Michael Portillo boards Australian trains clutching his 1913 Bradshaw’s Handbook for six hour-long journeys that began airing on BBC Two every Saturday from 26 October 2019. The route list reads like an intercity timetable: the Ghan from Port Augusta to Darwin, the Indian Pacific across the Nullarbor Plain, the Puffing Billy tourist line outside Melbourne, Sydney’s cliff-hanging Scenic Railway, plus commuter hops between Canberra and Melbourne, Kuranda and Townsville, Newcastle and Brisbane.
Each episode pairs heritage infrastructure with contemporary Australian life. Portillo inspects Hyde Park Barracks and the Sydney Opera House before heading west to Broken Hill, visits a kangaroo sanctuary outside Alice Springs, dons whites at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, snorkels the Great Barrier Reef off Townsville, and spends Anzac Day with veterans in Darwin. The 1913 guidebook supplies historical counterpoint: a coal loader at Newcastle, a koala hospital at Port Macquarie, an indigenous cultural centre in the Red Centre.
Boundless produced the six-part run for BBC Two, where it screened in the same early-evening slot that had already carried Portillo’s railway journeys through Britain, continental Europe, the United States, India, Alaska, Canada and Asia. Filming took 60 minutes per week, enough time for the presenter to change from his trademark pastel jackets into high-vis gear to inspect a locomotive cab, then back into linen for sunset shots on a hotel balcony. The series ended on 30 November 2019 and has not been recommissioned.
Production Details
BBC Two / 1 Season / 6 Episodes / 2019
Showrunner(s): John Comerford
Music: Jon Wygens
Main Cast
Michael Portillo as Self - Presenter
