| The Coral Island | |
|---|---|
| Genre | adventure |
| Written by | James Andrew Hall |
| Directed by | Chris Thomson Ray Brown Ray Alchin |
| Starring | Nicholas Bond-Owen Gerard Kennedy |
| Composer | Bruce Smeaton |
| Country of origin | Australia United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of episodes | 4 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 40 mins |
| Original release | |
| Network | ABC |
| Release | 1983 |
The Coral Island is a children's television series, adapted from the 19th-century novel The Coral Island by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. [1] The series of 4 episodes was a joint production of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Thames Television. [2] It was filmed on location in the western Samoan village of Salamumu and then on the Whitsunday Islands off the Queensland coast in 1981. [3] [4]
The series was first broadcast in Australia on ABC-TV on 6 January 1983. [5]
The story, set in 1840, centers on 3 boys from Australia and their struggle for survival when they are shipwrecked on a remote Pacific island. Jack (played by Scott McGregor), Peterkin (played by Nicholas Bond-Owen) and Ralph (played by Richard Gibson) must learn to survive on their own on the island, despite their very different characters and backgrounds. After befriending two natives on the island, they are rescued by an English missionary, and the three boys return to Australia. [5]
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The Gorilla Hunters: A Tale of the Wilds of Africa (1861) is a boys' adventure novel by Scottish author R. M. Ballantyne. A sequel to his hugely successful 1858 novel The Coral Island and set in "darkest Africa", its main characters are the earlier novel's three boys: Ralph, Peterkin and Jack. The book's themes are similar to those of The Coral Island, in which the boys testify to the positive influence of missionary work among the natives. Central in the novel is the hunt for gorillas, an animal until recently unknown to the Western world, which came to play an important role in contemporary debates on evolution and the relation between white Westerners and Africans.