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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
Entertainment
Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Magic Beach: how the beloved picture book became a spell-binding animation

An animated still showing a boy with brown hair and a big straw hat looking down into a rock pool, and reaching in with his hand, his fingers just submerged
‘It casts a spell over you down there’ … Magic Beach’s live-action scenes were shot at the beach that inspired Alison Lester’s book. Illustration: Madman Entertainment

Two and a half hours south-east of Melbourne, in Walkerville South, lies one of Australia’s most beloved beaches. For the last 35 years it has enchanted children as the setting of Alison Lester’s bestselling picture book, Magic Beach – so, when it came to a film adaptation, an on-location shoot was a no-brainer.

“It casts a spell over you down there,” says the film’s director, Robert Connolly. While he was filming a scene, he recalls, one of the producer, Kate Laurie, “tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘that way’. We spun the camera around … and a pod of dolphins passed.”

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