Whicker's World

Dorrie Flatman left Liverpool in 1963 with three daughters and £45. Today she is one of Australia's wealthiest women. She is a brothel madam, with three flourishing businesses and the firm conviction that business is best kept in the family. So while she manages one "house," her daughter oversees the house opposite, and her ex-babysitter from Kirkby the branch brothel in Fremantle. The books are meticulously kept by Dorrie's husband, an accountant 21 years her junior. Had Dorrie plied her trade in Britain, she would have ended up in jail. But this is Perth, Western Australia, in some ways astonishingly permissive, where licensed brothels are illegal, but "tolerated."

Jane Makim, born in London, lives a hard life in the remote and rugged outback of New South Wales with her rancher husband and two young children. On 23 July 1986 she was in London on important family business - the wedding of her younger sister. But this was no ordinary wedding. Her sister, Sarah Ferguson, was marrying Prince Andrew. Back at the ranch in the drought plain on the Queensland border, Jane reflects on a life and lifestyle that could hardly be less like those of her more famous sister. Captain John Alliston, RN, also decided to settle in a remote corner of Australia. At the end of the war he brought his new bride, Eleanor, to a deserted island, a mere speck on the map off Tasmania, where they eked out a precarious living and raised a large and happy family. Today the Allistons enjoy a busy retirement. John cultivates his garden; Eleanor writes romantic novels under the nom de plume of Minka Jones.

No one exemplifies the buccaneering, entrepreneurial spirit of Western Australia more than Alan Bond, who left Hammersmith as a 13-year-old and is now a megamillionaire and Australian folk hero, the only man to wrest the America's Cup from the Americans. Alister Norwood, son of a Belfast carpenter, is to jeans what Bond is to beer; Peter Briggs from Streatham believes that someone who's worth five or ten million "hasn't really made it." Briggs owns 150 vintage cars, and offers Alan Whicker a chance to drive in York's annual 'Flying Fifty' endurance trial.

Northern Queensland seems an abode of the blessed. And yet each year the crocodile notches up its terrible toll, despite the signs that warn of the presence of this unlovely amphibian... unloved by all, except Mike Pople, who left Bristol to become a ranger for the Queensland Wildlife Service. Among other examples of Pommie exotica who flourish in this balmy backwater are Bill Moull from Dagenham who sells prawns to the Japanese; Pat Robertson from London who sells koalas to the Japanese; Geoff and Edie Taylor from Coalville in Leicestershire, who are making a brave attempt to convert Australians to the garden gnome; and Eddie Farrell from Manchester, who lives in hope of finding gold - but who, to date, has not found enought to fill a gold tooth.

Beautiful people abound in Sydney, and more than a few exotic blooms are on display at Lady Primrose Potter's fancy dress ball, where Diana "Bubbles" Fisher, society columnist and daughter-in-law of a former Archbishop of Canterbury, chronicles proceedings attired as Brunhilde. Then there is the annual Sleaze Ball where 6,000 gays in this, the gayest of cities, pogo through the night to the laser lighting of Jeff Hardy, who once decked the displays at Fortnum and Mason. But first Alan Whicker meets the man who migrated 12,000 miles from East Ham - to become a dustman - and the orphan abandoned in a Cumbrian workhouse 50 years ago who is now an Australian cabinet minister.

To most travellers the real Australia is the Northern Territory, which attracts the loners, men like Sid Smith from Dudley who runs one of the loneliest pubs in the world. While Sid looks after his one and only regular, his wife Barbara prepares Devonshire cream teas for any passing trade. It is via a cattle-mustering expedition by helicopter and a stopover at the tiny town of Katherine to meet a fun-loving girl from Southall with a strong right hook that Alan Whicker meets some Aboriginals at an alcohol rehabilitation centre. For them the bicentenary is no time for celebration. Their existence in the camps is wretched, and lightened only by two young pommy doctors, Dr Clare and Dr Neil.

"If we have a malaise, I think we can trace most of our industrial attitudes back to the English" - so says David Hill, a Barnardo's boy from Eastbourne, who manages the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. George Campbell holds a senior position in the metalworkers' union. He brings the Belfast waterfront into the living rooms of Australia as he castigates government and bosses. The metalworkers were on strike when Alan Whicker met Tony Packard, a £10 Pom from Reading, whose multi-million pound motor franchise was threatened by the stoppage. Roger Smith left Britain in 1964 with £8, and made £20 million. Beaten by restrictive union practices, he's selling up and leaving.

Is the Aussie male all he's cracked down to be - a pot-bellied, beer-swilling chauvinist? Sally Hurley, ex-bunny croupier, would agree. So would Liverpudlian Clare Jukka, who sees a lot of outback wives in her clinic in a remote Northern Territories township. Sue Becker - the BBC's keep-fit Green Goddess of the early 70s - yearns for the company of European men in her lonely Hobart home. But liberated executive Jane Deknatel from Oxford sees something almost wimpish in the Sydney male; and Hazel Small from Aberdeen shows Alan Whicker that a woman in Australia can pioneer as well as a man.

When Ray Wilmott was a boy he used to follow the Beaufort Hunt on foot. Now that he's made his fortune, he has invented his own hunt. Arrayed in pink, he halloos through the vales of New South Wales - hoping the hounds have picked up the scent of a fox, and not a wallaby. Len Evans has been a keen drinker from his youth; he has become Australia's most respected vigneron, gourmet and wine critic. Because of him consumption has shot up to 24 bottles per person per year. Dennis Gowing was a penniless orphan from London, but he achieved the dream of every Australian male; his horse won the Melbourne Cup and he formed a liaison with Miss Australia. Alan Whicker bumped into him in the boisterous party crowds at the Melbourne Cup meeting.

In the last of ten films Alan Whicker talks to Poms who have joined the world of arts and entertainment down under: Robert Morley's son Wilton, a theatre producer; Phillip Emanuel, who contributes to the Australian film industry; Edmund Capon, late of the V&A, new curator of the NSW Art Gallery; Tony Shaffer, author of Sleuth, writing more fiendish drama in the house in the rainforest of Queensland he shares with wife Diane Cilento. At the lower end of the market - Paul Sharratt, late of the pier at Clacton, now owner of his own showbar in Surfers' Paradise; Peter Barnard, ex-Playboy croupier from Torquay, who presides over Hobart's casino; and honorary Pom Joe Bugner, who draws adoring crowds of Australians chanting "Aussie Joe!"