of palm nuts.'

268
00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:14,680
'Young birds always had to be
fed by hand.'

269
00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:20,120
'This young owl demanded food
every three hours.'

270
00:18:29,600 --> 00:18:32,760
But when the team went out
to film animals in the wild,

271
00:18:32,760 --> 00:18:34,040
there was a problem.

272
00:18:35,480 --> 00:18:39,200
In West Africa in the forest,
it's really very dark.

273
00:18:39,200 --> 00:18:42,680
And I remember Charles going in,
the first time he went in,

274
00:18:42,680 --> 00:18:44,600
he said,
"We can't film here at all."

275
00:18:44,600 --> 00:18:48,280
I said, "What do you mean, not at
all?" There was a bit of a blow.

276
00:18:48,280 --> 00:18:50,760
He said, "There is not enough light.

277
00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:53,000
I said, "Even for black and white
negative?"

278
00:18:53,000 --> 00:18:56,160
He said, "No, it's just too dark.

279
00:18:56,160 --> 00:18:59,520
"The only way we can film here
to get a decent picture

280
00:18:59,520 --> 00:19:01,880
"is to cut down a tree."

281
00:19:01,880 --> 00:19:04,880
And so that was a bit of a facer,
really.

282
00:19:04,880 --> 00:19:08,080
But when I did realise, I thought
we'd have to think of something

283
00:19:08,080 --> 00:19:12,840
else, so what we decided to do
was we would film birds that were

284
00:19:12,840 --> 00:19:17,680
out in the open, or we would go
into clearings in the forest.

285
00:19:17,680 --> 00:19:20,360
Now, there aren't big animals
sitting in the clearings,

286
00:19:20,360 --> 00:19:21,760
but there are small animals.

287
00:19:22,800 --> 00:19:26,640
'We were interested in little
animals, as well as big ones.

288
00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:30,400
'And one of the commonest insects
in Africa is the termite.

289
00:19:30,400 --> 00:19:32,960
'There's more than one sort
of individual termite.

290
00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:35,760
'The most common
are the small workers.

291
00:19:35,760 --> 00:19:39,960
'But among them are the soldiers,
with enormously enlarged heads,

292
00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:41,280
'armed with great jaws

293
00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:43,840
'with which they can give
the most painful bite.'

294
00:19:46,160 --> 00:19:48,600
'Naturally, when the nest
is disturbed,

295
00:19:48,600 --> 00:19:51,240
'the soldiers are very much
on the warpath.

296
00:19:51,240 --> 00:19:53,520
'And so cutting a section
of their nest

297
00:19:53,520 --> 00:19:55,600
'can become
quite a painful business.'

298
00:19:59,320 --> 00:20:04,880
Close-up photography of things
like insects was almost unknown.

299
00:20:04,880 --> 00:20:07,200
Nobody had done this before.

300
00:20:08,280 --> 00:20:11,320
Charles was really very inventive.

301
00:20:11,320 --> 00:20:15,160
He took an ordinary hollow piece
of metal and screwed it on the end

302
00:20:15,160 --> 00:20:20,040
of a lens and so increased
the magnification, as it were.

303
00:20:20,040 --> 00:20:23,280
And he was very, very ingenious
at doing that.

304
00:20:23,280 --> 00:20:27,440
When you get a close-up
of a praying Mantis,

305
00:20:27,440 --> 00:20:29,880
they are fascinating in themselves.

306
00:20:29,880 --> 00:20:31,320
It's like magic.

307
00:20:39,920 --> 00:20:43,600
They were very impressive shots.

308
00:20:43,600 --> 00:20:46,680
We noticed that there was
a wasp on the veranda.

309
00:20:46,680 --> 00:20:50,480
And before I could make it out,
Charles was up there and filming it.

310
00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:54,040
There was a male wasp hanging
on the side of the nest, waiting to

311
00:20:54,040 --> 00:20:57,880
grab the female before some other
male grabbed her and fertilised her.

312
00:20:58,960 --> 00:21:01,520
'Once more, another male arrives.'

313
00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:09,920
'Things are now getting tense.

314
00:21:09,920 --> 00:21:12,120
'The young female
continues her struggles

315
00:21:12,120 --> 00:21:16,120
'and hauls herself
to the mouth of the cell.

316
00:21:16,120 --> 00:21:19,360
'And now she's free,
he seizes her and flies off.'

317
00:21:19,360 --> 00:21:23,000
It wasn't what I thought we'd come
to film, if you see what I mean.

318
00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:24,760
But we made a speciality.

319
00:21:24,760 --> 00:21:27,240
That's what we could do,
and so we did it.

320
00:21:34,240 --> 00:21:38,000
But the team still hadn't found
the subject of their quest.

321
00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:39,760
The elusive picathartes.

322
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:44,960
'After an hour of cutting a path
through the bush up the hill,

323
00:21:44,960 --> 00:21:48,280
'we at last began to get good views
of the surrounding countryside.'

324
00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:52,440
'No-one in the first village
we stayed in

325
00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:55,400
'had recognised our picture
of picathartes.

326
00:21:55,400 --> 00:22:00,760
'And we decided to move on through
the bush towards the interior.'

327
00:22:05,280 --> 00:22:08,600
'At last, we reached
the next village.'

328
00:22:09,720 --> 00:22:12,560
Very often
when we would come to a village,

329
00:22:12,560 --> 00:22:16,720
it was quite a ceremonial event
for the people.

330
00:22:16,720 --> 00:22:19,200
HORN SOUNDS

331
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:33,760
And they would welcome us,
they would play music,

332
00:22:33,760 --> 00:22:39,200
and usually quite sophisticated,
complicated music to our ears.

333
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:43,600
I don't think they'd seen
film cameras there before

334
00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:46,840
and they certainly had never
heard themselves recorded.

335
00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:52,920
There was no way of linking sound
recording to film in those days,

336
00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:55,080
on 16mm at any rate.

337
00:22:55,080 --> 00:23:01,360
And David used to do the sound. Not
that he had been in any way trained.

338
00:23:01,360 --> 00:23:05,880
It was quarter-inch tape,
reel to reel, battery driven.

339
00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:08,080
David took to it like duck to water.

340
00:23:09,600 --> 00:23:13,040
I'd be very careful
in the editing later.

341
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:16,560
It isn't all that noticeable
that we haven't got sync sound.

342
00:23:19,600 --> 00:23:22,800
A portable tape machine
was quite a new thing.

343
00:23:22,800 --> 00:23:26,160
No-one had seen it in the parts
of Sierra Leone where we were.

344
00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:28,240
So they had no idea
what we were doing.

345
00:23:29,360 --> 00:23:33,000
'First to perform for us
were the newly initiated girls

346
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:36,520
'who had just passed through the
rites of the Bundu secret society.'

347
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:57,200
'And here, joining the girls
in the dance is the Bundu Devil,

348
00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:00,920
'who presides over the initiation
ceremonies in the sacred bush.'

349
00:24:23,680 --> 00:24:25,040
'A change of music.

350
00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:28,960
'These drums we knew were used
in the dance of the njai society,

351
00:24:28,960 --> 00:24:31,760
'which we had been told
we were not allowed to see.'

352
00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:43,560
'As they sounded, the devil itself
came into the dance.

353
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:45,520
'A very fearsome magical devil

354
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:48,360
'that has the gift of
foretelling the future.'

355
00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:23,920
'But we were able to produce
some magic of our own.

356
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:26,200
'For while the dance
had been going on,

357
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:29,560
'I had been recording the music
on my tape recorder.

358
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,720
'This, of course, was the object
of a great deal of curiosity.

359
00:25:32,720 --> 00:25:34,480
'I always play the recording back

360
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:37,760
'and let the singers listen to
themselves on a little earphone.

361
00:25:37,760 --> 00:25:42,400
'Blank astonishment was always
followed by huge grins of delight.'

362
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:44,000
We tried to explain
what we were doing,

363
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:45,680
but they couldn't understand it.

364
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:49,920
What we could do was to turn a
switch and then use the microphone,

365
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:53,520
which was a big thing like that,
and use it as a speaker.

366
00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:56,440
And so we recorded
something with the women

367
00:25:56,440 --> 00:25:59,480
and then I played it to them
through the ear.

368
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:03,000
And they started off
by being sort of astounded

369
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:04,760
and then suddenly delighted.

370
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:07,240
They thought it was
absolutely thrilling.

371
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:09,400
SINGING PLAYS

372
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:11,440
SPEECH INAUDIBLE

373
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:26,920
'Meanwhile, Jack was talking to
other members of the village

374
00:26:26,920 --> 00:26:32,520
'and showing our picture of
picathartes to everybody he met.

375
00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:36,640
'This man was the local agricultural
instructor living in the village,

376
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:40,600
'and to our delight, he at last
recognised the picture.

377
00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:42,800
'The birds he said were not common,

378
00:26:42,800 --> 00:26:46,200
'but he had seen them in the
thicker parts of the bush,

379
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:48,840
'up in the hills
at the back of the village.

380
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:52,280
'So it was that the next day,
under his guidance,

381
00:26:52,280 --> 00:26:55,280
'we started off on the journey
up the hill,

382
00:26:55,280 --> 00:26:58,440
'on our way at last
to the nests of picathartes.'

383
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:03,680
The problem with
the picathartes nesting site

384
00:27:03,680 --> 00:27:06,680
was that it was in deep jungle
and it was very, very dark.

385
00:27:06,680 --> 00:27:11,040
And there was simply not enough
light for the colour negative stock

386
00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:14,240
that we were using,
so we had to use black and white.

387
00:27:18,800 --> 00:27:22,720
'We took our places behind the hide
and now came the most tense moment

388
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:26,360
'of the expedition, the moment for
which we had all waited so long.

389
00:27:26,360 --> 00:27:28,440
'Would we see the adult birds?'

390
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:30,200
It was a six-part series.

391
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:33,160
We ended each programme by saying,

392
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:37,120
"But will we find
Picathartes gymnocephalus?

393
00:27:37,120 --> 00:27:39,640
"Tune in next week!"

394
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:43,280
And I was a bit worried about
whether this would actually

395
00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:45,680
make any impression on anybody.

396
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:48,560
And actually Charles Lagus and I

397
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:53,360
were in Charles' open two-seater
sports car and we were

398
00:27:53,360 --> 00:27:56,680
driving along Oxford Street,
which you could do in those days.

399
00:27:56,680 --> 00:28:01,840
And a driver leant out
and he said, "Hello, Dave!

400
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:08,000
"Well, are we or are we not going
to catch Pica bloody thartes?"

401
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:09,680
So I thought,

402
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:13,040
"Well, maybe the programmes
are beginning to catch on."

403
00:28:13,040 --> 00:28:14,560
'Suddenly, we saw one

404
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:17,760
'a few yards away in the twilight
of the bush, preening itself.

405
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:20,200
'This was enormous excitement.

406
00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:22,120
'Then up it fluttered onto the nest.

407
00:28:22,120 --> 00:28:24,760
'And as it did so,
the other parent flew across

408
00:28:24,760 --> 00:28:28,320
'and drove the first one away.
This was a great thrill for us.

409
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:32,440
'For as this happened, we became
the first Europeans ever to see

410
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:35,120
'the white-necked picathartes
on its nest.'

411
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:39,400
It did take several weeks
before we actually found it.

412
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:43,200
In a childish way, to film
something that nobody had ever

413
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:46,640
filmed alive before
tickled our fancy.

414
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:48,360
We thought it was fun.

415
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:54,320
'And eventually we secured
a young fledgling.

416
00:28:54,320 --> 00:28:56,880
'Alf Woods offered it a little frog.

417
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:58,360
'To our delight and relief,

418
00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:00,440
'it accepted it greedily
and asked for more.'

419
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:02,960
Feeding it alone was a chore.

420
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:07,440
It ate something like 60
little froglets every three hours.

421
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:09,840
So not only were we filming,

422
00:29:09,840 --> 00:29:13,320
but we were spending our time
catching frogs.

423
00:29:13,320 --> 00:29:15,480
'On that food, it grew
and flourished

424
00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:18,040
'and made the long voyage
back to England.

425
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:21,200
'Now it's settled
and thriving in the London Zoo.

426
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:23,400
'The first white-necked Picathartes

427
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,240
'ever to be brought
out of Africa alive.'

428
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:32,160
The first Zoo Quest programme
went out with Jack Lester

429
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:35,120
showing the animals,
and I up in the gallery

430
00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:39,400
directing the television cameras,
which is what my job was.

431
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:44,680
But after that first appearance,
Jack became very ill

432
00:29:44,680 --> 00:29:46,600
with a tropical disease.

433
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:50,160
He was taken to hospital
just after the first programme.

434
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:52,280
And so the Head of Television said,

435
00:29:52,280 --> 00:29:55,280
"Attenborough, you thought
you were director,

436
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:57,760
"but somebody's got to
do the studio."

437
00:29:57,760 --> 00:30:00,040
Nobody else was there, you do it.

438
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:03,800
And it turned out that he was
absolutely brilliant at it.

439
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:08,680
In fact, he was much better at it
than Jack. He was just a natural.

440
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:14,480
That is the picture of a very rare
bird, the white-necked picathartes.

441
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:19,680
And he could, particularly
in the earlier ones, he would laugh

442
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:24,560
at himself because he knew he was
sort of acting for the camera.

443
00:30:24,560 --> 00:30:27,200
One of those Indians taught me
how to make the noise.

444
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:29,440
At least I think I can do it.
He goes...

445
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:31,880
HE IMITATES BIRD
Is that any good, do you think?

446
00:30:31,880 --> 00:30:33,680
Ask him!

447
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:35,840
And that's how he became
the narrator.

448
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:42,000
And became one of the great
natural television broadcasters.

449
00:30:42,000 --> 00:30:45,240
And here he is, the very same one.

450
00:30:45,240 --> 00:30:47,880
The tree anteater or tamandua.

451
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:51,560
That right, isn't it? Well,
tamandu-a, we call it. Very well.

452
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:55,400
All television was live, and if you
didn't get it right first time,

453
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:58,920
it was just tough.

454
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:01,560
Everybody saw you making a mistake.

455
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:06,080
And from the last... for the last
time, from Dr Matthews, Jack Lester,

456
00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:08,480
Charles Lagus and myself, goodnight.

457
00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:11,240
Zoo Quest was a success.

458
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:15,280
And I thought, "Right, in that case,
strike while the iron's hot,"

459
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:17,520
and I immediately suggested

460
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:21,120
that we should go to
somewhere in South America.

461
00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:24,160
And the obvious place to go
was British Guiana, as it then was,

462
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:26,120
and is now Guyana.

463
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:31,720
And Jack had recovered and
so we set off on our second trip.

464
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:36,240
This was in 1955, soon after
the first series was broadcast.

465
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:41,720
There were still areas there
where it was pristine, really.

466
00:31:41,720 --> 00:31:43,760
Relatively speaking.

467
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:48,000
That is the South American jungle
as I first saw it.

468
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:50,840
We were flying over British Guiana.

469
00:31:50,840 --> 00:31:54,960
That forest below us stretched
unbroken for several hundred miles

470
00:31:54,960 --> 00:31:56,840
up north to the River Orinoco,

471
00:31:56,840 --> 00:32:00,040
right down south to the Amazon
and the Mato Grosso.

472
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,200
In fact, it's one of
the largest unexplored,

473
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:06,880
and as far as I'm concerned,
exciting areas in the world.

474
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:15,080
'There are three of us
in that plane.

475
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,480
'Jack Lester from the London Zoo,
Charles Lagus the cameraman

476
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:19,800
'and myself.'

477
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:30,040
'As we came in, we saw for the first
time some of the Akawaio Indians

478
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:32,360
'with whom we would be living
for the next months.

479
00:32:32,360 --> 00:32:36,160
'Though these particular people were
partly Europeanised, as they lived

480
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:39,760
'and worked on
the government station.

481
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:43,680
'Our first job was to unload
all our stores from the plane.

482
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:48,760
'Lenses, cameras, film, recording
gear, cooking pots and pans,

483
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:51,200
'food, hammocks
and all the other things

484
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:54,080
'we needed to make us
entirely self-sufficient.

485
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:55,760
'For when the plane left,

486
00:32:55,760 --> 00:32:59,120
'we should lose our last link
with the outside world.

487
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:01,360
'If we had forgotten
to bring something,

488
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:04,480
'well, from now on we should
have to do without it.'

489
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,480
'Our plan was to travel
up the Mazaruni River

490
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:11,720
'and explore its tributaries.

491
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:15,800
'And for transport the district
officer very kindly lent us

492
00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:19,480
'his largest dugout canoe.
And we set off up the river.

493
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:22,880
'A tunnel of sunshine,
cutting through the jungle.'

494
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:29,000
'For us,
it was all very exciting

495
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:33,800
'because at last we were seeing the
South American jungle close at hand.

496
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:35,560
'We couldn't expect to see
any animals,

497
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:38,880
'for the noise of our engine
would have driven them far away.

498
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,720
'But we were happy enough simply
to sit there and enjoy the ride.'

499
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:50,840
'Late in the afternoon,
we heard a distant thundering noise

500
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:54,840
'and we knew that we were
approaching a waterfall.

501
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:56,760
'After another hour, we reached it.'

502
00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:02,000
'To go further would mean
unloading all the canoes

503
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:04,320
'and carrying everything
above the fall.

504
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:07,040
'So we decided to camp that night
on the banks.

505
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:09,280
'While the boys unloaded the canoe,

506
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:11,600
'Jack Lester and I
enjoyed ourselves.'

507
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,760
Filming in Guyana had its problems.

508
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:25,440
For me, humidity and rain was
the big challenge on the equipment.

509
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:29,640
How was I going to store
all this stuff without getting wet,

510
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:33,400
without having mildew and fungus
growing on everything?

511
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:34,800
It was a challenge.

512
00:34:34,800 --> 00:34:41,040
So we had biscuit tins with
silica gel, which absorbs moisture.

513
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:44,560
So every time we shot something,
we put it in the biscuit tin

514
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:48,280
and then when the tin was full
we sealed it with camera tape

515
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:50,400
and there it was with silica gel.

516
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:54,200
You've only got to get a scratch
on a film, something wrong

517
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:59,680
with the exposures, a hair in the
gate and you've wrecked everything.

518
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:01,960
We could be away
for three or four months,

519
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:07,320
thinking that we'd got a film
and the rushes come back ruined.

520
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:11,800
And this really was
a nerve-racking thing to live with.

521
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:18,000
Despite the tricky conditions,
the team soldiered on.

522
00:35:19,120 --> 00:35:22,120
'The first village we entered
seemed deserted.'

523
00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:29,720
'Then we noticed two tame parrots
on the eaves of one of the huts.

524
00:35:29,720 --> 00:35:33,600
'Whatever else these people were,
they were obviously pet-keepers

525
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:37,920
'and of course nothing could've been
better from our point of view.'

526
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:41,760
'Soon, the women emerged
from the huts

527
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:44,800
'and looked at us silently
and impassively.

528
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:47,920
'But there were no men for,
as we later discovered,

529
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:51,280
'they were all out in the forest
on a hunting expedition.

530
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:55,200
'In their absence, the women were
busy with the household chores.

531
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:58,040
'This young girl is weaving
a bead apron, or mo'sa,

532
00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:01,480
'which traditionally is the only
clothing that the women wear.'

533
00:36:03,960 --> 00:36:06,560
'Two other girls
were busy cutting cassava.'

534
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:12,240
'Cassava is the plant from
whose swollen starchy roots

535
00:36:12,240 --> 00:36:14,760
'the Indians make their bread.

536
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:18,320
'As a food, though, it seems to me
to have serious limitations.

537
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:21,560
'Because its juice contains
a deadly poison.

538
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:23,400
'Prussic acid, in fact.

539
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,640
'So that before you eat it you
must prepare it very carefully

540
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:28,800
'to get rid of the poison.'

541
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:34,640
'First, it is peeled.

542
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:37,720
'And then the peeled roots
are grated on a board

543
00:36:37,720 --> 00:36:40,520
'studded with small pieces
of sharp stone.'

544
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:58,480
'But you've still not got rid
of the poisonous juice,

545
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:02,760
'and to extract that, the Indians
employ an extendable squeezer

546
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:05,200
'that is a most cunning piece
of basket work.

547
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:09,400
'As you fill it,

548
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:13,120
'the weight of the grated cassava
makes it becomes short and fat.'

549
00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:23,800
'When it's quite full,

550
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:27,720
'it's carried and hung on the end
of one of the rafters of a hut.'

551
00:37:36,720 --> 00:37:39,400
'A pole is stuck through
the loop at the bottom.'

552
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:51,240
'And then all you have to do
is to sit on it.

553
00:37:51,240 --> 00:37:53,120
'Your weight makes
the squeezer stretch,

554
00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:57,320
'so that instead of being short
and fat, it becomes long and thin.

555
00:37:57,320 --> 00:38:01,600
'And the juice, with its prussic
acid, falls out at the bottom.

556
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:04,240
'Sometimes the Indians
collect this juice

557
00:38:04,240 --> 00:38:07,240
'and use it in making poison
for their blowpipe darts.'

558
00:38:08,880 --> 00:38:11,120
'When the cassava is squeezed

559
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:15,280
'and the Indians are satisfied that
there's no more poisonous juice

560
00:38:15,280 --> 00:38:18,920
'in it, it is emptied in dry
pulpy lumps into a wicker basket.'

561
00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:28,160
'Then it's broken up and sifted
into a sort of coarse flour.'

562
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:38,480
'The actual cooking of the bread
was, to me, fascinating

563
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:41,840
'because it's done in exactly
the same way as griddle cakes

564
00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:45,240
'and oatcakes are made
in Scotland and Wales.

565
00:38:45,240 --> 00:38:50,440
'It's cooked, in fact, on a circular
bakestone heated over a fire.

566
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:53,880
'But as in Wales and Scotland,
so in the upper Mazaruni River,

567
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:57,200
'housewives have a little bad luck
in turning the cakes.'

568
00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:04,200
'When the fat white circle
of cassava bread

569
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:07,800
'is cooked on both sides, it's
put out on racks to dry in the sun.'

570
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:12,400
'Having seen the whole of
the cooking process,

571
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:15,320
'I thought I really ought to see
what the bread tasted like.'

572
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:21,720
'Courtesy made me pretend that I
enjoyed it, but I can't say I'd like

573
00:39:21,720 --> 00:39:23,560
'to spend the rest of my life

574
00:39:23,560 --> 00:39:26,320
'living on cassava bread,
as the Indians do.'

575
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:31,680
As the Zoo Quest series continued,

576
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:34,920
it revealed as much about
the local people as the animals.

577
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:38,160
'The children of the village

578
00:39:38,160 --> 00:39:40,360
'had much better things to do
than to cook.'

579
00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:43,640
'Fishing is much more fun.'

580
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:50,360
'These two lads,
Carlton and Codrice,

581
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:52,360
'became great friends of ours.'

582
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:01,360
Of course, they knew the jungle
absolutely backwards.

583
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:05,320
They took us into the rainforest
and made us feel ashamed

584
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:08,440
at how little we knew
and how much they knew.

585
00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:12,600
'There were two other pets
in the village, and rather odd ones.

586
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:14,840
'Capybara.

587
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:17,600
'They are not related to pigs
as you might think,

588
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:20,920
'but belong to the family
that includes rats and mice.

589
00:40:20,920 --> 00:40:22,360
'The rodent family.

590
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:25,920
'They are, in fact,
the largest rodents in the world.

591
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:28,480
'And, when fully grown,
they can be three feet long.'

592
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:35,920
'These two were comparatively
young ones.

593
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:38,160
'They had been reared
from tiny babies

594
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:42,280
'by the grandmother of our
two friends, Carlton and Codrice.

595
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:46,040
'They had never quite forgotten
their childish habit of suckling

596
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:50,080
'and were prepared to suck anything
that was offered to them,

597
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:52,280
'including my finger.'

598
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:00,680
'Nevertheless, they were fully
equipped with

599
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:03,360
'the long front incisor teeth
of the rodent family.'

600
00:41:05,720 --> 00:41:08,360
And they ate
bushels and bushels of grass.'

601
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:12,920
They were very much
village pets, actually.

602
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:17,720
And although people ate capybaras,
in order that nobody else would kill

603
00:41:17,720 --> 00:41:21,480
these village pets which had been
reared since they were very young,

604
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:25,080
they put red patches of paint on
them so that they were identifiable.

605
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:27,720
'The oddest thing about them

606
00:41:27,720 --> 00:41:31,440
'is that they are really amphibious
animals and in the wild

607
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:35,680
'they spend a great deal of their
time swimming in the rivers.

608
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:38,320
'There are two clues
to this habit of theirs.

609
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:39,360
'The first is that

610
00:41:39,360 --> 00:41:42,560
'their eyes and nostrils
are placed very high on the head,

611
00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:46,240
'so that like the crocodile and the
hippopotamus, they can lie submerged

612
00:41:46,240 --> 00:41:49,680
'in the river with just their eyes
and nostrils out of water.

613
00:41:49,680 --> 00:41:52,920
'And the second is that
their feet are webbed.

614
00:41:52,920 --> 00:41:55,240
'We were very anxious
to film them swimming.

615
00:41:55,240 --> 00:41:56,400
'And for a long time,

616
00:41:56,400 --> 00:42:00,240
'I tried to persuade them to go down
into the river. But they wouldn't.'

617
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:06,680
And Jack's big thing was these
are supposed to be aquatic animals.

618
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:08,800
"Why don't they ever
go in the water?

619
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:11,120
"I want to see film of them
in the water."

620
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:12,440
So I wanted to show this,

621
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,960
but the wretched things
wouldn't go into the river.

622
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:17,520
'And then early one morning,

623
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:20,280
'Carlton and Codrice
ran down to the river for a swim.'

624
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:24,520
They just jumped into the river.

625
00:42:24,520 --> 00:42:27,880
Of course these capybara,
which were semi-tame, followed them

626
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:29,800
and jumped in the river too.

627
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:34,200
And we got lovely film of the boys
playing with the capybaras

628
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:35,960
in the river.

629
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:38,560
'And we discovered that
not only were the two boys

630
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:41,640
and their grandmother's capybara
habitual playmates,

631
00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:43,920
'but that the pets would, in fact,

632
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:46,560
'never go into the water
without the boys.'

633
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:00,960
'I certainly wouldn't like to
have said which of them

634
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:02,480
'were the better swimmers.'

635
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:05,240
BOYS GIGGLE

636
00:43:15,160 --> 00:43:17,360
And it wasn't only
Carlton and Codrice

637
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:19,440
who enjoyed swimming in the river.

638
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:42,160
After their swim, there was another
skill the boys wanted to show off.

639
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:47,920
'And our two friends, Carlton and
Codrice, give us a short exhibition

640
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:51,440
'of blowpipe practice, using
a small pineapple as a target.'

641
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:15,760
Both the little boys
loaded these blowpipes...

642
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:18,320
and you look along the top.

643
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:20,200
And they went...

644
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:24,440
And sometimes they missed, but
mostly they were pretty accurate.

645
00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:29,920
INAUDIBLE

646
00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:35,240
After spending several weeks
in the Mazaruni basin,

647
00:44:35,240 --> 00:44:39,880
the team continued their search
throughout Guyana for animals

648
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:41,720
that had never been filmed before.

649
00:45:21,560 --> 00:45:24,760
'Besides egrets, there were
also other birds. Blue herons.'

650
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:30,280
'And here on the top of a tree
a snail-eating hawk,

651
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:34,320
'living up to its name by actually
eating a snail as we watched.'

652
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:40,480
One of the most interesting things
as far as I was concerned

653
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:42,640
was a bird called a hoatzin,

654
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:45,000
which lived in the coastal swamps.

655
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:50,800
It had claws on the front of
its wings.

656
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:54,880
And birds as a whole
are thought to have been derived

657
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:58,880
from four-legged creatures, perhaps
a branch of the dinosaur group.

658
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:06,000
So, in a way, that gave you an
insight into what the early birds

659
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:10,000
with claws on their front legs,
their wings,

660
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:12,440
were like as they climbed
around in the trees.

661
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:19,600
It was the first film of hoatzin
ever taken, as far as I know.

662
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:28,240
The next destination for David
and the team was the savanna

663
00:46:28,240 --> 00:46:33,840
of South Guyana, but the journey
was not entirely plain sailing.

664
00:46:33,840 --> 00:46:36,520
Some of the transport,
when we were lucky,

665
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:43,000
was a little seaplane
driven by a wonderful pilot.

666
00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:47,360
He must have been ex-air force
or something like that,

667
00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:49,640
because he was just brilliant.

668
00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:56,000
And we had to take off on a fairly
short-ish stretch of river

669
00:46:56,000 --> 00:47:00,320
which finished
in very tall jungly trees.

670
00:47:00,320 --> 00:47:04,160
In it we had Jack Lester, me, David

671
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:06,600
and a mass of equipment.

672
00:47:06,600 --> 00:47:09,840
It looked awfully overloaded to me.

673
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:13,000
And Colonel Williams said,
"Don't worry, lads."

674
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:15,520
He said, "I've done this before."

675
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:18,640
And the engines started.

676
00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:22,160
He put absolutely full boost on.

677
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:27,000
And we roared down this stretch of
river. And we got faster and faster.

678
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:38,120
And suddenly I could see the trees
coming closer and closer

679
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:40,920
and closer and closer.
He was going straight...

680
00:47:40,920 --> 00:47:43,320
I was convinced we were going to go
straight into them.

681
00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:45,320
When suddenly when
they were just very close,

682
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:49,720
he suddenly put his arm around the
controls and leant back like this.

683
00:47:49,720 --> 00:47:52,280
The plane went up into the sky.

684
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:55,320
While he was doing that, he started
fumbling. I said, "Are you OK?"

685
00:47:55,320 --> 00:47:58,440
He said, "Yeah, I need my bifocals."

686
00:47:58,440 --> 00:47:59,880
He changed his glasses.

687
00:47:59,880 --> 00:48:01,360
And we just made it.

688
00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:23,800
After what was certainly
an interesting flight,

689
00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:26,800
they finally arrived at
their destination.

690
00:48:26,800 --> 00:48:30,400
The wide Savanna in the south-west.
The Rupununi.

691
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:36,200
Here they met up with
ranch owner Teddy Melville.

692
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:40,800
'He took us up to
a remote part of his ranch,

693
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:44,440
'where he said he had heard reports
of a large anaconda snake.'

694
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:52,760
'The savannas were littered with
giant termite hills,

695
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:54,400
'standing like tombstones.'

696
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:00,120
'Teddy took us down to
a thicket in a swamp

697
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:02,440
'where the snake
was supposed to lurk.

698
00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:06,240
'But instead of finding signs of
an anaconda, Teddy's sharp eye

699
00:49:06,240 --> 00:49:09,880
'immediately picked out
the footprints of a giant anteater.'

700
00:49:09,880 --> 00:49:13,160
The big thing was whether
we could get a giant anteater.

701
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:15,240
So we had a go at it.

702
00:49:15,240 --> 00:49:18,760
In a rather extraordinary way.

703
00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:20,720
Amateur ham-fisted way.

704
00:49:20,720 --> 00:49:22,360
'While we were looking at them,

705
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:25,480
'there was a rustle on the other
side of the thicket. We looked up.'

706
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:31,000
'And there was the anteater itself
galloping across the savannas.

707
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:34,040
'Without thinking how we were
actually going to catch it,

708
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:35,880
'Jack and I set off
wildly in pursuit.'

709
00:49:41,240 --> 00:49:44,840
And I ran after it. What I was
going to do, I can't imagine.

710
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:48,600
But I actually tried to slow it down
by catching its tail.

711
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:50,680
But when it turned round
and had a look at me,

712
00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:53,920
I decided that was as far
as I was going to take this.

713
00:49:58,720 --> 00:50:02,360
Giant anteaters have these
huge powerful forelegs

714
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:07,400
with enormous great claws on them,
which they rip open termite hills.

715
00:50:07,400 --> 00:50:11,280
And the one thing to avoid was
the embrace of the giant anteater

716
00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:12,680
because it was lethal.

717
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:27,640
The local rancher who was helping us
lassoed it, poor old thing.

718
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:39,200
And we captured it.
Jack had got it for the zoo.

719
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:43,120
And it did very well.
Lived for quite a long time.

720
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:49,720
With all the animals collected,

721
00:50:49,720 --> 00:50:53,000
the expedition in South America
had come to an end.

722
00:50:54,280 --> 00:50:57,400
But sadly, Jack Lester
took a turn for the worse.

723
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:03,680
Jack suddenly collapsed again.

724
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:07,480
And he had to be
flown home urgently.

725
00:51:07,480 --> 00:51:11,560
And the expedition
then came to an end.

726
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:15,200
It turned out that
they didn't know what it was.

727
00:51:15,200 --> 00:51:19,120
I'm very sorry to say
that Jack has been very ill.

728
00:51:19,120 --> 00:51:23,400
It started halfway to the expedition
and he's still in hospital.

729
00:51:23,400 --> 00:51:25,360
I think he's probably looking in

730
00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:27,880
and we all wish him
a very speedy recovery.

731
00:51:27,880 --> 00:51:30,560
When we came back,
he was in hospital.

732
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:35,120
So there was no question
of him taking part.

733
00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:38,720
And in fact, he never
really recovered.

734
00:51:38,720 --> 00:51:40,840
And he died a few months later.

735
00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:54,440
The Guyana series was another
big hit with the British public.

736
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:57,040
Keen to keep Zoo Quest
as a regular event,

737
00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:00,480
it was time for David
to choose the next destination.

738
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:08,960
We'd done Africa,
we'd done South America,

739
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:11,440
and the Far East would be
the obvious place.

740
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:16,800
And I had read about giant lizards
which the press had called

741
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:19,960
dragons, which lived on
a very small island in the middle

742
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:23,200
of the Indonesian archipelago,
in a place called Komodo.

743
00:52:24,320 --> 00:52:27,840
Well, having found it on the map,
we then had to try and get there.

744
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:31,360
But nobody in London could give us
any idea as to how we could do so.

745
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:36,240
So Charles and I decided the thing
to do would be to fly to Singapore

746
00:52:36,240 --> 00:52:40,040
and then somehow, in some way
or another, make our way

747
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:44,160
slowly southwards and eastwards
through these islands to Komodo.

748
00:52:44,160 --> 00:52:47,040
And the first place
we decided to go to was the mouth

749
00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:50,600
of the Mahakam River, which goes
right into the heart of Borneo.

750
00:52:55,120 --> 00:52:57,560
'Everyone had told us that the river

751
00:52:57,560 --> 00:53:00,520
'was infested with
man-eating crocodiles.

752
00:53:00,520 --> 00:53:02,400
'But it wasn't until one morning

753
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:04,600
'three weeks after
our arrival in Borneo

754
00:53:04,600 --> 00:53:08,000
'when I was looking for frogs
that were whistling and chirping

755
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:11,520
'in the swamps fringing the river
bank, that I actually saw one.'

756
00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:19,520
'And it was no ordinary one either,

757
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:23,040
'but the variety with
the long thin nose. The gavial.'

758
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:30,880
The only problem with it was it was
tiny. I mean, it was a baby.

759
00:53:30,880 --> 00:53:34,480
So I had the idea that we would
make a kind of joke of it.

760
00:53:34,480 --> 00:53:37,600
And that we would film it all
in close-up

761
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:41,120
and then I'd film myself
taking off my shirt,

762
00:53:41,120 --> 00:53:42,960
and we hoped the audience would say,

763
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:45,680
"He's not going to tackle
that huge thing, is he?!"

764
00:53:52,080 --> 00:53:54,160
And only when I jumped on it

765
00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:58,280
would the people realise that
it was just a tiny thing.

766
00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:07,200
'As you can see, no-one could class
this little baby as a man-eater,

767
00:54:07,200 --> 00:54:09,800
'even though he had got
quite a bite.'

768
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:12,120
We shot it that way
and edited it that way.

769
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:15,920
But as far as I could see,
nobody ever saw the joke.

770
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:30,960
Happily, we had met a very nice
English-speaking Dutchman

771
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:34,040
called Daan Joubert who acted as
an interpreter for us.

772
00:54:35,240 --> 00:54:38,160
'The village itself,
like all Dayak villages,

773
00:54:38,160 --> 00:54:40,640
'consisted only of
a single long house,

774
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:45,120
'which stretched for several hundred
yards along the river bank.

775
00:54:45,120 --> 00:54:48,440
'The people who watched us from
the galleries of the house

776
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:49,800
'seemed to be very different

777
00:54:49,800 --> 00:54:51,800
'from those we had met
lower down the river.

778
00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:55,200
'The head man was on his way
into the forest to hunt.

779
00:54:55,200 --> 00:54:58,800
'He showed us his stout blowpipe
tipped with a spearhead,

780
00:54:58,800 --> 00:55:01,720
'which he said was very useful
for stabbing.'

781
00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:09,200
'And his hat, which was very light
and woven from palm leaves.

782
00:55:09,200 --> 00:55:12,840
'We both bought and wore ones
like it later on and found them

783
00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:16,320
'to be ideal headwear
for the Tropics. Cool and shady.'

784
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:20,600
'He never carried a gun, he told us,

785
00:55:20,600 --> 00:55:24,200
'but relied on his parang -
a crude and heavy Dayak bush knife.'

786
00:55:26,520 --> 00:55:31,080
'He said that we would be
very welcome to stay in the village

787
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:33,160
'for as long as we wished.'

788
00:55:33,160 --> 00:55:34,600
The long house never went to sleep.

789
00:55:34,600 --> 00:55:36,520
There was always somebody
trundling about.

790
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:39,680
So all the time you were going
up and down like this.

791
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:44,080
And down on the ground there were
pigs and there were chickens

792
00:55:44,080 --> 00:55:47,240
and they were moving around
all night.

793
00:55:47,240 --> 00:55:51,040
And on top of that there were
some people chanting.

794
00:55:51,040 --> 00:55:53,480
And I don't think I slept at all
the first night.

795
00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:56,680
In the morning, I said,
"What was all the chanting about?"

796
00:55:56,680 --> 00:55:59,160
And they said, "They were chanting

797
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:02,800
"because some important people
have recently died.

798
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:08,160
"It's a funeral chant." I said,
"Really? Where are the bodies?"

799
00:56:08,160 --> 00:56:13,640
He said, "Didn't you notice them?
They were just alongside you there."

800
00:56:13,640 --> 00:56:16,760
"Oh!" I said, "I didn't realise."

801
00:56:16,760 --> 00:56:19,560
But, no, it was a communal life
all right.

802
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:21,640
And they were lovely people.

803
00:56:21,640 --> 00:56:26,000
And one of them found
a little baby bear. A cub.

804
00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:30,000
'The little cub was obviously
very young.

805
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:33,880
'I reckoned about two weeks old.
He seemed to be in good condition,

806
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:38,680
'but he hadn't got any teeth and
obviously was still feeding on milk.

807
00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:41,040
'We had got
a baby's bottle on board,

808
00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:45,160
'ready for such a case as this,
but I wondered whether he was

809
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:48,120
'yet old enough for us to be able
to rear him.

810
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:52,640
'First, however, he had to be
put in a box and covered up,

811
00:56:52,640 --> 00:56:54,320
'so that he kept warm.'

812
00:56:56,320 --> 00:57:00,040
'As soon as the sun went down,
it gets quite cold on that river,

813
00:57:00,040 --> 00:57:03,080
'and we didn't want to risk
our new pet catching a chill.'

814
00:57:05,120 --> 00:57:07,400
BEAR CALLS OUT

815
00:57:07,400 --> 00:57:11,080
'And then I had to set about
the urgent job of making

816
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:13,600
'a bottle of dilute condensed milk.

817
00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:15,320
'Urgent because the little cub

818
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:18,160
'was already calling
very loudly indeed for his food.'

819
00:57:22,400 --> 00:57:25,600
'The milk seemed to be
about the right temperature.'

820
00:57:30,560 --> 00:57:35,600
'And, to my relief, the young cub
was soon guzzling away contentedly.'

821
00:57:44,520 --> 00:57:46,400
And here he is.

822
00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:49,280
Twice as large, I should say,
but still just as hungry.

823
00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:52,200
And still making this extraordinary
little noise which he used to

824
00:57:52,200 --> 00:57:56,040
make out there in Borneo.
Oh, Benjamin!

825
00:57:56,040 --> 00:57:59,040
He's grown considerably
since we had him.

826
00:57:59,040 --> 00:58:01,520
The cameraman who took
all those pictures is here.

827
00:58:01,520 --> 00:58:05,520
And Charles has had him
in his flat ever since we came back.

828
00:58:05,520 --> 00:58:09,360
Has he caused any trouble, Charles?

829
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:11,000
Well, he's fairly destructive.

830
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:14,840
He likes to eat the lino,
newspapers, telephone directories,

831
00:58:14,840 --> 00:58:16,240
almost everything.

832
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:19,920
Benjamin became known as
the Zoo Quest Bear

833
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:23,400
and I even wrote a little book
about him. He was charming.

834
00:58:24,440 --> 00:58:25,800
Very nice.

835
00:58:29,080 --> 00:58:31,280
Well, you're very sweet.
What about his teeth?

836
00:58:31,280 --> 00:58:34,360
Have you had a bite from him?
Yes, he draws blood regularly now.

837
00:58:34,360 --> 00:58:37,600
When he misses the bottle
and gets your finger instead.

838
00:58:37,600 --> 00:58:41,280
In that case, I think
when you've finished, Benjamin,

839
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:44,680
we'll let him go back to your flat
and draw a little more blood!

840
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:50,800
Benjamin had very bent little feet.

841
00:58:50,800 --> 00:58:54,880
And I took it for a walk
on a little collar

842
00:58:54,880 --> 00:59:00,560
and a woman appeared from the
distance shaking her umbrella at me

843
00:59:00,560 --> 00:59:04,960
and said, "Can't you see
your dog's got rickets?"

844
00:59:04,960 --> 00:59:08,320
And then she looked at it
and said, "Ooh, it's a bear."

845
00:59:08,320 --> 00:59:10,600
And she ran off
in the opposite direction!

846
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:20,640
After Borneo, David and Charles
travelled eastwards across Java,

847
00:59:20,640 --> 00:59:22,640
the next island on their quest.

848
00:59:33,240 --> 00:59:36,680
'On our way through Java,
we passed many beautiful buildings.'

849
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:40,320
'But we saw none more lovely

850
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:44,280
'than the beautiful Buddhist
temple of Borobudur,

851
00:59:44,280 --> 00:59:47,320
'which was built
over 1,000 years ago.'

852
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:57,640
'It rises tier up on tier,
shrine upon shrine,

853
00:59:57,640 --> 01:00:02,000
'until at the top there is one
final gigantic monument.'

854
01:00:06,160 --> 01:00:09,560
JAVANESE TEMPLE MUSIC PLAYS

855
01:00:09,560 --> 01:00:14,360
'But Java is a country not only of
temples, but of volcanoes.

856
01:00:14,360 --> 01:00:15,520
'And our route eastwards

857
01:00:15,520 --> 01:00:18,560
'took us past the still-active
crater of Bromo.

858
01:00:22,400 --> 01:00:24,960
'The Jeep couldn't take us
up the mountain,

859
01:00:24,960 --> 01:00:27,480
'so in the early dawn one morning,

860
01:00:27,480 --> 01:00:30,200
'we met some hillmen
and hired some ponies.

861
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:42,120
'By midday, the volcano collects
a blanket of cloud above it,

862
01:00:42,120 --> 01:00:45,920
'but now, at five o'clock in the
morning, it was still quite clear.

863
01:00:50,640 --> 01:00:55,760
'To get to the crater, we had to
descend on to a great plain,

864
01:00:55,760 --> 01:00:58,960
'a sea of sand which surrounds
the central cone.

865
01:01:10,600 --> 01:01:14,360
'Now, the ground steepened
and we had to leave the horses

866
01:01:14,360 --> 01:01:15,880
'and continue on foot.'

867
01:01:26,920 --> 01:01:29,640
'Looking down into the depths
of the crater,

868
01:01:29,640 --> 01:01:33,560
'it seemed easy enough to clamber
right down to that central vent.

869
01:01:33,560 --> 01:01:37,040
'But our guides would go no further,
for they said that the crater was

870
01:01:37,040 --> 01:01:40,360
'full of invisible pockets
of poison gas

871
01:01:40,360 --> 01:01:43,920
'and that people who had gone
farther down had never returned.

872
01:01:45,120 --> 01:01:48,400
'Even from where we were standing,
the air was full of choking,

873
01:01:48,400 --> 01:01:52,400
'sulphurous fumes and the ground
beneath our feet shook

874
01:01:52,400 --> 01:01:56,800
'as the clouds of poisonous smoke
belched out from the vent.

875
01:01:56,800 --> 01:02:00,840
'It's down there that sacrifices
are thrown every year

876
01:02:00,840 --> 01:02:03,480
'to placate the god of the volcano.

877
01:02:03,480 --> 01:02:07,840
'These days, only chickens,
cloth and money.

878
01:02:07,840 --> 01:02:11,360
'But in olden times,
the sacrifice was a human one.

879
01:02:21,840 --> 01:02:26,440
'We left the volcano with the clouds
gathering in a shroud above it

880
01:02:26,440 --> 01:02:28,160
'and continued on our way.

881
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:34,240
'And the next day, we reached
the southern coast of Java

882
01:02:34,240 --> 01:02:36,480
'and the sea, the Indian Ocean.'

883
01:02:55,760 --> 01:03:00,000
Very often, we slept on the beaches,
which are wonderful places.

884
01:03:02,880 --> 01:03:06,480
It was very lucky that Charles
and I got on so well together.

885
01:03:06,480 --> 01:03:09,360
I certainly look on back
with my friendship with him

886
01:03:09,360 --> 01:03:10,680
with great pleasure.

887
01:03:12,120 --> 01:03:14,640
I don't know why we hit it off.

888
01:03:14,640 --> 01:03:16,960
We hit it off from day one.

889
01:03:18,640 --> 01:03:21,840
I don't think we ever had
a cross word.

890
01:03:21,840 --> 01:03:26,760
I don't think we ever worried about
each other's problems.

891
01:03:26,760 --> 01:03:31,600
I knew he could cope with
what he was doing and he relied,

892
01:03:31,600 --> 01:03:34,120
hopefully, on everything
I was doing.

893
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:39,400
The next day, they set off inland.

894
01:03:39,400 --> 01:03:42,200
CICADAS SING

895
01:03:44,200 --> 01:03:46,160
In Jack Lester's absence,

896
01:03:46,160 --> 01:03:50,960
David had to take on the role of
catching animals, including snakes.

897
01:03:52,680 --> 01:03:56,800
'It looked enormous,
and from its size and markings,

898
01:03:56,800 --> 01:03:59,560
'I was quite sure that it
was a python

899
01:03:59,560 --> 01:04:04,000
'and therefore, non-poisonous, which
was something of a relief.'

900
01:04:04,000 --> 01:04:08,080
So, I thought, "Oh, this is the
moment!" Nothing frightened,

901
01:04:08,080 --> 01:04:12,720
I skipped up the tree and took out
my trusty cutlass and I thought,

902
01:04:12,720 --> 01:04:15,440
"I won't grapple with
the snake up in the tree,

903
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:17,800
"I'll cut the branch down."

904
01:04:41,600 --> 01:04:45,720
The branch came down and
I nipped down the tree

905
01:04:45,720 --> 01:04:48,400
and then had to face the python.

906
01:04:52,160 --> 01:04:55,360
So I tried to remember
what I'd learnt in West Africa.

907
01:04:55,360 --> 01:04:59,280
I picked up a sack and tried to
throw it over the animal's head,

908
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:00,960
very inexpertly, I must say.

909
01:05:00,960 --> 01:05:04,600
It went nowhere near the head! But
I was quite nervous, after all.

910
01:05:11,640 --> 01:05:15,520
But eventually, I managed to throw
it over the animal's head

911
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:17,280
and grasp it by the neck.

912
01:05:18,480 --> 01:05:21,600
'It's important to grab his tail as
soon as you grab his head,

913
01:05:21,600 --> 01:05:24,120
'otherwise he'll wrap
his great coils around you

914
01:05:24,120 --> 01:05:26,400
'and give you a very nasty squeeze.

915
01:05:31,640 --> 01:05:34,000
'And here he is in the studio.

916
01:05:34,000 --> 01:05:37,040
'The python is not
a poisonous snake at all,

917
01:05:37,040 --> 01:05:39,440
'it kills its prey by squeezing it.'

918
01:05:39,440 --> 01:05:45,840
Of course, my expertise as an animal
handler, a zoo man, as it were,

919
01:05:45,840 --> 01:05:49,840
was exposed rather painfully
every now and again on television.

920
01:05:49,840 --> 01:05:53,520
Well, helping me...
Helping me control...

921
01:05:53,520 --> 01:05:55,800
..this python is Mr Langwarne

922
01:05:55,800 --> 01:05:58,560
from the reptile house
in the London Zoo.

923
01:05:58,560 --> 01:06:02,800
I'm pretending to be very
accomplished and expert about snakes

924
01:06:02,800 --> 01:06:04,920
in front of Mr Langwarne,

925
01:06:04,920 --> 01:06:08,160
who was the head keeper of the
reptile house.

926
01:06:08,160 --> 01:06:09,960
He's quite a handful now, isn't he?

927
01:06:09,960 --> 01:06:12,280
You could quite imagine how these
powerful coils

928
01:06:12,280 --> 01:06:14,440
could really give you
quite a crush. Oh, yes.

929
01:06:14,440 --> 01:06:17,720
He was very charitable towards
my attempts at trying

930
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:20,040
to control this wretched snake.

931
01:06:20,040 --> 01:06:22,920
He's doing... Well,
it's a very good example

932
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:24,160
of how he constricts his food.

933
01:06:24,160 --> 01:06:26,320
Shall I just show you,
or will you lose your hand?

934
01:06:26,320 --> 01:06:29,200
No, I don't think so. You'll be able
to get out eventually.

935
01:06:29,200 --> 01:06:31,040
Well, I think we'll untie you later.

936
01:06:31,040 --> 01:06:32,680
Thank you very much for coming.

937
01:06:34,680 --> 01:06:38,120
JAVANESE TEMPLE MUSIC PLAYS

938
01:06:43,040 --> 01:06:44,280
After leaving Java,

939
01:06:44,280 --> 01:06:48,040
the team continued their journey
east onto Bali.

940
01:07:04,760 --> 01:07:07,440
A few minutes of travel
was enough to show us

941
01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:09,720
that in coming to
the island of Bali,

942
01:07:09,720 --> 01:07:12,000
we had come to a different world.

943
01:07:12,000 --> 01:07:14,800
There were high mud walls
round the houses,

944
01:07:14,800 --> 01:07:16,760
which we'd never seen in Java.

945
01:07:16,760 --> 01:07:20,240
The people looked quite different.

946
01:07:20,240 --> 01:07:22,760
And as we travelled
along the grassy tracks,

947
01:07:22,760 --> 01:07:26,880
we passed through the terraced rice
fields for which Bali is famous.

948
01:07:32,640 --> 01:07:35,840
BOY PLAYS SULING

949
01:07:49,760 --> 01:07:51,800
SULING MUSIC CONTINUES

950
01:07:55,800 --> 01:07:59,000
It was an intoxicating place,

951
01:07:59,000 --> 01:08:03,840
because it was, er...full of beauty.

952
01:08:13,320 --> 01:08:18,200
But above all, we were impressed by
the great number of temples.

953
01:08:18,200 --> 01:08:20,800
There were temples everywhere,

954
01:08:20,800 --> 01:08:24,320
and all were decorated with
a wealth of intricate carvings.

955
01:08:26,680 --> 01:08:30,080
This one lay in the centre
of a small forest.

956
01:08:32,320 --> 01:08:36,360
Many Balinese temples
are sacred to a particular animal,

957
01:08:36,360 --> 01:08:40,920
and the courtyard of this one was
haunted by a troop of monkeys,

958
01:08:40,920 --> 01:08:45,320
ever-hungry to snatch food from
worshippers who came to the temple.

959
01:08:47,800 --> 01:08:51,040
It was a real joy
to meet these bold creatures,

960
01:08:51,040 --> 01:08:54,040
even if they did do their best
to steal things from my pocket.

961
01:08:54,040 --> 01:08:56,840
MONKEYS CHIRP

962
01:09:05,520 --> 01:09:07,640
When they are grooming one another,

963
01:09:07,640 --> 01:09:09,880
they're not simply
looking for fleas,

964
01:09:09,880 --> 01:09:14,160
but are searching one another's skin
for tasty little grains of salt.

965
01:09:24,640 --> 01:09:29,200
We had a problem. When we changed
film quickly on the camera,

966
01:09:29,200 --> 01:09:31,800
normally you'd have a clapperboard.

967
01:09:31,800 --> 01:09:35,000
We didn't have clapperboards,
so we weren't running in sync.

968
01:09:35,000 --> 01:09:40,040
So David invented a clever system -
raffle tickets!

969
01:09:40,040 --> 01:09:43,360
He would always have them
in his pocket,

970
01:09:43,360 --> 01:09:46,680
and when we changed a reel,
he'd fish it out,

971
01:09:46,680 --> 01:09:49,360
and he'd just hold it up
in front of the camera

972
01:09:49,360 --> 01:09:52,880
and stick it on the camera film,

973
01:09:52,880 --> 01:09:56,200
and that was our way of
pre-editing the film

974
01:09:56,200 --> 01:09:58,240
and knowing what was on what.

975
01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:04,560
The whole business of 60mm film
at the time,

976
01:10:04,560 --> 01:10:08,960
we didn't have any code of behaviour
or any expertise, really.

977
01:10:08,960 --> 01:10:11,840
We just did it the way
we thought was sensible.

978
01:10:11,840 --> 01:10:13,320
It was clockwork-driven

979
01:10:13,320 --> 01:10:18,760
and you had 40 seconds of film
before it ran out.

980
01:10:18,760 --> 01:10:23,880
Then you had to stop and wind it up
again. And it only took 100ft reels.

981
01:10:23,880 --> 01:10:26,440
That's two minutes 40 in 60mm.

982
01:10:26,440 --> 01:10:30,520
So, this is quite a handicap
when you're filming.

983
01:10:30,520 --> 01:10:36,560
Especially when filming complex
sequences, like a village festival.

984
01:10:36,560 --> 01:10:39,840
THEY PLAY RHYTHMICALLY

985
01:10:56,200 --> 01:10:59,400
The music of Bali is
particularly beautiful,

986
01:10:59,400 --> 01:11:03,480
the gamelan music,
and of the most brilliant kind.

987
01:11:10,200 --> 01:11:14,800
The gamelan plays
and rehearses every night,

988
01:11:14,800 --> 01:11:16,920
every night in the village.

989
01:11:16,920 --> 01:11:20,520
'These young girls are only
eight years old

990
01:11:20,520 --> 01:11:24,640
'and they've been training to
perform this beautiful temple dance,

991
01:11:24,640 --> 01:11:27,760
'the Legong, since they were six.

992
01:11:27,760 --> 01:11:32,960
'They wear on their heads
crowns of leather and gold leaf,

993
01:11:32,960 --> 01:11:36,800
'decorated with the ivory coloured
blossoms of the frangipani tree.'

994
01:12:12,760 --> 01:12:15,880
While Charles filmed it,
I recorded the music

995
01:12:15,880 --> 01:12:19,280
and I think Bali's gamelan music
was heard for the first time

996
01:12:19,280 --> 01:12:22,840
by millions of people in Britain.

997
01:12:30,200 --> 01:12:32,400
The Balinese are not only
great sculptors

998
01:12:32,400 --> 01:12:34,120
and instrumental musicians,

999
01:12:34,120 --> 01:12:36,680
but they are also great actors

1000
01:12:36,680 --> 01:12:43,600
and they're continually re-enacting
the stories from the Ramayana

1001
01:12:43,600 --> 01:12:47,840
and from the Balinese version
of some of the Hindu legends.

1002
01:12:49,080 --> 01:12:53,920
'Now begins the masked play.
A demon descends the temple steps.'

1003
01:13:17,680 --> 01:13:20,600
It's a deeply religious thing.

1004
01:13:20,600 --> 01:13:24,200
The villagers watch this enactment
of the story again and again

1005
01:13:24,200 --> 01:13:25,760
and again.

1006
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:31,920
One of the great epics is
there's a battle between the evil,

1007
01:13:31,920 --> 01:13:37,160
which is represented by a horrifying
witch, who has a long tongue

1008
01:13:37,160 --> 01:13:41,440
and huge long fingernails
and is a terrifying figure.

1009
01:13:41,440 --> 01:13:44,840
'Rangda, the dreaded evil witch.'

1010
01:13:56,320 --> 01:14:00,280
Who then attacks a very friendly
mythical creature called Barong.

1011
01:14:02,600 --> 01:14:07,000
'And now comes the superb Barong,
the mythical monster which lives

1012
01:14:07,000 --> 01:14:08,920
'in the temple and is the guardian

1013
01:14:08,920 --> 01:14:12,120
'of the village and
of its graveyard.'

1014
01:14:16,240 --> 01:14:19,760
And the battle between Rangda
and the Barong is one of the great

1015
01:14:19,760 --> 01:14:24,040
dramas that is enacted by these
rituals which go on every day.

1016
01:14:24,040 --> 01:14:25,960
'And now begins the fight.

1017
01:14:33,080 --> 01:14:35,720
'The men from the village,
in a state of trance,

1018
01:14:35,720 --> 01:14:39,840
'rush down from the temple,
waving their swords to attack Rangda

1019
01:14:39,840 --> 01:14:41,960
'and protect the Barong.

1020
01:14:41,960 --> 01:14:45,480
'But Rangda, by her evil power,
is able to hold them at bay.'

1021
01:14:55,200 --> 01:14:58,840
And then suddenly,
the Rangda makes a spell, whoof!

1022
01:14:58,840 --> 01:15:01,120
'With a flourish of her magic cloth,

1023
01:15:01,120 --> 01:15:04,000
'she forces them to
turn their daggers upon themselves.

1024
01:15:04,000 --> 01:15:07,440
'The men, almost insensible,
try to thrust these sharp

1025
01:15:07,440 --> 01:15:09,680
'swords into their chest.'

1026
01:15:09,680 --> 01:15:13,480
They really looked that they were
going to pierce their abdomens

1027
01:15:13,480 --> 01:15:16,760
with them
and they pushed and they pushed.

1028
01:15:16,760 --> 01:15:19,160
But the Barong is
sufficiently powerful,

1029
01:15:19,160 --> 01:15:22,440
so it means that the daggers
don't pierce their chest.

1030
01:15:22,440 --> 01:15:24,680
'The Barong's power is
stronger than Rangda's

1031
01:15:24,680 --> 01:15:28,280
'and he is able to protect his
followers, so that no blood is shed.

1032
01:15:36,600 --> 01:15:39,760
'Now, the priest comes
from the temple

1033
01:15:39,760 --> 01:15:43,120
'and scatters holy water to bring
the men out of their trances.

1034
01:15:56,440 --> 01:16:01,040
'The men rush back into the temple.
The Barong disappears.

1035
01:16:01,040 --> 01:16:04,680
'And all that is left
are the mangy curs,

1036
01:16:04,680 --> 01:16:07,160
'eating the priest's
offerings to the gods.

1037
01:16:11,680 --> 01:16:15,480
'I can offer no explanation for that
extraordinary performance,'

1038
01:16:15,480 --> 01:16:18,680
but I was a little worried lest
Rangda the witch should decide to

1039
01:16:18,680 --> 01:16:20,720
turn their swords on the BBC.

1040
01:16:22,360 --> 01:16:26,200
Well, two days after that dance,
we had to leave Bali

1041
01:16:26,200 --> 01:16:29,960
and continue on the last
leg of our trip to Komodo,

1042
01:16:29,960 --> 01:16:33,640
the island of the giant lizards,
the dragons.

1043
01:16:33,640 --> 01:16:37,040
Komodo was on the western end,
the farther end,

1044
01:16:37,040 --> 01:16:39,680
of this banana-shaped island.

1045
01:16:39,680 --> 01:16:42,960
So we went down to the harbour.

1046
01:16:42,960 --> 01:16:48,480
There was one single sail
30ft little fishing boat there.

1047
01:16:48,480 --> 01:16:51,440
And that was all there was.

1048
01:16:51,440 --> 01:16:55,800
So, eventually, we managed to
talk to the skipper of this boat

1049
01:16:55,800 --> 01:16:59,960
and he said no problem and we said,
"Can you take us to Komodo?"

1050
01:16:59,960 --> 01:17:01,560
He said, "Oh, yes."

1051
01:17:01,560 --> 01:17:03,600
So we agreed
and there was Charles and me

1052
01:17:03,600 --> 01:17:08,240
and there was Sabran, our guide,
who was the interpreter.

1053
01:17:08,240 --> 01:17:12,160
And there was the captain
and some boys, who were his crew.

1054
01:17:12,160 --> 01:17:14,480
We had no choice by then,

1055
01:17:14,480 --> 01:17:21,600
so we loaded all our stores onto
this miserable little 30-footer.

1056
01:17:24,720 --> 01:17:29,240
'We loaded all our equipment into
the hold beneath the tiny cabin.

1057
01:17:29,240 --> 01:17:31,560
'That was the tape recorder.

1058
01:17:33,840 --> 01:17:35,400
'Our kit,

1059
01:17:38,280 --> 01:17:40,800
'and the camera.

1060
01:17:41,880 --> 01:17:43,920
'We didn't take much food

1061
01:17:43,920 --> 01:17:46,920
'because we expected to be able
to catch enough fish to last us

1062
01:17:46,920 --> 01:17:49,880
'for the few days it was going
to take us to get to Komodo.

1063
01:17:51,720 --> 01:17:53,880
'Here comes Sabran.

1064
01:17:57,280 --> 01:17:59,160
'The sail goes up.

1065
01:18:03,400 --> 01:18:05,440
'We haul up the anchor.

1066
01:18:08,240 --> 01:18:09,640
'And at last, we're off.

1067
01:18:11,720 --> 01:18:16,080
'We headed away from the shore
and soon,

1068
01:18:16,080 --> 01:18:18,880
'the trade winds were
filling our sails.

1069
01:18:22,440 --> 01:18:25,560
'The boys took
it in turn on the tiller.

1070
01:18:25,560 --> 01:18:29,520
'This is Hasan, a cheerful lad who
unfortunately was not a particularly

1071
01:18:29,520 --> 01:18:33,400
'good steersman, as he had the habit
of falling asleep at the tiller.'

1072
01:18:33,400 --> 01:18:36,680
The boy would fall asleep,
day or night,

1073
01:18:36,680 --> 01:18:41,080
and we'd finish up with this awful
crunching noise in the night,

1074
01:18:41,080 --> 01:18:43,760
to find that we
were on a coral island.

1075
01:18:43,760 --> 01:18:48,160
So I said, "I think we're on
a coral island." He said, "Argh!

1076
01:18:48,160 --> 01:18:51,320
"They are no good!"
"What are we going to do?"

1077
01:18:51,320 --> 01:18:53,320
We eventually poled ourselves off.

1078
01:18:55,520 --> 01:18:59,080
'Sabran, always eager
to make himself useful,

1079
01:18:59,080 --> 01:19:01,640
'had quickly improvised
a kitchen in the stern.

1080
01:19:05,680 --> 01:19:10,000
'He had found an empty petrol tin,
which would serve as a grate,

1081
01:19:10,000 --> 01:19:12,560
'and in it, he had lit a wood fire.'

1082
01:19:16,240 --> 01:19:22,440
The trip took nearly three weeks.
We lived entirely on boiled rice.

1083
01:19:22,440 --> 01:19:28,440
The fish that we were going
to have was non-existent.

1084
01:19:28,440 --> 01:19:33,720
We said, "Where's your fishing
tackle?" This was early on.

1085
01:19:33,720 --> 01:19:36,920
"Why aren't you fishing?"
He said, "I'm no fisherman."

1086
01:19:40,200 --> 01:19:44,640
'To the south of us stretched
the mountainous coast of Flores.

1087
01:19:44,640 --> 01:19:48,000
'Somewhere, 200 miles ahead,
lay Komodo.

1088
01:19:49,440 --> 01:19:54,000
'The wind was strong and fair
and we were making a good four knots

1089
01:19:54,000 --> 01:19:56,120
'through the brilliant
clear blue sea.'

1090
01:20:02,280 --> 01:20:04,280
And I then said to the captain,

1091
01:20:04,280 --> 01:20:07,720
"How long will it be
before we get to Komodo?"

1092
01:20:07,720 --> 01:20:12,200
And the captain said, "Tidak tahu,"
which means "I don't know".

1093
01:20:13,360 --> 01:20:15,600
The only map we had
was the airline map

1094
01:20:15,600 --> 01:20:19,240
and Komodo was rather smaller
than a full stop,

1095
01:20:19,240 --> 01:20:22,200
a little dot on the western end.

1096
01:20:22,200 --> 01:20:26,720
And he looked at this map
and he said, "Where are we?"

1097
01:20:26,720 --> 01:20:29,240
An awful thought struck me.

1098
01:20:29,240 --> 01:20:32,720
I said, "You have been to
Komodo before, haven't you?"

1099
01:20:32,720 --> 01:20:36,680
He said, "Belum,"
and I didn't know what that meant,

1100
01:20:36,680 --> 01:20:40,200
so I had to go down to the hold
and get out my little Indonesian

1101
01:20:40,200 --> 01:20:44,880
dictionary and it said
"belum - not yet".

1102
01:20:46,160 --> 01:20:50,120
So he had no idea
where we were going.

1103
01:20:50,120 --> 01:20:53,920
We said to him, "Are you sure
you know where you are?"

1104
01:20:53,920 --> 01:20:58,360
And he said, "We are there,"
and he pointed to Borneo,

1105
01:20:58,360 --> 01:21:02,040
which was probably about
1,000 miles away from us.

1106
01:21:02,040 --> 01:21:07,440
'It was very hot in the blazing sun
and Hasan draped his sarong over

1107
01:21:07,440 --> 01:21:10,640
'his head to protect
him from the heat.

1108
01:21:10,640 --> 01:21:13,760
'And we had nothing to do
but to lie on deck

1109
01:21:13,760 --> 01:21:16,000
'and wonder what lay ahead of us
in Komodo.

1110
01:21:17,280 --> 01:21:20,680
'Our fresh water was stored
in this earthenware jar,

1111
01:21:20,680 --> 01:21:22,760
'lashed to the tiny cabin.

1112
01:21:22,760 --> 01:21:25,720
'Unfortunately,
it got very hot in the sun.'

1113
01:21:25,720 --> 01:21:28,680
It could have been soup
because it had nothing

1114
01:21:28,680 --> 01:21:31,920
but mosquito larvae wriggling in it.

1115
01:21:31,920 --> 01:21:34,320
'But nonetheless,
it was quite refreshing.'

1116
01:21:37,200 --> 01:21:42,240
This just went on and on and on
and we were hungry,

1117
01:21:42,240 --> 01:21:46,120
sleeping out on deck, mosquitoes.

1118
01:21:46,120 --> 01:21:49,560
So it was in the evening and it was
blowing quite a gale, actually,

1119
01:21:49,560 --> 01:21:52,760
and so I said to the captain,
"I think we go this way now."

1120
01:21:54,040 --> 01:21:59,120
But the sea rose and it rose
and it got darker and it got darker

1121
01:21:59,120 --> 01:22:02,800
and it became quite dangerous.

1122
01:22:04,320 --> 01:22:07,320
And suddenly, we were in whirlpools.

1123
01:22:07,320 --> 01:22:11,360
And the waves were tremendous.
What were we going to do?

1124
01:22:11,360 --> 01:22:13,680
The water was going round,
the ship was going round.

1125
01:22:13,680 --> 01:22:16,240
You could see
the sort of fangs of coral,

1126
01:22:16,240 --> 01:22:19,600
rocks, in the middle
of this whirlpool.

1127
01:22:19,600 --> 01:22:22,480
So we were poling away
and it's pouring with rain.

1128
01:22:22,480 --> 01:22:25,120
Quite honestly, neither of us

1129
01:22:25,120 --> 01:22:28,440
were sure that we would ever
see each other again.

1130
01:22:28,440 --> 01:22:32,080
Unfortunately, we weren't to show
any of this on television

1131
01:22:32,080 --> 01:22:34,120
because of course,
we weren't filming.

1132
01:22:34,120 --> 01:22:38,320
Charles wasn't filming, Charles was
poling away like the rest of us.

1133
01:22:38,320 --> 01:22:39,640
It was that dicey.

1134
01:22:39,640 --> 01:22:42,080
And the captain was saying
things like,

1135
01:22:42,080 --> 01:22:44,960
"Setengah mati, setengah mati!"

1136
01:22:44,960 --> 01:22:48,880
He's saying, "I'm half dead!
Setengah mati!"

1137
01:22:48,880 --> 01:22:52,560
And finally, about four o'clock
in the morning, just before dawn,

1138
01:22:52,560 --> 01:22:56,000
we managed to get
out of the whirlpool area

1139
01:22:56,000 --> 01:22:58,200
and into calmer
waters in a little bay.

1140
01:23:00,000 --> 01:23:04,680
'So, at last, we sailed safely

1141
01:23:06,160 --> 01:23:11,040
'The island looked most exciting,
as we sailed close by its shores.

1142
01:23:12,880 --> 01:23:16,000
'Brilliant white
beaches of coral sand,

1143
01:23:16,000 --> 01:23:19,800
'clumps of bush near the water's
edge, and above them,

1144
01:23:19,800 --> 01:23:25,120
'gaunt, bare, volcanic hills,
covered in sunburnt brown grass,

1145
01:23:25,120 --> 01:23:27,920
'with a few palm trees
here and there.

1146
01:23:27,920 --> 01:23:31,360
'This was the home of the dragon,
which we'd come so far to see.

1147
01:23:48,160 --> 01:23:52,200
'We were so happy and relieved
to have arrived after such a long

1148
01:23:52,200 --> 01:23:56,760
'and tricky voyage that to our eyes,
the village seemed a real paradise.

1149
01:23:59,640 --> 01:24:04,080
'The Petinggi, or headman, was
sitting on the steps of his house.

1150
01:24:04,080 --> 01:24:07,120
'He welcomed us very kindly
and invited us inside.'

1151
01:24:09,880 --> 01:24:13,800
And the chief, the Petinggi,
gave us a little feast and during

1152
01:24:13,800 --> 01:24:17,920
that, he said, "You know, that
captain of yours is not a good man.

1153
01:24:17,920 --> 01:24:19,680
"He's actually a gun runner.

1154
01:24:19,680 --> 01:24:22,920
"He's been smuggling guns
to rebels in Sulawesi

1155
01:24:22,920 --> 01:24:26,600
"and the navy is after him."

1156
01:24:26,600 --> 01:24:30,720
That's why he was the only
person in the harbour.

1157
01:24:30,720 --> 01:24:33,280
All the rest were out fishing.

1158
01:24:33,280 --> 01:24:37,680
With a lucky escape behind them,
the team continued on their quest.

1159
01:24:37,680 --> 01:24:40,840
This time with the added
ingredient of dragon bait.

1160
01:24:42,680 --> 01:24:45,720
'We walked, carrying the two goats,
with our cameras

1161
01:24:45,720 --> 01:24:50,080
'and recording equipment, ready for
this final stage in our expedition.'

1162
01:24:52,160 --> 01:24:56,160
The Komodo dragons had never been
filmed, at least not professionally.

1163
01:24:57,920 --> 01:25:03,440
And this was going to be a top draw
if we got pictures of one.

1164
01:25:06,160 --> 01:25:09,160
The only problem was that
there was not a lot of light.

1165
01:25:09,160 --> 01:25:10,880
There was quite heavy bush there.

1166
01:25:10,880 --> 01:25:14,160
It was too dark,
according to Charles, for us

1167
01:25:14,160 --> 01:25:18,880
to use our colour stock, so we had
to film it in black and white.

1168
01:25:18,880 --> 01:25:21,880
'Now,
we had to set about building a trap.

1169
01:25:21,880 --> 01:25:24,320
'All the materials
you need to make it can be

1170
01:25:24,320 --> 01:25:26,040
'obtained in the forest itself.'

1171
01:25:29,880 --> 01:25:33,200
They attached the trap door to
a simple trigger mechanism,

1172
01:25:33,200 --> 01:25:35,600
using a rope.

1173
01:25:35,600 --> 01:25:38,760
'He put a piece of
goat's flesh inside

1174
01:25:38,760 --> 01:25:41,320
'and then shrouded that end
with palm leaves.'

1175
01:25:44,120 --> 01:25:47,280
RUSTLING

1176
01:25:47,280 --> 01:25:50,520
'We waited, but not for long.
Within half an hour, there was

1177
01:25:50,520 --> 01:25:53,120
'a rustle in the bush
and there was the dragon.

1178
01:25:59,320 --> 01:26:01,680
'This was tremendously
exciting for us.

1179
01:26:01,680 --> 01:26:04,520
'Our first sight of this
magnificent monster,

1180
01:26:04,520 --> 01:26:07,040
'the climax of four months
of arduous travel.

1181
01:26:08,120 --> 01:26:09,920
'He was enormous.

1182
01:26:09,920 --> 01:26:13,440
'As he circled us, flicking
out his great yellow tongue,

1183
01:26:13,440 --> 01:26:19,120
'he looked almost as though he had
walked out of some prehistoric age.'

1184
01:26:19,120 --> 01:26:25,280
This enormous monster, the size
of a really big crocodile, appeared,

1185
01:26:25,280 --> 01:26:30,760
sniffed the air and eventually,
it went in after this dead goat.

1186
01:26:36,560 --> 01:26:38,440
'And down came the door.

1187
01:26:38,440 --> 01:26:41,000
'Hastily,
we piled boulders on the door,

1188
01:26:41,000 --> 01:26:42,920
'so that he couldn't lift it up.

1189
01:26:42,920 --> 01:26:45,720
'We had got him.'

1190
01:26:45,720 --> 01:26:50,040
But we didn't have the permit to
take it away, so we had to content

1191
01:26:50,040 --> 01:26:54,680
ourselves with just measuring it
and looking at it in close detail.

1192
01:26:54,680 --> 01:27:00,120
So, we let this first famous dragon
go and away it went into the bush.

1193
01:27:03,200 --> 01:27:06,040
We'd had to use
black and white negative stock

1194
01:27:06,040 --> 01:27:08,760
for this climax of the whole trip.

1195
01:27:08,760 --> 01:27:12,440
We thought we really ought to use
the colour negative stock too,

1196
01:27:12,440 --> 01:27:16,840
if we could dragons out in the open,
as indeed we did,

1197
01:27:16,840 --> 01:27:19,680
because on the island,
there are a lot of them.

1198
01:27:22,680 --> 01:27:25,080
It was, I think,

1199
01:27:25,080 --> 01:27:29,040
the first colour film taken
of a Komodo dragon in the wild.

1200
01:27:33,000 --> 01:27:37,320
Like the series before it, Zoo Quest
For A Dragon was another big hit.

1201
01:27:38,800 --> 01:27:42,960
The Zoo Quest expeditions
did a lot for me.

1202
01:27:44,080 --> 01:27:46,320
I never had to look for work again.

1203
01:27:47,640 --> 01:27:52,280
And David became a very
famous person

1204
01:27:52,280 --> 01:27:56,240
and it's Zoo Quest
who made him that.

1205
01:27:56,240 --> 01:28:00,880
And Charles and David have
remained lifelong friends.

1206
01:28:00,880 --> 01:28:04,760
They were good days
and I wouldn't change them.

1207
01:28:04,760 --> 01:28:08,640
I think when you're 28, you do
things rather differently from

1208
01:28:08,640 --> 01:28:14,120
when you're 88, and you do silly
things, which we undoubtedly did.

1209
01:28:14,120 --> 01:28:16,240
Looking back,

1210
01:28:16,240 --> 01:28:21,520
I don't think you would let two kids
in their 20s just go off like that

1211
01:28:21,520 --> 01:28:26,080
and nobody asked us anything about
health and safety or anything else.

1212
01:28:26,080 --> 01:28:30,520
I mean, we just disappeared and
they said, "When will you be back?"

1213
01:28:30,520 --> 01:28:34,600
"Ooh, just before Christmas,
I think." "Righto, goodbye."

1214
01:28:34,600 --> 01:28:36,880
Happy days.

1215
01:28:36,880 --> 01:28:39,720
That was the end of our Zoo Quest.
Goodnight.