Under contract to Lucas and Roberts, and on behalf of Granada Productions, a team of four specialists from ESS in the UK along with six locals set to work in mid-December last year. The build took place in a tropical rainforest near to the town of Murwillumbah just south of the border between Queensland and New South Wales and was finished by 15 January.
The crew were exposed to snakes, leeches, funnel web spiders and a host of other nasty creatures that never feature in Australian travel brochures. "The first thing that happened when we arrived was a briefing about all the nasty bites you could get and which vegetation to avoid," said Steve Richards, project manager for ESS. "Some of these things could be fatal without treatment," he continued. Fortunately, paramedics were on site during the entire construction period and everyone lived to tell the tale.
Narrow bridges and tight bends all added to the excitement as tons of equipment was transported from base camp through to the actual site - 44 tons of GKN scaffolding was carried manually down hill. "We used the scaffolding to produce a platform with a minibeam roof in the treetops that would become the studio where contestants were removed from the game," said Richards. "Then we built a camera jib platform adjacent to the studio with a technical area beneath it. To give us access we had to build a 30m long ramp to a height of 12m where it joined the studio. We built the entire structure within a 2mm tolerance so the studio camera platform was useable."
No mean feat of construction when the hill where the build took place was so steep that footholds had to be cut into the side of the hill so the ESS scaffolders could work. The ramp was then decked bay-by-bay to enable equipment to be moved more easily than on the forest floor.
"The weather conditions in the main were stifling," said Richards, "and we drank vast quantities of water during the build period."
(Lee Baldock)
