The World About Us

Graceful white horses, dangerous black bulls, the vivid colours of Provencal costumes and exotic birds: all are part of the romance of this wild region. But the pressures of the 20th century are on, and this year a major decision is being made as to whether the Camargue can still remain a Mecca for the bird-watcher and an invaluable place for research.

Exactly 60 years ago tonight Captain Scott took his last painful steps across Antarctica. It was the end of an epic journey which has stirred hearts ever since. Scott and four others had planted the Union Jack on the South Pole. But they were to pay for it with their lives. What did go wrong? Some new questions are asked and some fresh answers uncovered in this filmed investigation into the fate of Scott's last expedition.

This film tells the true story of Mrs Helen Robinson's fight with the King of the Marlins. Mrs Robinson is 71; her ambition was to catch a giant black marlin weighing over 1,000 pounds. She travelled from her home in Miami, Florida, to Cairns in North Queensland to begin the struggle off Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Apart from Mrs Robinson and her fishing friends Ted Smits and Vie Dunaway, the cast includes the giant marlin, the exotic and deadly butterfly cod, and Hugo the killer whale.

The career of Col. Sir Hugh Boustead reads like an adventure from the Boys' Own Paper He joined the Navy at 13, deserted to fight on the Western Front, went on to fight with the White Russians, became an Army boxing champion, had a go at Everest - and commanded the Camel Corps. He left the Army to become eventually a Political Agent in the richest sheikdom in the world.

In the heart of Dartmoor there are places where the silence seems to have been accumulating and deepening for centuries; yet in reality, the peacefulness is made up of many small sounds that blend together. Lawrence Shove is a professional recordist who is making a sound-picture of the Moor.

A tropical Eden through three pairs of eyes at different times. Hans Hass - a modern view of a holiday dream isle. James Morrison - one of the mutineers on the Bounty. Paul Gauguin - from the diary and paintings of the artist.

The story of a naturalist-explorer making a six months' journey from the lowest point in Ethiopia, the bottom of the Danakil Depression 300 ft below sea level, to the top of the highest mountain 15,000 ft above sea level. Ethiopia offers a variety of scenery, plants and birds and other animals without parallel in Africa. This film contains the best from a series of six films first transmitted on BBC1.

This, the second of two contrasting programmes about Ethiopia, looks at the history, customs and religions of a people with 70 different languages, ruled by a monarch who traces his ancestry back to Solomon and Sheba.

Thirty years ago Christoph von Furer Haimendorf visited the Nagas - a wild tribe of head-hunters who live in the hills between India and Burma. He returned last year and filmed the Nagas at the turning point between their violent past and the developments yet to happen.

Albert Oeming runs the largest zoo in Canada. In his vast game farm in Alberta even rhinoceros, giraffe and lion appear to have adapted well to the snows of the Canadian winter. The film follows Oeming on one of his journeys to the Arctic as he collects animals in danger of extinction in order to breed them in his unusual zoo.

The World About Us sails 'The Jolly-Rodgered Sea' "Once, through these waters, schooners no larger than ours carried a couple of hundred poor slaves down below in the hold. Today, our rich cargo pays for the privilege of working with us." Val Howells skippers the Yankee Clipper, largest of the Caribbean's remaining staysail schooners, through the volcanic multiracial islands of the Windward chain. She sails now where dug-out canoes go faster than yachts and where the skills which built the wooden navies are practised by their last generation of shipwrights; and, even in the hurricane season, she carries through this lustiest of men's worlds a majority of women passengers.

Deep in the south-west corner of Spain lies one of the most fascinating regions in Europe, the Flamenco - or flamingo - Triangle. It is a land shared by colourful People and colourful wildlife, their lives strongly intertwined. But now life is beginning to change. What will happen to this land of bulls and horses, flamingos and eagles, flamenco and fiesta? What will become of the great sand dunes like the Sahara, the vast marshes full of wildfowl, the famous Coto Dofiana, and the remarkable pilgrimage to the Lady of the Dew?

Jacques Cousteau attempts to unravel the mystery of the 'blue holes' of the Caribbean, strange cavities in the sea floor believed to be bottomless and the home of deep sea monsters. The film follows Oeming on one of his journeys to the Arctic as he collects animals in danger of extinction in order to breed them in his unusual zoo.

Pelly Bay, in the Canadian Arctic: the temperature -20°C. But this doesn'worry the fur-clad hunter crouching beside the seal's breathing hole who has waited there for 15 hours, right through the polar night, and will remain there till either a seal surfaces - or he freezes slowly to death. This was the old way with the Netsilik Eskimos-the People of the Seal. Now, they, and their harsh, simple life have been swept away into settlements. But not before a Canadian camera team had shot nearly 100 hours of film, the best of which makes up these programmes reflecting the actions and the outlook of a vanished race.

The last bone peg is hammered home with a stone; the last sinew stitch drawn tight in the caribou skin. The kayak is complete, and a stone-age craft is launched. The Place is Pelly Bay in the Canadian Arctic: the year, 1960. Even as late as this, the People of the Seal were still following their ancient way of life. Now they, together with their harsh, simple life and their incredible resourcefulness, have been swept away into civilised settlements. But not before a Canadian camera team had shot nearly 100 hours of film. The result is a film which reflects not just the actions but also the outlook of a vanished race. So a programme that starts out as a succession of fascinating pictures slowly turns into something more -the understanding of another way of life.

The drastic decline in the number of wild tigers at large in the Indian sub-continent reflects the general disappearance of a great deal of wildlife there. Philip Wayre has travelled widely in India and Bhutan to film some of the remaining creatures of the vanishing forests and to observe some of the valiant efforts being made to conserve them in the face of a desperate struggle for living space.

27,000 pearls, 19,000 diamonds, 8,000 rubies and 12,000 assorted precious gems. A BBC expedition found them unguarded in Bolivia - encrusted upon a gold and silver statue of the Virgin. The team set out from the highest capital in the world - La Paz. They followed the path of the Spanish Conquistadors. In Potosi they found a silver hill which had supplied a third of the silver of the New World. Here the expedition members heard rumours of treasure even further to the south. As they drove they climbed higher, to 16,000 feet and the ruined city of Lipez. A solitary isolated peasant family lived among the ruins. It seemed they had made a wasted journey. But here was the biggest surprise of all.

Each year thousands of people visit Snowdonia - a National Park covering 845 square miles of magnificent, varied scenery. Those who live and work in this grey green landscape know 'the rhythm of the seasons, wind and rain;' they know too the elusive wild life and rare beautiful flowers which often escape the eyes of the casual tourist.

Christopher Columbus spotted three mermaids off the coast of Haiti in 1493. 'They were not as beautiful as they had been painted' he wrote. They were, in fact, manatees - perhaps the least well-known of the world's mammals. Cousteau and his team of divers follow these distant relatives of the elephant on their migration through the swamps and glades of Florida. Then they undertake the dramatic and difficult task of returning a captive manatee to the wild.

To be free and alone above the earth; to be like a bird using the winds to take you ever upwards and on; that is the ambition of man to which only gliding can come near. But when one. man sets out to beat another, to strain his every nerve to fly his sunship higher and further than the next man, then this gloriously exhilarating pastime becomes a fiercely competitive game. The Sunship Game follows the fortunes of three of the leading glider pilots in America as they compete against each other in the National Sailplane Championship of the USA. It shows how the whole man, his state of mind, even his personal life becomes focused on his ability to use the winds more skilfully than his competitor; and how, when the competition is in world class, a man's every thought condenses itself into the will to win.

There were Samurai, a kind of knight errant armed with long sword and bow, wandering about Japan as recently as 150 years ago. People who have seen the film The Seven Samurai will have a pretty good idea of what a Samurai was. What they may not know is that the spirit and practice of the Samurai have not passed away from modern Japan; hidden in secluded parts of the country, secret schools still exist to preserve the techniques and beliefs of these fierce and fearsome warriors.

Tao Bong is Manuel Elizade, a wealthy young Philippine businessman who got his nickname from the poor primitive peoples whom he has helped. What happens to primitive men and women when so-called civilisation encroaches upon their territory is well known: they are badgered, exploited, hunted like animals - at best enslaved and frequently exterminated. But not if Manuel Elizade can prevent it, even though it frequently means at the risk of his life.

Since the first white men entered Canada the stories of the wolf's ferocity have multiplied. Man's fear and ignorance have led him to hunt the animal mercilessly.

A change of colour and a cloud of ink confuse the enemies of the octopus. Almost as confusing are the stories alleging that the octopus is a man-killer and destroyer of ships. Ranging from the Pacific to the Mediterranean, Jacques Cousteau and his team of divers solve some of the mysteries surrounding these legendary eight-armed monsters of the deep.

A complete and unique record on film of the greatest event in the Moslem world. The annual pilgrimage of Muslims to Mecca is one of the world's most celebrated religious observances. But Mecca is barred to non-Muslims, who have very little idea of what the event is really like. There are, too, many Muslims who cannot perform the pilgrimage and who know about it only from hearsay. This film, made with the permission of the Saudi Arabian Government, is the first complete record of this ancient and still vital expression of religious faith.

Peru has a long history of earthquakes; when the Incas and their Sun God were defeated by the Spanish the people of Cuzco turned for protection to an effigy of Christ given to them by their conqueror, Charles V. The film follows the annual procession of this 'Lord of the Tremors' through the streets of Cuzco and illustrates the story with an eye-witness account of the earthquake of 1970 when whole towns were obliterated.

Through the observations of gorillas, chimpanzees and monkeys, we can see the parallels with our own behaviour.

Across the vast plains of Tanzania moves the greatest concentration of wild animals in East Africa. This area was once dominated by a fierce tribe of nomadic warriors – the Masai. Today, they live in peace and this is the story of one Masai, Sam Ole Saitoti, who guides visitors through the spectacular wildlife of the Serengeti National Park. Once a year Sam returns to his tribal home to share in old customs and to witness a vital ceremony - the making of a Masai warrior.

Pierre Gaisseau (remembered for "The Sky Above, the Mud Below" which won him an Academy Award) parachuted with his camera into a previously unexplored region of New Guinea jungle. The aim of Gaisseau's drop was to study what would happen when primitive tribesmen were subjected to instant 'civilisation.' Taking with them many artefacts of Western culture, Gaisseau and his 18-year-old son Nicholas started filming the action from the moment they left the plane.

To most people the words 'British pony' conjure up a picture of a shaggy, tubby beast with a mind of its own, as drawn by cartoonist Thelwell. But in Britain we have nine breeds of mountain and moorland pony, each with its own characteristics and history. From Dartmoor to Shetland, from polo to pit, the versatile British pony shows its paces.

At the beginning of the century Fabre was known to thousands of readers for his vivid descriptions of insect behaviour. Among his greatest contributions to science were his studies of the hunting wasps, which paralyse prey for their larvae to feed on in their underground cells. Fabre was an enthusiastic populariser, to whom modern methods of communication such as radio and television would have had an instant appeal. This programme takes the form of an imaginary television visit to his home in Provence, in which Fabre talks about his life and work and recreates many of the field experiments which so fascinated his readers years ago.

There are 50 million people in China who are not ethnically Chinese at all. China is, in fact, a multi-national state composed of 50 different nationalities. Felix Greene, in a personal view, shows us something of this other China - the Mongolians in the cold north, the Uighers in the vast plains of Sinkiang and a number of smaller minorities living in a remote area near the Laos-Burma borders. In the programme we see how these minority peoples live - their homes, their costumes, their music and colourful festivities - all so different from what comes to our minds when we think of 'China.'

The Observer Singlehanded Yacht Race across the Atlantic qualifies as one of the longest, loneliest and toughest sailing contests in the world. This year's race attracted 59 entries from 11 countries. Murray Sayle, journalist-adventurer, commanded Lady of Fleet, a 41-foot ketch-rigged catamaran and brilliantly filmed his solo attempt to conquer the Atlantic.

For years there have been white expeditions to darkest Africa. Now there comes a black expedition to darkest Britain. In the footsteps of Stanley, in the tradition of The World About Us, and in a take-off of both, a black man's expedition now journeys along the Liverpool-Leeds canal to find the centre of Britain. On the way the intrepid explorers do what travellers and television safaris always have: they examine the quaint customs of the natives, delve into their folklore and record for posterity an exotic but fast-vanishing culture.