Coast Australia

Coast has returned.

After our first look at Australia's epic coastline,

it was clear we'd barely begun to cover this vast

and surprising continent.

It's great to be back

to explore eight new fascinating coastlines.

From The Pilbara to The Torres Strait.

From Norfolk Island to South Australia.

We're setting out to capture

the dazzling diversity of a young nation...

built on an ancient land.

Discovering the secrets,

the scenery, and the stories of its people.

Joining me on this grand adventure,

Professor Tim Flannery,

a passionate palaeontologist and zoologist,

who also writes extensively about Australia's explorers.

Distinguished marine biologist, Professor Emma Johnston.

A New South Wales Scientist of the Year,

Emma is an expert on the stunning biodiversity

in Australian waters.

Doctor Xanthe Mallett is an anthropologist,

scientist, and keen diver,

with a fascination for social and cultural quirks.

Brendan Moar is a landscape architect

who is intrigued by the way people interact

with their coastal environment.

And Dr Alice Garner is an historian

who brings a special knowledge of coastal communities.

And as for me, well, I get the job of a lifetime,

because I get to be your guide.

It's an irresistibly epic journey and I can't wait to get started.

Welcome back to Coast.

Coast Australia.

Our first journey

covers Victoria's dramatic Bass Strait coast...

taking in the sprawling Gippsland Lakes,

the southernmost tip of the Australian mainland

and the jagged edge of the Mornington Peninsula.

Tim delves into his own past in a tale of dinosaur discovery.

The first dinosaur fossil ever found in Australia.

Alice investigates a great maritime mystery.

This bay was the site of tragedy once again.

Brendan checks out a sport that's not plain sailing.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

While I'm on a journey into the unknown.

More people have walked on the surface of the moon

than have ever set foot on Skull Rock.

But first, we're heading offshore.

Fifty kilometres east, off Victoria's Gippsland coast.

For many years,

the waters of Bass Strait hid a prehistoric secret.

A buried treasure.

In 1960,

American geologist, Lewis G Weeks, singled out this area,

as a likely place to find black gold.

The first big discovery was made in 1965,

when an exploration company found natural gas.

And, just a year later, they discovered the real prize...

Oil.

I've been given a very rare opportunity

to fly the 43 kilometres out, to see some of the platforms,

and to meet some of the people who live and work on them.

Until 1966,

Australia had been totally reliant on overseas oil.

Now, it had its own supply, right here in Bass Strait.

The very existence of these platforms out here

is testament to ground-breaking engineering.

Invisible beneath us is a complex web of 400 wells.

And a platform like that one doesn't just drill straight down.

On the contrary, it can reach out in all directions,

drawing upon reserves of oil and gas,

as far away as six kilometres.

Steve O'Brien is senior operations supervisor

on Tuna Platform.

Bass Strait's been his workplace for over 40 years.

It's not a bad office, hey.

Steve, what kind of challenges does the Bass Strait pose

for oil and gas exploration?

Well, probably the biggest challenge, Neil, is the weather.

It's... you know, it can be huge.

It can go from what we've got out here right now,

in six hours, we could be looking at 45, 50 knot winds

and three and a half, four meter seas.

And how is the structure designed to cope with that?

Okay, in two ways.

One, using piles, deep long piles.

We actually pin the structure into the seabed.

And then, secondly, the structure itself,

the six and a half thousand ton of steel it's made up of,

is actually designed to withstand what we call the hundred-year wave.

- Which is what? - Which is, statistically,

the biggest wave we're going to see over a 100-year period,

and here, it's a 33-metre wave coming in from the south-east.

Thirty-three-- So, how high are we above the sea

- at the moment? - Plenty!

We're about 50 meters above, so that's okay.

If the worst was to happen here and this thing was,

you know, washed away, what would it cost to put it back?

Neil!

Little change out of four and a half billion.

- So... - Right. Okay.

We don't want to have to rebuild this platform.

Okay, I hear you.

The figures are enough to leave you reeling.

But there is another surprise waiting below in the plant room.

- Right. - So, what is this?

- Where are we? - Have a look at this.

Just... have a feel.

- It's hot! Too hot to touch. - Yeah!

That's the oil coming up from the reservoir.

That's the temperature it comes up at.

Just under 200 degrees as it comes to the surface,

that's already cooled a bit.

- Wow! - Bloody amazing, aye?

So the oil is hot because of its proximity to...

- the centre of the Earth? - Yeah, as...

as the heat rises,

as we go further towards the centre of the Earth,

and, you know, as they say we're only down a few thousand feet,

but it's quite hot there already.

- That's amazing! - It's massive, aye.

It takes just four hours to draw the oil

from its reservoir nearly two kilometres

under the seabed.

It's amazing to think that the black gold

flowing through this pipe

originated millions of years ago,

as microscopic plants and animals in prehistoric seas,

absorbing the sun's energy.

As the microorganisms died, they sank to the ocean floor

and were covered by layers of sediment.

As millions of years passed,

incredible pressure and heat transformed them.

At between 60 and 120 degrees Celsius,

they became crude oil.

Higher temperatures turned them to gas.

At any one time,

Tuna Platform is home to up to 60 employees,

from engineers to cooks,

all doing their bit to make sure the precious oil

and gas keep flowing 24 hours a day.

The oil workers aren't the only inhabitants

of these platforms.

These places are incredibly popular with the local seal population.

So popular in fact that builders have to put in special gates

to stop the seals climbing all the way up

to where the workers are.

Since 1969,

Bass Strait has produced over eight trillion cubic meters

of natural gas, and four billion barrels of oil.

A 600 kilometre network of pipelines

transports the raw materials from the seabed

to an onshore plant,

where it's processed and sent off to power the country.

Providing 40 percent of Australia's East Coast gas needs,

and two thirds of the country's oil.

It's a funny feeling being out here on this platform,

because I'm thinking all the time about...

how this one and others like it have been in the Bass Strait

for the best part of 50 years,

pumping back gas and oil

upon which thousands upon thousands of people's lives have depended.

And yet, although it's a gargantuan structure,

and there are others like it, when you look at them

in this seascape, they seem so insignificant,

so slight and so frail,

and you're reminded that for all we depend on this

and for how much human endeavour it represents,

in the scheme of things, no matter what we do,

we're still insignificant.

The next step in our journey takes us back onto terra firma.

Southeast of Melbourne, near Cape Paterson,

and the very Scottish-sounding town of Inverloch,

lies a distinctive outcrop called Eagles Nest.

From some angles, it resembles the top half of Australia,

rising from the rock platform.

More than a century ago,

Eagles Nest was a site of a landmark discovery.

A discovery that changed both palaeontology

and Professor Tim Flannery, forever.

They say that small events can cast long shadows,

and one such event happened right here

on this very rock platform, in May 1903.

The geologist William Ferguson was mapping the Victorian coastline,

looking for coal,

but what he found instead... was this.

He doesn't know what it is at first.

But it's soon identified as the first dinosaur fossil

ever found in Australia.

Experts at the British Museum

identified it as the toe bone of a carnivorous dinosaur.

It was later dubbed The Cape Paterson Claw.

Ferguson's discovery was long dismissed as a fluke,

partly because of the theory of continental drift.

A hundred and ten million years ago,

Australia lay 3,000 kilometres further south,

huddled up against Antarctica.

It was believed that cold-blooded reptiles

couldn't survive in such harsh conditions.