♪♪ -A big place with a big story -- Outback Australia.

The Kimberley region in the northwest of the country is the size of California, yet only 40,000 humans live here among some of Australia's most beautiful and deadly wildlife.

♪♪ -This is beautiful country.

This is untouched country.

♪♪ -I think there's the croc.

Watch out.

Watch out.

Watch out.

Watch out.

-Fire.

-Across the Kimberley, rangers, traditional owners, scientists, and passionate volunteers... -Tough bugger, aren't you?

-...work together under extreme conditions in a strange kind of paradise.

It's a frontier existence, and it takes a tough hide to survive.

-You go against nature, and nature will give you a hell of a hiding.

-True story, isn't it?

[ Both laugh ] -In this episode... life is getting hot, humid, and hard.

Brave volunteers... -You're going to come around this way.

-...wade into croc-infested waters... -If you see a croc coming at you, stay still.

-...while others race to avert disaster.

-So that won't last another 12 hours.

-Ancient treasures are explored.

-It's just mind-boggling.

This is old.

This is very old.

-And the monsoon arrives, turning drought to flood.

[ Animal calling ] -It's early spring in the Kimberly.

The days are getting suffocatingly hot.

Each day is more humid than the next.

[ Animal calling ] As a monsoonal trough edges back towards this parched corner of the continent... [ Thunder rumbles ] ...clouds taunt, but it does not rain.

The locals call it the troppo season... when only madness reigns.

In the driest part of the country... -Hang on, John.

I'll come out behind you.

I'll go around behind you.

-Gold diggers, Honest John and Steve, are starting work.

-Honest John is training me up because we're going into an economic crisis shortly, and... -Economic crisis, and we're going to make our fortune.

-Survival of the fittest.

-Oh, yeah.

[ Engine revs ] [ Dog barking ] ♪♪ -We're living in West Australia, really.

-Yeah.

-The geology of the Kimberly is ancient.

[ Detector warbling ] Underground, it stores beds of gas and iron ore. Closer to surface are precious metals.

-Picking up something there?

-Yeah.

It's in that pile there.

-The weathering and upheaval of Kimberly rock reveals long-buried treasures.

[ Detector warbling, beeping ] -I got what you need here.

-What is it?

-A nugget, mate?

-How heavy?

-That's a nice nugget, mate.

-How heavy would that be?

It would be probably three.

Ooh, yeah.

=We'll be retiring -- Oh, you are retired.

-Yeah.

[ Both laugh ] [ Laughs ] It's only the real battlers that deserve them that get them, mate, you know?

I've battled all me life, helped people and done everything... -[ Laughs ] ...and now God is paying me back.

[ Laughs ] [ Detector resumes warbling ] [ Both chuckle ] ♪♪ -After months with no rain, the only water left in the vast expanse of the Outback are the small rivulets and billabongs.

They provide a precious oasis.

♪♪ Windjana Gorge, in the hot heart of the Kimberly, is one such refuge.

♪♪ ♪♪ This oasis will continue to water her flock as so much of the Kimberly desiccates.

[ Birds calling ] It is a fine place to see out the dry season.

And so the animals congregate here, seemingly oblivious to the humidity.

[ Birds calling ] On the water's edge, figs and river gums shade curious fruits from the sun.

Little red flying foxes are sleeping... or trying to.

[ Flying foxes chirping ] It's hard to kip when you live in a colony of thousands.

[ Chirping continues ] ♪♪ A nudist colony no less.

♪♪ Although megabats, these mammals are so light, gravity doesn't affect their blood flow, so no head rushes.

♪♪ But gravity does present an issue with waste disposal... ...requiring bats to turn wrong-way up to keep their faces clear.

Of course those hanging below may still cop an eyeful, but bats have turned this into a positive.

Waste tells the story of a neighbor's digestive adventures.

If there's a hint of eucalyptus blossom, that neighbor might be worth following when it's time to forage.

They'll fly up to 60 miles to find pollen and nectar.

Like bees, they give back to their food source.

Pollen sticks to their fur and gets spread across the landscape.

A well-fed bat leads the group in flight.

♪♪ ♪♪ Before leaving, they need to rehydrate.

They do this by dipping their bellies... ♪♪ ...and licking the wet fur.

♪♪ It's a move fraught with risk.

The crocs are waiting.

♪♪ Every day there's a winner... ♪♪ ...and there's dinner.

♪♪ Despite being top of the food chain, things are changing in the kingdom of the croc.

There's a new threat that might just topple their reign.

♪♪ ♪♪ The cane toad.

This terminator toad has expanded across the country since arriving from South America in the 1930s.

From the Queensland coast in the east, they have advanced across the continent and have now reached the Kimberly in the west... ♪♪ ...poisoning native reptiles and mammals with their toxic skin.

Kununurra is full of toads.

Now they're heading southwest, in a race with scientists to some of the world's most pristine ecosystems.

[ Birds chirping ] [ Indistinct conversation ] -We'll all drag a net from this end.

-Cane toads haven't yet reached the oasis of Windjana Gorge.

-Yep.

We goo?

[ Indistinct conversation ] -Let's put the net right across here.

-Scientists and volunteers descend.

[ Birds chirping ] They're going to trawl the water hole, attempting to catch and record life here in advance of the cane toad invasion.

To achieve this, they have to do the unthinkable -- wading into croc-infested waters.

-If you see a croc coming at you, just stay still.

-The problem is with the net, you kind of got to stick your feet into the base of the net.

It's a bit tricky to try and wander along and not step on a tail or a foot somewhere.

-Tracy Solomon... -Y'all are going to head around this way.

-...is coordinating this survey of isolated freshwater crocodiles.

-There's a croc.

-You can feel them starting to thrash around.

Then it's just the excitement to see if you've got two or four or seven or how many we've got, and then to get them restrained as quickly as possible.

-[ Screams ] -Get it.

Get it up.

[ Indistinct conversations ] -They may not have the gravitas of their saltwater cousins, but a bite from one of these squeakers can puncture deep and take months to heal.

Herpetologist Ruchira Somaweera is trying to keep the capture safe for all species.

One thing they've learned about crocs, they have fine memories.

Crocs caught last year are dodging the net.

[ Animals calling ] It's no wonder the crocs are reluctant volunteers.

Tied like charms to a bracelet, the crocs are kept cool and hydrated while the rest of their brothers and sisters are rounded up.

-Where do you want him?

-By midday, a respectable sample of 60 crocs has been captured.

-We go through the process of making them as comfortable as we possibly can.

Okay.

One, go down.

It takes about probably 2 or 3 hours to actually process all the crocodiles, and bit by bit we'll be releasing them back into the water.

Beautiful color.

-Yeah, he's a nice big one.

-Why do they always wee on me?

-Tracy needs to build a picture of this population at this moment in history.

-We go through and do all the morphological measurements for them, so how long they are, what sex they are, how big their head is.

-42.5.

-We get an idea of their condition and their health.

-That's a big girl.

-We also take a genetic sample.

-This information may soon tell a story of what has been lost.

When the cane toad reaches Windjana Gorge, the freshwater crocodiles will experience a population decline as has happened in other parts of Australia.

-It's not something that we can stop.

It's really just a matter of managing the fauna that they impact on and the areas that they're coming through.

-Let me know when you're ready.

-Yep.

We'll let you know.

-And we've just got to try and manage them as part of the ecosystem almost.

-Not knowing the toad is toxic, freshwater crocs could poison themselves by feasting on the invasive species.

-There's not much water available so all the cane toads come to water pools where all these crocodiles congregate to rehydrate themselves, so the encounter rate would be very high.

♪♪ ♪♪ -But the march of the cane toad has already proven nothing can be assumed.

They have decimated some species, while others have adapted, learning quickly to avoid the toad.

These crocs are vulnerable but hopefully resilient.

♪♪ [ Crocodile groans ] ♪♪ [ Crocodile groans ] [ Crocodile hisses ] -Hang on.

Watch out.

Watch out.

Watch out.

Watch out.

Watch out.

♪♪ -As the murky resource, water offers the only release.

Crocs make swimming tricky.

So if you can't be in it, be on it.

Go fishing.

♪♪ The fish locals love to catch is a barramundi, a delicious creature which lives in freshwater as a juvenile then heads for the sea when it's ready to spawn.

It's a legendary fish, growing up to 130 pounds, a monster in western Australian waters, but at Lake Kununurra, a popular fishing hole, a dam wall has got in the way of this ancient breeding pattern.

The fish can't spawn and the fishing lines are hanging limp.

♪♪ ♪♪ Over 600 miles away in a laboratory, Milton is tearing down the dam wall.

-Let's see how hungry they are today.

Come on, big girl.

Yeah, they're hungry.

-Milton and his colleagues have created an artificial breeding cycle so they can restock Lake Kununurra with the beloved barramundi.

It all starts with these wild-caught females, the backbone of the breeding program.

-There's a few individual fish that are quite tame, let you touch them and play with them like this with the sore lip.

Call him Lip.

-Milton dotes on them like a pen full of puppies.

-Doesn't mind a pet and scratch.

You can push around.

You feed them every day.

You look after them.

You get quite attached to them.

-Today is a big day for Milton and his fish.

It's time to spawn, lab style.

♪♪ -Come on.

In you get.

Get in the crowd.

♪♪ It's about as full as you want the crowd, too, lots of biomass in here.

So now well add the AQUI-S, which is an anesthetic, that'll put them to sleep.

Putting them asleep so that they don't hurt themselves or us when we handle them.

So we'll watch them now and they'll start to get dopey and eventually they'll roll over on their backs.

♪♪ -Milton is looking for egg-filled females, ready to be placed in a saltwater tank with the males.

-Take her over and get her in the sling.

-He isolates a female.

In the wild, when no dam wall existed, she would have swam many miles down stream to the sea.

♪♪ Here, she wakes up, having arrived.

-Do your business, my boy.

They're looking all right.

They recovered well.

-Milton's mama fish have already created several generations of baby barra.

-Okay.

-One large female can lay 32 million eggs in a breeding season.

-See, this one here is a bit larger than the rest.

He's ate one of his brothers.

-It takes constant vigilance to stop them cannibalizing each other.

-We need to separate the larger fish from the small fish, and we do this with method of bar grates.

The larger ones are retained, and the smaller fish will go through the bars into the tank.

♪♪ -Their start in life might bear no resemblance to the wild version.

-Here they come.

Now they go through here.

They're all coming down.

Are you ready?

♪♪ -But these test-tube fingerlings will be indistinguishable from natural born fish except for one thing.

♪♪ They are bathed in a non-toxic luminescent solution which soaks into the skeleton, making these fish forever identifiable as captive bred.

These glow-in-the-dark fish are now ready to do their man-made migration across the Kimberly except for a handful of casualties who get Googled.

-This is Google.

Google is the resident goanna.

[ Birds chirping ] He's quite happy to come into the hatchery and frighten the bejesus out of you every now and again when you look down, there's Google, waiting for a fish.

One more, Google, and that should do you today.

The dinosaur.

See you next lunch time.

Back to work for us.

-In the east Kimberly, Purnululu, or the Bungle Bungles, is the regions most revered national park.

♪♪ ♪♪ Two men are starting their day's work in this spectacular office.

Vincent and Cyril are resident rangers at Purnululu.

♪♪ It's a World Heritage-listed geological wonder, and its rock faces hold ancient stories only the locals know about.

Until recently Vincent and Cyril's people lived traditionally on these lands.

♪♪ -I've been coming here since I was a little kid when our people would show us the sacred sightseeing, showing places of significance in the area.

-Only discovered by the outside world 30 years ago, Purnululu now gets over 20,000 visitors a year.

They're coming to revel in the unique landscape, but often the beaten track, are artworks spanning thousands of years of occupation.

The value of these works is unrecognized.

Protecting an oral and physical history spanning thousands of years is not something these two men can do alone.

-Yeah, in our history, nothing is written down.

It's all oral history, and we've actually started to lose information, so I've been trying to piece together some stories and put that information back together.

-Vincent hopes archaeologist Peter Veth, who is working across the Kimberly, cataloging thousands of art sites, might help to piece together this information.

-This is actually the first time I've been to Purnululu.

I've wanted to go for a very long time.

A bit of a Holy Grail.

And the thing that piqued my interest was an image that was an incredible engraving, and it was an archaic face, and it was of a human, but really more than just a human.

It's, like, some ancestral being, and it was just so different.

It was so powerful and so evocative.

♪♪ Wow.

This is amazing.

I've never seen anything like this.

That's incredible.

-The engravings are over 30 feet above ground level, which has shifted over thousands of years.

-That's a huge face.

I mean, it's really big in life.

You can imagine the whole figure, from the face down to the body, would have been two meters, possibly even more.

What do you think that figure is down at the bottom?

-I don't know.

Too long ago.

[ All chuckle ] -Truly.

-You want to go up closer?

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is an amazing site.

Absolutely blown away.

I mean, if your average visitor came in and didn't know it was old Aboriginal culture, they'd think this must be from Central America or somewhere else, from other peoples.

It's not.

This is Aboriginal art.

It's incredibly early.

Yeah, we've been looking at this kind of early engraving tradition, and we think it is pre last ice age.

Our best estimate is it's around 25,000 to 30,000 years old.

-Purnululu might be World Heritage-listed for its unique geology, but not yet for its art.

This panel is an extraordinary record.

You're stepping back effectively into the Dreamtime.

There's absolutely no question this is of World Heritage significance and should be celebrated as part of the fabric of Purnululu.

[ Birds chirping ] -While the team make records of the work, Vincent continues to amaze Peter with images.

Engravings by his ancestors as recently as the 1930s, interpretations of the strange new world of white settlers.

-I suppose these are number plates of the vehicles with the MWD.

This one looks like 8BE.

There's a seven, back to front seven or a T. You probably have that in a recorder somewhere.

You'd be able to know who registered their car.

-Yeah, absolutely.

-Early pastoral days up here?

-Yeah.

And there's another one here.

Another couple.

-Three.

-Yeah.

And it's interesting because this one is not done completely squared.

When you look inside the truck, they've done curves in the doors.

They probably saw it rolling and moving like this, and so they're actually showing it in motion, and that tells you straight away it's probably the first few years of contact they've actually had seeing cars come through.

-Do you think they put these as wheel tracks or something or maybe that's, like, their version of a road?

-Yeah, totally.

They would have seen tracks on the ground and probably followed them.

That would have been the first vehicle tracks people ever saw.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Contact site.

-Vincent and Cyril reveal a myriad of sites to Peter and his colleagues.

-One here.

His body goes like that.

-In return, the archaeologists offer up their images.

-With a couple of hundred photographs, and we've put that together in this photogrammetry program so that it can make a three-dimensional model.

It helps with conservation.

It shows you where things are, if they've moved through time.

That's very good for monitoring, good for management.

Yeah.

-It's also a window into the past that will help Cyril and Vincent take oral storytelling into the future.

Compared to its baking interior, the Kimberly coast is relatively cool and pulsating with life.

The mud flats of Roebuck Bay are the place to be.

♪♪ ♪♪ When the tide is up, snub finned dolphins play in-shore.

♪♪ Only recognized as a species in 2005, this grinning, melon-headed dolphin catches fish by spitting at them.

Swimming below them, grazing on sea grasses, the cows of the ocean.

These shy, gentle mammals can chomp through 90 pounds of sea grass a day... ♪♪ ♪♪ ...but they all swim here at the whim of the tides.

[ Bird calling ] When the enormous tide recedes, 100 miles of Dugong paddock transforms into intertidal flats wriggling with life.

-Get yourself a crate and sit on a crate and keep perfectly still, and in 5 minutes, you'll be overwhelmed with what's around you.

♪♪ -Some of the Kimberly's splendors are not so obvious or obviously splendid.

♪♪ That's why photographer Peter Strane is taking to Roebuck Bay with a macro lens.

-I want people to be awed by nature, you know?

To see how just fantastic it is.

The feeling it gives you when you see it.

It's far bigger than us, you know?

It's extraordinary.

-Over 350 species of invertebrates have been identified here.

It's likely there many more traveling incognito.

♪♪ -The waving crab.

They do this "come here" kind of movement.

♪♪ One will start doing it, and then another one will do it, and then eventually there will be dozens of them, like a football crowd hysteria.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Peter is not the only invertebrate nut around here.

Admirers fly almost 7,000 miles to experience to the most bio diverse stretch of mud on the planet.

♪♪ These migratory birds, some weighing as little as 1 ounce, have just flown from the Arctic, chasing rich pickings and year-round spring.

Curlers, sandpipers, stints, terns, tattlers, and a multitude of other shorebirds.

[ Birds calling ] To make the distance, their hearts enlarge, gizzards and guts contract.

They arrive exhausted, expending almost half their body weight.

This is the longest single migration of any creature on Earth, and Roebuck Bay is their safe haven.

-20 years of it, and it still fills me with awe.

I mean, they're not big birds, and they fly nonstop.

There's no soaring up into a thermal and gliding.

These birds are going to fly nonstop for that entire journey.

-Chris Hassel follows the bird migration.

After leaving Roebuck Bay, he monitors them at their halfway point in China, and then at their breeding grounds in the Arctic Circle.

With shorebird numbers drastically declining across the world, he wants to know how many are making the distance.

-I spend 2 months each year working in China where I see thousands of the birds from Roebuck Bay, and I see many hundreds that I've personally marked, so that's quite emotional, as well, to know that I've held a bird in my hand, put a ring on it, put the bands on it, measured it, weighed it, released it, sent it off on its way.

Yeah, it's nice.

It really is.

-But catching these tiny, flighty birds for marking takes military planning and heavy artillery.

Tomorrow, Chris and his team will turn this beach into a bird lover's battleground.

-Better get this show on the road.

-Milton's soldiers are also ready to make their move.

-Now it's a big day.

Knew them when they were a button egg.

-His fingerlings are ready to start their peculiar migration.

-Gone through quite a process getting to this stage, a lot of hard work and a lot of plans coming together, so it's pretty exciting to get something up in the lake.

And out into the wild, wild world for them.

-Over four years, Milton and his colleagues are restocking Lake Kununurra with over 550,000 barramundi.

-So it's very rewarding, very rewarding.

It's good to put something back into nature and not just take everything out all the time.

-To get them there, Milton drives over 600 miles.

The biggest threat to the fingerlings is the searing Kimberly heat.

With each passing minute, the day gets hotter.

It's now a race against time for Milton.

He'll have to drive with minimal stops or risk losing months of hard work and a new generation of barra.

♪♪ ♪♪ If the fingerlings do expand into the reaches of Lake Kununurra... within 4 years, some will be over 3 feet long and targeted as a sports fish.

By 5:00 p.m., Milton and his tank so full of potential reach Kununurra.

Indigenous rangers are standing by to help release the road trippers.

-You've got to get them into tonight, so that won't last in those bags.

Have them acclimatize so they can find a nice bit of cover to find under and hopefully stay out of the way of any predators.

♪♪ That way they've got these nice weedy banks and growth along here.

You've got a lot of habitat for them to hide in and also it provides a lot of food source for them, so a lot of bugs and smaller fry and that sort of thing for them to feed on.

Bringing them home.

They're on their way home.

[ Chuckles ] ♪♪ ♪♪ They're looking pretty happy.

We don't want them to go to into shock either because they're going to go into the biggest tank they've ever swam around in.

They've been raised on pellets and they haven't had to find and forage for their own food.

They pick it up surprisingly quickly.

-And then it's time.

-This is a very -- a bit of an emotional moment, really, you know?

All these guys, I've raised their parents.

These guys, I've known since they were an egg.

♪♪ ♪♪ Now we just let them go like that.

Turn the net inside-out.

♪♪ Having healthy stock 1,000 kilometers from where we grew them is pretty rewarding.

-After all his devoted parenting, there's a twist in Milton's story.

Like everyone else in the Kimberly, he's hoping he'll meet his barra again.

-So I love my barra fishing like we all do, and it's just awesome to be putting back in half a million so I think I'm all right.

I can catch a couple more.

[ Birds calling ] -Back on Roebuck Bay, the troops are preparing to blast unsuspecting shorebirds.

-As you can see, it's very prominent on the beach, but they're young birds, so I'm hoping they'll be a little bit stupid.

-A net connected to a cannon is buried on the beach.

When birds are within range, it'll be fired over them.

-I can't go into how many things can go wrong, but we usually catch birds.

When we come out and try, we usually catch them.

-But with volunteer wranglers on the ready, getting birds in range of the net is proving problem number one.

-We're just sending someone out.

We call them a twinkler, and they're going to do -- just do a little move of the birds and see what happens.

I'm confident the birds will stay on this beach, but whether they'll end up in front of the net is another matter.

♪♪ Okay, everybody.

Stay exactly where you are.

Don't move, but we've already -- We did have birds very close to catchable.

Every single bird left the beach at the moment.

-Problem number two -- it's not just the birds on the beach they're watching.

Looming birds of prey can scatter the flocks of shorebirds in a wing flap.

-They're very nervous.

Go away.

Just hold on there.

Let them get used to you.

Let's just see what happens now.

[ Speaks indistinctly over radio ] All right.

Arm the box.

Get ready.

They're flying in.

Three, two... one... fire.

[ Birds squawking ] ♪♪ All right, guys.

Get this edge.

Start lifting the net.

Quick.

We've got to get them out the water.

Pull that net back and stop the birds out the back.

Lift it.

Get the birds out of the wet net.

Lift.

Lift.

Lift.

Lift.

Lift.

-The dramatic capture has netted 170 birds and at least 12 different species.

The birds are unharmed and quickly settled.

-Go get a box.

They're all mixed species.

There's brodies there's curly sands, etc.

You need to sort the species out.

-Each one now must be recorded and marked as quickly as possible.

-Two curly sandpipers.

-Seven of Australia's 37 migratory wader birds are edging towards extinction.

Captures like this play a huge part in understanding why.

-We've banded hundreds of thousands of birds here, so we're able to put it all into a database and work out survival rates of different species, and the nice thing is, once I've put this on and released the bird, I can see that band in the field with my telescope to get any information.

The yellow depicts that it's been done in Northwest Australia.

All right.

Let's do -- Let's [Indistinct] we don't catch many of these birds.

-When these birds migrate, volunteers along the flyway will note their tags.

The flyway passes are the 22 countries between its two poles.

A single bird can navigate the globe every year for 25 seasons, flying as far as the Earth to the moon within its lifetime.

-This bird was born in the Arctic last year.

He's done his 9,000, 10,000 kilometers initial southward migration as a chick, and then next year, in April, this bird will go back to the Arctic breeding grounds.

If you can get your head around this, the energy output of an 800 meter runner in the Rio Olympics, at the peak of their ability, will spend 3 minutes to run 800 meters.

That bird will put out the same energy output for 4 to 5 days while it flies to -- from here to southern China.

-But this is where Chris's beloved birds are floundering.

-Intertidal mud flats in the Yellow Sea are basically being concreted over in vast swathes.

65% of the habitat has been destroyed in the last 50 years, 65% of the habitat.

So they can fly 6,500 thousand kilometers to China no problem, but then when they leave there, that's when we lose them from the population.

-When little birds can't refuel at their Chinese stopover, they never make it back.

The birds just disappear.

-Now it's got this little mark on, we'll cross our fingers and hope that we'll see this bird back here again.

He might run first.

There he goes.

Beautiful.

-Without healthy mud flats along the flyway, these aeronautical miracles will cease to exist.

-I fear at the end of my career, someone will say, "What did you do, Chris?"

And I'll say, "Well, I documented the decline of shorebirds."

And they're going to go, "Well, what did you do about it?"

And I would say, "I couldn't do anything."

-Even faced with difficult odds and seeing so many species decline, Chris has hope these birds will survive.

Every volunteer who joins this project is another soldier in his army, dedicated to the cause of these birds.

And for those birds that make it back to Roebuck Bay, despite the manhandling, they've reached shorebird paradise.

♪♪ ♪♪ So much in the Outback is still a riddle to science.

[ Indistinct conversation ] -It's a very common thing.

-Tracy Solomon is trapping tiny marsupials and reptiles at Windjana Gorge as part of a biodiversity survey.

Working with her is local Bunuba ranger Natalie Davy.

-Got something.

Can you see him at your end.

She's there.

-Oh, yeah.

That's a Kimberly rock monitor.

-That is what you're looking for.

-That's the Holy Grail of reptiles in this area.

That's amazing.

-That's six.

Nigel can get seven.

You want to get eight?

-What Natalie and Tracy find is a carpet of life unique to the region.

-It's a little chestnut mouse.

-Had a good morning this morning.

-Yeah.

There are a lot of more of quite a few different species as well, so that's been really good if we're out and about.

-Out last night having a party.

-Party!

[ Laughter ] [ Birds chirping ] -Secretive creatures which only exist in this corner of the planet... -Got something.

Yeah, one.

-Tracy and Natalie know that what they find today might be gone tomorrow, but the two women are also symbolic of how this unparalleled wilderness might be preserved.

-For me, the biggest reason I do this is for the ecosystem.

It's managing it and protecting it and looking after it.

So we'll start with his feet.

So it's that real mix of the traditional ecological knowledge that we get off the indigenous people and then also the science as well.

I like mixing those two together and just looking after country as best as I can.

[ Birds chirping ] [ Flying foxes chattering ] [ Thunder rumbling ] -After one of the longest dry seasons on record, the clouds burst.

[ Thunder crashes ] ♪♪ [ Man singing in native language ] ♪♪ Today, the bats won't need to risk drinking from the water hole.

Instead, they'll lap the first drops of the wet season from their raincoats.

♪♪ [ Man continues singing in native language ] ♪♪ The land drinks deeply... this precious gift... ...an abiding cycle sustaining life here for millions of years.

♪♪ Its story painted and celebrated across the expanse... [ Man continues singing in native language ] ...translated into song, woven into Dreamtime... [ Man continues singing in native language ] ...the story of sacred land... ♪♪ ...uniquely pristine and so precious to us all.

Perhaps by understanding it, its value, we will all work harder to protect it... in this place we call Outback.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Man continues singing in native language ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -I wonder if we'll find our way out of here.

-Well, you can remember how we got in here.

-I know we didn't come over that range.

-No.

-So we don't go that way.

-We'll just follow our tracks out.

Yeah.

-You've got your sniffer dog anyway.

She'll go home when she gets hungry.

-Yeah.

-We just follow her.

[ Dog panting ] [ Birds chirping ] -This program is available on Blu-ray and DVD.

To order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.

Also available on iTunes.

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