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When Bill Bailey decided to film his first travel series in Australia, where he has toured for the best part of 30 years, he decided to turn away from the overexposed beaches and landmarks of the east coast, and go west. In Bill Bailey\u2019s Wild West Australia<\/i>, the British comedian\u2019s adventures include doing burnouts in a tugboat, trying to start a secessionist movement, caving beneath a convict jail, and visiting a commune of gnomes.<\/p>\n
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Bill Bailey wanted to explore paths less travelled in his new series, Wild West Australia. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDocos and travelogues about Australia that I\u2019ve seen in the past follow a certain structure,\u201d Bailey explains from Christchurch, where he is touring his live show Thoughtifer<\/i>. \u201cThey mostly take a big shot of the east coast. It\u2019s mostly a lot of similar kinds of things that we\u2019ve seen before. We focus on, \u2018Ooh! The dangerous wildlife!\u2019 \u2018Ooh! The sharks and the snakes!\u2019 and \u2018Ooh! The spiders!\u2019 Or it\u2019s the beach life \u2013 the Bondi scene in Sydney, the sunny side of Australia \u2013 and I wanted it to be not that.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole aim of the series was to show a 360 visual of Western Australia \u2013 the history of the place, the landscape, the people, the kind of work that people do, the industries \u2013a broader feel of the whole state.\u201d<\/p>\n In the four-part series, Bailey meets fascinating people, from Broome astronomer Greg Quicke, aka \u201cSpace Gandalf\u201d, to the keeper of a replica Stonehenge, to passionate food producers and bush food experts. He jams with the Albany Shantymen and the Perth progressive metal band and Australia\u2019s 2023 Eurovision representative Voyager.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people came up to me and said hello and were very friendly, which is lovely,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s what happens to me anyway when I travel around Australia \u2026 I have to say, I loved singing in the pub with these bearded blokes. That was great. Going back to my prog roots, jamming with Voyager, what a joy that was! I love playing the keytar [a keyboard-guitar combination] at the best of times. It\u2019s often something that you only play in private, but they\u2019re a lovely band, and being able to jam with them was a wonderful day of fun for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill Bailey, with keytar in hand, joined up with Australia\u2019s Eurovision finalists Voyager. <\/span><\/p>\n From the first episode, when Bailey is welcomed to Country by Noongar guide Doc Reynolds on the sparkling white sands of Lucky Bay, First Nations people, history and place names are a cornerstone of the series.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was something which I wanted to make a feature of because I think it seemed like the right thing to do,\u201d says Bailey. \u201cAnd something which perhaps has not been mentioned too much, certainly by overseas presenters.\u201d<\/p>\n Bailey can add the didgeridoo to the extensive list of instruments he plays, but he chose not to pick one up in the series.<\/p>\n \u201cI played a bit of guitar in the Pinnacles [in Nambung National Park], and I wrote quite a bit of the incidental music for the series,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is what I do when I\u2019m on tour in Australia. I take a little keyboard with me and plug it into a laptop and I\u2019ll write on tour, so we managed to capture a bit of that. That\u2019s another thing I find about Australia \u2013 the landscape and the imagery that you see around is quite inspiring when you\u2019re trying to write music, so I used the opportunity to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the series was made with the intention of broadening overseas perceptions of Australia, Bailey hopes there is much for Australians to learn about their country.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot about the series that perhaps [Australians] might not have known,\u201d he says. \u201cThey might not have seen these places. They might not have travelled to them. Maybe it will inspire them to take their own journeys, make their own travelogues. I enjoyed it very much and I\u2019m hoping to do more, so for a first one, I couldn\u2019t have picked a better spot to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n