Adventurer, crocodile wrangler, park owner, film-maker, Malcom Douglas was all these and more. Malcolm’s ground-breaking first film Across the Top, first shown to Australian audiences in 1969, generated an enormous amount of interest. It was the first ‘authentic’ travel documentary and it brought the ‘Top End’ right into the living rooms of metropolitan Australia for the first time.
Over the years, Malcolm went on to make fifty more documentaries for Channel Seven and Channel Nine – and they’re all worth watching. Some detail his exploits as he tries to trap rogue crocodiles and bring them back to his wildlife park in Broome; many others document his continuing travels to Australia’s remotest regions and his interactions with the Aboriginal inhabitants. In all of these films, Malcolm tries to instill respect for the environment in his audience, and respect for the culture of the First Australians; his adventures, most especially in the Kimberly and also in the remotest areas of the Great Sandy Desert certainly make for riveting viewing.
Sadly, Malcolm died in an accident in 2010. Many of his films have been uploaded to YouTube by his fans in Europe, where he was especially popular.