Tim Winton fronts a MAGICAL new doco about Ningaloo

“I live with my feet in the sand and my head in the salty wind, on an island where you can still feel the power and majesty of wild things and wild places. And the place that exhilarates me like no other is right here, on the western coast, where the desert has its feet in the sea,” says author Tim Winton, as he introduces a global audience of millions to a place beloved of all West Australians: Ningaloo.

Ningaloo, or Nyinggulu as its traditionally known, is somewhere many on the west coast take for granted. We grew up camping there, jumping into its pristine aqua waters, snorkelling with its strange prehistoric-like megafauna. But for many of the people in the 130 countries worldwide who will be watching Winton’s sublime new three-part documentary series, Ningaloo Nyinggulu, it will be the first time they’ll be hearing about this World Heritage-listed conservation success story.

And they’ll be hearing about it straight from Winton’s mouth.

“Making the show was a way of celebrating the place, and explaining to people around the world there’s this amazing treasure that Western Australia has,” says the acclaimed novelist and activist, who wrote and stars in the three-part doco, which will make its debut on ABC May 16.

“But also, I wanted to show what we have to lose …

“I feel so lucky to live (in Western Australia); somewhere where there are still wild places — I think we take it for granted, because we don’t understand how rare and precious it is.”

I’m speaking to Winton from my spare room in Fremantle, a space that is neither rare, nor precious. We’re chatting by phone, and it’s strange, because talking to journalists is not something the notoriously-private author likes to do.

Like, ever.

“It’s kind of a bit of an odd trajectory, or an odd thing for me to do for someone who one of my great ambitions is not to be on the tellie, or talking to the media … Ha! That went well!” he laughs

And I laugh too. Because it is odd to be chatting to one of our country’s greatest living authors about, of all things, a television program.

But Ningaloo is a place that Winton has visited, loved, wept for, and passionately advocated for, for over thirty years. Through this documentary, he’s taking it to the world, acting as its very own passionate tour guide.

And, honestly, as guides go, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one.

Winton has been at the coalface campaigning to save Ningaloo Reef, Cape Grange and Exmouth Gulf from development for more than two decades. He helped spearhead a movement to save the area from development and was instrumental in the original Save Ningaloo campaign from 2000-2003, becoming patron of the campaign to get the area World Heritage status.

You could say he’s Ningaloo’s biggest advocate, one of its closest friends — and its greatest admirer.

“(I did the series) to help celebrate it, but also to create a sense of value and urgency around it — you can’t save a place unless you can tell people it exists, and to create and elevate its social value,” he explains. “That’s been my experience as an activist.

“In a strange way, the conservation movement kind of invented Ningaloo. All those years, we were essentially donating time like multi-million dollar tourism campaigns, that other people have been able to exploit.

“And I am happy about that — I want to live in a world where these places are still viable … it improves your life mentally and spiritually to know that there are still wild places that your children and their children might experience.

“Otherwise what are you doing? You are passing on a business that is trading insolvent; passing on a house that is essentially fully in debt, that’s not yours.

“So that is how I think about this — an old man’s legacy gesture, perhaps.”

And boy, what a gesture it is.

The show is visually breathtaking, using sweeping drone photography to capture Ningaloo’s smudgy pink landscapes, the blue hues of its waterways; its burnt orange beauty writ large on the small screen.

There are wide shots of its flood plains, footage of manta ray migrations. There are whale sharks, dugongs, and teeny, tiny cave fish — some of the rarest in the world — flopping around in Winton’s palm. Schools of fish, turtles, coral forests, soaring vistas of a limestone ranges “running the spine of an enormous desert peninsula”.

And there, at the centre of it all, is Winton, in a pair of boardies, waxing lyrical in his own, unique Winton-esque style.

And it’s magic.

Episode one is called Collisions, and it looks at Ningaloo’s ancient origins, explaining “the role of the mighty currents, rainfall, wind, and waves still shaping it today”. The second ep is called Connections, and it delves into the links between ecosystems, tracing the human relationships and migratory pathways that continue to sustain the area’s biodiversity. Winton talks with First Nations custodians to learn more about the interconnectedness of land, sea, and life.

The final episode, Choices, highlights the “the good decisions that have granted Ningaloo a cultural status and a level of management almost unrivalled in the world”. It also points out the challenges the area still faces. As Winton explains, the sea might shimmer a pristine green, but just past the horizon, the lights of heavy industry twinkle, threatening to inch ever closer.

Through the doco, Winton is urging us to maintain vigilance — it’s the reason he leant his name, his words and his face to this project, his involvement starting as far back as 2018.

“I had gone back into the campaigning mode to try to save Exmouth Gulf from industrialisation, which is a bit of left-over business from our campaign 20 years before, when we helped spare the reef from a few disastrous developments,” he explains.

“We changed the planning laws, and helped get the place put on the World Heritage List.

“I published a story in The Guardian, about my wife and I swimming face-to-face with humpback whales in the gulf, and how rare it is to have these kinds of experiences with megafauna in a pristine place — Peter Rees, the director of this, and the guy who made Mythbusters, contacted my agent and asked if I would be interested in making a natural history show about Ningaloo.”