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One Plus One: The Road to Alice
by Chris Chamberlain 29 August 2015
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eginning September 11, One Plus One presents a three-part series called, The Road to Alice. “We travelled to Alice Springs to tap into some of the incredible characters who inhabit regional Australia,” said host Jane Hutcheon. The first episode, airing on Friday, September 11 at 10am on ABC and again over the weekend of September 12-13 on ABC News 24, features kangaroo rescuer Chris ‘Brolga’ Barns, who appeared in the 2013 BBC documentary, Kangaroo Dundee. Chris Barns loved shows about the outback when he was a kid. Not surprisingly his favourite show was Skippy. He became a zookeeper at 17, worked with wildlife and then as a tour-guide, falling in love with the wide, open spaces of Western and Northern Australia. Now he runs a kangaroo sanctuary just outside Alice Springs. He tells Hutcheon that he was taught to check road-kill when he was a young zoo-keeper and was
transformed the day he found a living joey inside a dead kangaroo’s pouch. “What comes to you is how vulnerable the baby is. I thought, ‘I’m going to have to keep this.’ I knew education would be my life and I could teach people how to become kangaroo rescuers themselves.” - Chris Barns, kangaroo rescuer Barns shows Hutcheon why joeys need to be nurtured. But once they reach independence, he emphasises they shouldn’t be kept as pets. He has several kangaroos on the sanctuary that can’t be released into the wild, including Roger - a strapping creature who frequently tries to chase and box Chris. “He’s a great lesson for people,” Chris says of Roger the Kangaroo. “Be a wildlife carer, enjoy being a kangaroo mum, but return them to the bush. You don’t want to have Roger.” Chris has featured in the Kangaroo Dundee documentary series produced for the BBC. After the first series aired in the UK in March 2013, Chris, who lived in a tin shed on the sanctuary and was
single at the time, was deluged with marriage enquiries. Now he’s married and lives in a house but insists marriage hasn’t changed his life’s priority - to educate people about kangaroos. The second episode of The Road to Alice series features inspiring young, indigenous midwife, Cherisse Buzzacott. With her persistence and encouragement from her parents whom she describes as ‘role-models’, she defies the stereotype of indigenous youth living in the outback today. The episode airs on Friday, September 18 at 10am on ABC and across the weekend of September 19-20 on ABC News 24. In the final episode, musician Shon Klose unravels a story of trauma and healing in the red interior. Shon was born intersex, meaning she is neither fully male nor female. Through music, she found a career teaching rhythm to kids in remote aboriginal communities. This episode airs on Friday, September 25 at 10am on ABC, and across the weekend of Sept 26-27 on ABC News 24. Join the conversation: #OnePlusOne
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