Archival Remnants
Much of the early episodes of Adventure Island appear to no longer exist. However, a search of the National Archives of Australia reveals 1197 listings of audiovisual archival material for the program, most of which appears to be complete episodes stored as black and white film recordings. While there are a large number of duplicate episodes listed, a substantial number of episodes do still exist.
The National Film & Sound Archive database National Film & Sound Archive contains listings for six episodes, preserved on 16mm film and in video copies—one from 1967, one from 1971, and four consecutive episodes (1171–1174) from 1972, which are among the last to have been produced.
The fate of Adventure Island is consistent with that of many other ABC-TV programs from the same period. In the late 1970s ABC-TV management instituted a policy of "recycling" videotape as a cost-cutting measure and this was especially targeted at older programs made in B&W. All departments of ABC-TV were obliged to surrender tapes and as a result a large amount of historically significant videotaped programming from the 1960s and early 1970s was erased.
It should be noted, however, the closure of the former Gore Hill studios in Sydney in 2002-03 uncovered large amounts of uncatalogued film and video footage, including many hours of live performance footage from GTK and material other programs long thought to have been lost, including 'missing' portions of The Aunty Jack Show and it is therefore possible that more material from Adventure Island may have survived.
The material currently presumed lost includes early episodes of Adventure Island, most of the videotaped studio segments from the pioneering current affairs program This Day Tonight, nearly all episodes of the popular serials Bellbird and Certain Women, important drama productions like the miniseries The Norman Lindsay Festival (the first screen adaptations of the novels of Norman Lindsay) and most of the first two years' of production of the popular music programs GTK and Countdown.
The Performing Arts Collection at the Arts Centre, Melbourne, holds a substantial number of costumes, props, photographs and related documents for the production, with the National Film & Sound Archive in Canberra also holding a substantial collection of production documentation and photographs relating to the show.
The Adventure Island storybook, from which Cato and Donovan read each day, is now part of the collection of Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The donor, who was working at the ABC's Rippon Lea studios as a props staffer at the time, rescued the book from a dumpster where it had been discarded in 1988.
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