#mark farnell

Attachment to the old brick building, known affectionately by staff as “Rippers’, stems from its place in the history of television production. The studios, in Gordon Street, Elsternwick, date back to the start of TV in Australia. The ABC started broadcasting in Victoria in 1956, in time for the Melbourne Olympic Games, and the completed studios were officially opened in 1958.

(A flyer promoting the programs and personalities on ABV2 at the time of the official opening of the studios in 1958 - supplied: Andrew Best)

Since then, a host of iconic Australian programs, dramas, and variety shows have been produced at Ripponlea, including the children’s show Adventure Island, sixties soapie Bellbird, period drama Power Without Glory, Countdown, The Gillies Report, The Big Gig, SeaChange, Kath and Kim and, more recently, Mad as Hell and The Weekly.

(Children’s show ‘Adventure Island’ being filmed at Ripponlea in the 1960′s - Photo: ABC archives)

“In the sixties this was called the ‘dream factory’ because it was the beginning of TV and really anything you could dream up was new and exciting and you could create it here. I think latterly I’ve thought of it as Hollywood by the Bay because we’ve had a lot of stars go onto Hollywood and alike,”  says Andrew Best, who has worked alongside many of them, including Hugh Jackman, Eric Bana, Sigrid Thornton and Kerry Armstrong.

(Andrew Best on location with actress Kerry Armstrong during filming of ‘Bed of Roses - Photo: Andrew Best)

“It does really have that feeling that just anything could happen here and so many wonderful shows have come out of here.”

(Filming ‘Countdown’ at Ripponlea - Photo: ABC archives)

The studios were built on land that was originally part of the historic Rippon Lea Estate, a location which has caused some headaches over the years.

“The studios border the back end of the Rippon Lea gardens where there is a large lake and this was essentially swampland,” says Andrew Best.

(Inside Studio 31 where ‘The Weekly’ is currently being produced until moving to the new Southbank studios - Photo: Natasha Johnson) 

“So if we have extreme rain the studios and scenic runway behind them can be deep in water. We’re also next to a railway line and quite often in the fifties and sixties when trains went by they would make the entire lower level of the building shake and the cameras in the studio would be wobbling. It’s been fixed since with thick concrete floors, but in the early days people would say “Oh, I think that’s the 5.09 to Sandringham going by”, it was that rattly.” 

(Belinda Hawkins as a young news reporter - Photo: Belinda Hawkins)

Belinda Hawkins started at Ripponlea in 1985 as a 28 year old News cadet, having abandoned a teaching career to chase her dream of being a journalist.

“The first day I walked in here and got my ABC lanyard I thought I’m off on a magic carpet ride, I can go anywhere and talk to anyone I want, and I have never stopped feeling that way. I remember the first time I watched the news go to air and I just thought this is the best theatre in town. The newsroom was on the second floor, The 7.30 Report was below us and the studio was on the ground floor and there was a constant stream of people running up and down the stairwell, heading out on a story or a ‘scramble’ as it was called then or rushing scripts into the studio.”

(The stairs leading from the ground floor studio to the old newsroom on level two - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

“Everyone smoked and the newsroom was full of smoke. There was a constant buzz of noise in the newsroom: the clatter, clatter, clatter of typewriters, people shouting across the room, and there was a police scanner going all the time. A two-way radio was used to communicate with crews on the road and we had a Chief of Staff, Roger Delisle, who had been in the navy and he’d bark on the two-way “What is the SITREP on your ETA? Over!” I thought it was hilarious.”

VIDEO: Rewind to see how the news was produced at Ripponlea in 1979

“In those days, (before automated studios), there were lots of people behind the cameras, in the studio and in the control room. The autocue script had to be put together manually - now it’s all computerised - and there were all these people frantically sticking sheets of paper together.  There was just this enormous theatre involved in getting the news to air.”

(Cameraman Mark Farnell has worked at Ripponlea for 33 years - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

Cameraman Mark Farnell has been based here for 33 years and worked on a wide range of news, current affairs, arts and education programs. Starting in 1983, he was one of the last employees to be put through a three year traineeship program, learning all aspects of television production.

(Mark Farnell - second row, far right - with his fellow trainees in 1983 - Photo: ABC archives)

“It was an exciting, vibrant place to work,” Mark recalls. “There was a sense of being amongst the ‘bright lights’ and you’d pass people like Molly Meldrum and Max Gillies in the corridor.”

“There was lots of money going into TV production and, because it was then very labour intensive, there were lots of people working here and it was a 24/7 operation. A lighting crew would work overnight getting studios ready and there’d be a big technical crew on deck from 5am to ‘line up’ (calibrate) all the studio cameras.”

(In the control room during production of Countdown - Photo: ABC archives)

“It was less ‘serious’ then and there was lots of fun and games behind the scenes. I remember working in telecine one day and I’d laced up the machine with a film reel ready to go to air in the news and, without me realising, one of my colleagues flicked the switch to reverse so when the director hit roll it went backwards. No one got that upset about it. It was accepted that things went wrong and that people made mistakes. My trainer, Billy Wright, told us “If you make a mistake don’t worry about it, it’s only TV, not brain surgery!”

(Mark Farnell shooting a story in the early years of his career - Photo: Belinda Hawkins)

Mark Farnell first learnt to shoot on film and recalls how the medium required efficient and economical shooting.

“You couldn’t over shoot because the film had to be processed and it was expensive. You would very rarely run through a 400 foot roll, which was about 8 minutes. You had to get the footage back to the lab by 4pm to make the 7pm news.  You wouldn’t go to a press conference and just roll endlessly on an interview. The journalist’s job was to ‘rehearse’ with the talent off camera so you could record  the right answer straight up. It was liberating when we moved to video, and later digital cameras, because we could shoot a lot more material. There’s a lot less discipline in what we shoot now because we can accumulate huge amounts of material, but it’s opened up that ‘fly on the wall’ ability to capture the perfect moment that was hard to capture on film.”

(Set buyer/dresser Andrew Best in the wardrobe department - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

Andrew Best started in dispatch in 1981, moved into staging and then became a buyer/dresser in the Art Department. His job is to realise the visions of designers and producers and make the sets ‘look real’. There’ve been some challenging moments along the way.

“I remember one designer insisted he didn’t want to see anything red on set, no red!  I once got 10 different samples of a brown carpet and the designer still wanted a shade of brown between two samples that already looked pretty much alike. When I was working on Countdown and Cindi Lauper was performing ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, her manager kept screaming “I want more trash cans, we need more trash cans” for her set. It can be a frantic job, but it’s intensely rewarding.”

(Cindi Lauper on the Countdown set with host Molly Meldrum - Photo: ABC archives)

When dressing a set, first stop is always the ABC props stores, which Andrew Best fondly describes as looking like “the world’s biggest op shop”. And he’s not wrong.

“Some people think of it as the city tip, but to me it’s heaven on earth, you can find amazing things in here.”

(The props department, which Andrew Best describes as looking like “the world’s biggest op shop” - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

He insists there is a system to it, but to the untrained eye there seems to be just row after row, shelf after shelf of piles of junk: various styles of suitcases, telephones, crockery, furniture, paintings, toys, medical equipment, bathroom toiletries, a dozen different types of sticky tape dispensers and jars of lollies, well past their use by date.

(”Never throw anything out” says Andrew Best, even stale lollies - Photo: Andrew Best)

“The thing about a props store is that you always reuse everything, you never throw anything out, even when the mice have made a home in it, because you never know when the script is going to say ‘cereal box with mouse droppings in the bottom of it’!”

(An old pram amongst a props storeroom of furniture from different eras - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

Many of the props have been created by the ABC Art Department and among Andrew Best’s favourite items are rubber replicas of old Melbourne street lamps that were first used in Power Without Glory in the 1970s, hollow wooden blocks of books used to fill the shelves of numerous legal dramas (cheaper than real books) and a mauled wombat head, which was made for an episode of Bed of Roses, starring Kerry Armstrong.

(Andrew Best with one of his favorite props, a very realistic mauled wombat made for an episode of ‘Bed of Roses’ - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

“One of the story lines was that there was a panther on the loose around the country town where the show was set and one of the scenarios had a little girl coming across a wombat that had been eaten. This beautifully made prop cost about $1500 and two weeks to make and it is incredibly realistic.”

(Andrew Best with the wombat head on location during filming of the ‘Bed of Roses’ episode - Photo: Andrew Best)

As well as a vast props collection, the ABC has an enormous range of costumes, stored in several rooms at the Gordon Street site and the neighbouring Selwyn Street offices, where staff are also relocating. The collection, stretching back 60 years, includes many outfits handmade by the ABC wardrobe department and pieces are often hired out for external productions.  

(A couple of gowns from the wardrobe store, which has thousands of costumes dating back to the start of television - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

“In the early days, we didn’t have a huge supply of clothing so a lot of the actors and performers would be asked to bring in their own clothing, cleaned, pressed and ready to wear. And sometimes they were even asked to bring in their own furniture as props!” says Andrew Best.

(The costume collection includes many period costumes made by ABC dressmakers - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

“In the 1970s, the ABC produced a great number of operettas, we had ‘The Saturday Show’ with Louetta Farrar, and we also made a lot of period dramas. So, we had a large workshop of seamstresses making dresses, hats, jackets, coats and gloves, particularly when we were making ‘Power Without Glory’ (set in Melbourne between the 1890′s and 1950′s). They weren’t costumes that you could just go out and buy.

Years ago, I remember going to the workshop where wardrobe used to be (in the nearby suburb of Highett) and it looked rather like Yves Saint Laurent’s Ateliers. There were about 20 women, everyone had white jackets on, with pins in their lapels working on huge old sewing machines. And even recently, with the Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, a lot of the clothes were made here.”

(Among a large hat collection are some donated by local Elsternwick ladies - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

“The ABC has also been lucky that some of the older ladies living in the area have donated a lot of their hats, so we have some period hats that were actually worn in the thirties, forties and fifties by the local Elsternwick ladies.”

(A jacket believed to have been worn by the Mayor in an episode of ‘Adventure Island’ - Photo: Natasha Johnson)

Over the next few months, the wardrobe and props collections will be packed up and moved to new warehouses and all staff will be relocated at the newly refurbished Southbank complex. One of Ripponlea’s final productions will be a party for current and former staff to farewell the ‘dream factory’.

As he prepares to move on, Andrew Best recalls that when he joined the ABC in 1981, a jaded old colleague told him, ‘Mate, you’ve missed the glory years of the ABC but after 36 years, I think I’ve had some pretty glorious times here.”