'Ningaloo: Australia’s Ocean Wonder': Remarkable look at one of the last untouched places in the world

Premiering on Earth Day, the documentary series Ningaloo: Australia’s Ocean Wonder provides a unique and in-depth look at the Western Australia region, one of the last untouched places in the world.

What makes the three-part docuseries particularly unique (available to watch April 22 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on Love Nature in Canada, which is also available on Prime Video and Apple TV in Canada) is that Australian author and conservation activist, Tim Winton, uses personal stories about his connection with and experiences in Ningaloo to guide and narrate the audience through the story.

"I think that was a decision that we all made in the development stage, that nobody was interested in a purely 'objective' piece of natural history," Winton told Yahoo Canada. "I think they wanted a personal journey."

"I was kind of interested in how we could match that kind of personal reflection of a lifetime of being engaged with the place and obsessed with it, match that to the science and that form of advocacy, and see if we can make something a little bit different. Something that was scientifically sound, just a little bit poetic."

'We had to kind of write a recipe for something that we weren't sure we could cook'

Winton's participation in Ningaloo: Australia’s Ocean Wonder all began when he got a message from the director of the docuseries, Peter Rees, who created Mythbusters. But the Australian author wasn't entirely jumping at the chance to participate, initially.

"[Peter Rees] had seen something I wrote in The Guardian about Ningaloo and he came up with this crazy idea," Winton explained. "He said, why don't we work on a natural history TV show about Ningaloo, because you're so passionate about it."

"I said no. I'm a novelist in late middle age. ... I've spent [40 years] working alone. The idea of trying something new so late in life, it just seemed kind of absurd, but somehow I got talked into it."

With Winton's experience writing fiction, the author worked to effectively blend natural history with the art of storytelling to develop a captivating docuseries.

"Fiction is really kind of dealing in the art of emotion and language, so it was kind of tough, ... for art to meet science, and make something engaging and also just something worthy of watching," Winton said. "It was a kind of close negotiation, trying to figure out ways in which I could write about enormous amounts of information and somehow distill it into imagery."

"Essentially, we had to kind of write a recipe for something that we weren't sure we could cook, because we were shooting in remote places, in really quite challenging conditions, hoping that the weather and the animals and the natural systems would align and allow us to actually capture something."

As Winton explained, it was really two scripts. An "aspirational script" that he and Rees hoped they would be able to capture, and then another that Winton had to adapt to the reality of the circumstances in front of them.

"I think we had ... probably 2,000 hours of footage to try and stitch together," Winton said. "It's unlike anything I've ever attempted before, so I was terrified."

'You just never really know if the animal is going to turn and face you'

In the first episode of Ningaloo: Australia’s Ocean Wonder alone, Winton brings the audience with him underwater, engaging with wildlife in a way that most people around the world have never been able to experience. While Winton had done many of these things previously, he also had to get used to having a film crew around him.

"All my experiences at Ningaloo have been lovely kind of accidental experiences, generally quite solitary, and then suddenly I've got a crew, four cameras and two boats, and all this stuff," Winton explained. "So it was kind of nerve-wracking having to have these encounters in public."

"Wherever we worked, whether we were underground or in the water or in the desert, it was always hot. It was always tough. We never really knew if we were going to be able to get the shots, whether you're face-to-face with a whale shark ... or dealing with turtles or tiger sharks, you just never really know if the animal is going to turn and face you."

'The best stuff in the world is the stuff that we haven't made and we can't create'

At the core of this series is a lesson about being able to maintain diversity of wildlife, particularly amid escalating concerns about lack of action on climate change as global temperatures continuing to rise.

"We were making this show in the midst of an extinction crisis, in a climate emergency," Winton said. "I think the motivation was to put this really remarkable and unknown place in front of people, and to celebrate what is here, which is a rare thing in terms of the level of biodiversity, the level of abundance."

"This is just kind of a remarkable hotspot, but we just wanted to celebrate that and to raise cultural value globally. ... The medium of natural history, of television is just so universal and so global. ... There have been great ecosystems lost. There have been great cultural sites lost because nobody knew about them."

For anyone who watches Ningaloo: Australia’s Ocean Wonder, Winton hopes that people understand that "we have to honour and preserve and celebrate" the world.

"The best stuff in the world is the stuff that we haven't made and we can't create," he said. "My hope is that it will inspire people to think about their own corners of the world and to do what they can to honour their home places, and their wild places for their own sake, for their own mental health, but also for the good of these these ecosystems [and] for those who come after us."

"We all have places to love because this is our only home. ... This is it for us. We have to treat it like it's our only chance, because it is."