TV That Wasn’t: The Paradise School

In the mid-1960s, Prince Charles spent two terms studying at Geelong Grammar School’s remote campus Timbertop, located in Victoria’s high country.

The setting of the isolated school campus was to be the inspiration for an ambitious 26-part Australian comedy series, The Paradise School, proposed in 1966 as a joint venture between Pacific Films and the American Screen Gems company. The partnership had already had success with the series Adventures Of The Seaspray.

The premise of The Paradise School sees Professor Robin Bird (played by New Zealand actor Fred Betts) make plans to establish a private boarding school for boys. However, his teenage son Dicky (David Morgan, from The Magic Boomerang and The Terrible Ten series) sneakily alters the school’s prospectus to allow girls to enrol at the school.

In the first episode, Birds Of Paradise, the professor is stunned when the first intake of students at his school includes more than 30 girls. Five of the female students — played by Yvonne Matthew, Barbara Frawley, Lene Bloch, Liza Goddard and Mariko McKenzie — form part of the principal cast.

Frawley, who played a Texan girl, was a children’s presenter on ABC radio and was known for appearing on TV commercials. English-born Goddard had previously appeared on ABC plays Point Of Departure, Antigone and Getting On With The Government. Japanese-born McKenzie played Keiko, who strikes up a romance with Dicky. Despite her demure looks, Keiko comes to the rescue to fend off a pair of would-be thugs looking to cause trouble at the school.

Also in the first episode is Chips Rafferty as Inspector Lamington, though the actor’s involvement in any later episodes was subject to availability around a number of overseas film commitments.

The setting for the country school was Overnewton Castle in Keilor, then an outer Melbourne suburb. An unfortunate side effect of the location, unbeknownst to producers beforehand, was that Keilor was in the flight path to nearby Essendon airport, meaning that filming was impacted by aircraft noise.

Despite the enthusiastic press coverage around the proposed series, including pictures provided by the production, it seemed to have been somewhat premature. No television network was reported to have shown any interest in taking up the series and it seemed to have simply disappeared without trace. There is no mention of the series in the National Film and Sound Archive or on the Internet Movie Database.

As for the show’s cast, Liza Goddard went on to star in Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, which gained worldwide exposure. Fred Betts went on to guest star in various series and later scored a leading role in The Box, playing the part of bullish TV station owner Sir Henry Usher. Barbara Frawley also featured as a guest in different TV series productions but became more prolific as a voice artist for animated productions in the 1970s and ’80s.

David Morgan went from acting to a career in business, including several years as CEO of Westpac Banking Corporation.

Chips Rafferty continued to star in movies and TV series up until his death in 1971.

Source: TV Times, 29 June 1966.