Africa's Big Five and Other Wildlife Filmmakers: A Centenary of Wildlife Filming in Kenya

Africa’s Big Five

64 Africa’s Big Five and other Wildlife Filmmakers Africa’sBigFive Des Bartlett: the father of them all In the words of Alan Root, ‘Des was the Original wildlife cameraman – the archetype that so many of us youngsters learned from and tried to emulate’. There can surely be no higher praise. Des Bartlett was born in the Queensland rainforest on 2 April 1927. His father was a teacher, who had one of the largest collections of butterflies in Australia, and was interested in everything. Des grew up to be like him – fascinated by nature. After leaving school, he got a job in a bank which he did not enjoy. A visit to the local library changed his life – he read Osa Johnson’s I Married Adventure and became determined that he too would travel the world with a camera. He bought a camera and read all the books he could find on photography, processing,filmingandediting,andleftthebanktojoinaphotographic business in Melbourne. He worked with Noel Monkman, who had made something of a name for himself as a cameraman. Armand Denis had seen Monkman’s film, and offered him a job which he accepted. Des was to be his assistant, shooting the film Wheels Across Australia. Noel Monkman then had an accident on the barrier reef, gashing his leg badly on the coral, an injury that took a very long time to heal. So it was Des who shot the film for Armand Denis in 1952 which was the start of a very long association that changed forever the content, style and standard of wildlife filmmaking. During the filming of Wheels across Australia, Des needed to buy more film stock. In those days this was obtainable from a chemist’s shop, and he met Pat Edmondson whose wife worked in such a shop near Ayre’s Rock. Pat later introduced Des to his sister, Jen, in Sydney. Africa’s Big Five and other Wildlife Filmmakers 65 The meeting was brief, and Des then went off to New Guinea to film Among the Headhunters. Jen started to excel as a tennis player, playing with Darlene Hard, Mo Connolly and the awesome ‘Muscles’ (Ken Rosewall). A young Fred Stolle was her ball boy. She then moved to London, and played at Wimbledon with the likes of Rod Laver. Her boat trip to London was delayed, and Des flew to Aden to meet her during her five-hour stop there. Armand Denis was delighted with Des’s footage in Australia and New Guinea,andin1954offeredhimasix-monthcontracttofilminAfrica. Des started filming in Kenya and Uganda, which resulted in six halfhour shows that were aired on the BBC. Among the first of these was We Capture a Baby Elephant. The baby in question was the first that David Sheldrick adopted, and his name was Samson. Daphne was at the time married to Bill Woodley,but later married David. She became involved with orphaned elephants, and never looked back. Today she isstillcaringfororphanedelephantsintheNairobiandTsavoNational Parks. Des just kept turning the camera, filming anything and everything that he came across. Monitor lizards and marabous in Uganda, penguins, ostriches and aardvarks in South Africa, the Victoria Falls in Rhodesia, pygmies and okapi in the Congo. Des and Jen met up once more in 1956 and were married in London, when Jen gave up her tennis to travel to Africa with Des. Armand and Michaela were seldom with him in the field, and the programme links were filmed separately. The six-month contract turned into fourteen years, during which time Des shot 105 On Safari programmes (seventy of them in Africa), three colour specials, two black and white specials, and 104 shorts aired in the US under the title Animaland. Their daughter Julie was born in Australia in 1957. An early On Safari in 1956 was called The Egg and the Snake and involved a young schoolboy in Nairobi with a passion for snakes. His name was Alan Root, and together Des and Alan filmed an egg-eating snake swallowing a dove’s egg. Des and Alan became lifelong friends, and Des was best man at Alan’s wedding to Joan Thorpe in 1961. 66 Africa’s Big Five and other Wildlife Filmmakers Des and Jen filmed all over Africa, in Surinam, South America, and in the US. The last film for Armand Denis was shot in Florida in 1965, when Armand’s health was failing, and Des decided to join Survival. While in...