This document is part of the Ocean Girl Archive — Last update: 2009-02-19 — sourcemeta

Source:1
Author: Patrik Rölander, Anders Gunderson
Published:2001-09-08
Archived:2008-04-13

The story of Ocean Girl

Starring

Neri

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Neri is the ocean girl who comes from another planet (the planet of the oceans). She is a mysterious young girl. She can swim very fast and deep without breathing apparatus. She thinks only good about living beings. She’s living on a lonely island in the tropical part of the world outside Australia.

A matted mane of sun-bleached hair framed a broad forehead, straight nose, and full mouth… The girl was tall and slender but there was a sense of hidden strength in her lithe, bronzed limbs. She wore a simple dress made of some strange, rough fabric the like Brett had never seen. The hem had rotted away in places leaving a tangle of threads halfway up her thigh.

Ocean Girl is about the story of one mysterious girl Neri who lives in a small island and has an extraordinary ability to communicate with a humpback whale named Charley and turned out that came from an other planet. It’s about her adventure in finding her sister and trying to protect the ocean as her deceased father’s will, with people who live in the underwater institution called ORCA (Ocean Research Center Australia). There also an other institution called UBRI that attempts to capture Neri, her sister Mera and their whale friend Charley to abuse their ability.

(Mera come forward first in the 2nd season in TV-series and does not appear in the book).

Jason

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Jason is one of two sons of the scientist Dianne Bates. He becomes one of the best friends of Neri. He’s in the younger teenages and helps his mother in her job when he’s not studying or visiting Neri at her island or in the ocean.

Brett

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The other of the two sons of Dianne Bates. He is one of the best friends of Neri. He is Jason’s little brother. He’s some years younger than Jason. Together with Jason he helps his mother in her job when he’s not studying or wisiting Neri at her island or in the ocean.

Dianne

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She is a scientist and also Jason and Bretts mother. She works in the underwater city ORCA, trying to find out how to communicate with whales. The mission is to make a dictionary of the whale’s language.

Winston

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Winston is Dianne’s scientist-assistant.

Charley

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A humpback whale, and Neri’s dearest friend. Neri and Charley communicate thelephaticly.

Recommendations

The book is fantastic and I warmly recommend people to read about the adventures with Neri and her friends. The book is full of painting descriptions. It is not hard to feel, and see in front of your eyes what is happening while reading the text page after page.

The message

The writer tells a story about true friendship and that we shall take care about what we have and not destroy the nature and risk the friendship among people for our own winning sake in the hunting for money and power.

Ocean Girl TV-series

“Ocean Girl” is also a filmed TV-series, produced in Australia and broadcasted in many countries. Ocean Girl is a production of Jonathan M. Shiff Productions, one of the major producers of high quality family programming in Australia, whose impressive catalogue of drama and documentary series has been distributed into more than 70 territories worldwide entertaining an audience in excess of 100 million children.

When I have read the book, and seen the TV-series, I have noticed that they are two different versions of the story. I want to make a special point in that observation.

The story

Neri is living alone on a desert island. Dianne Bates have got a scientist work at the ORCA-institute. ORCA is an underwater city in the Pacific Ocean. One day Dianne and Winston, the scientist-assistant, go out on a boat together with Jason and Brett. Jason has been given the order to shoot a tag for their research, into the skin of a whale. Just when Jason is going to pull the trigger, a girl shows up just in front of him and in the shootingsector to the whale and beg him to cancel the shot. Jason gets paralyzed and can’t shoot. Dianne bans him for not doing what he was supposed to do. He tries to explain what happened, but none believes him. Some days later Brett, his little brother runs into an accident by falling into a boat and faint. When he wakes up, he’s helpless. The boat is drifting to Neri’s Island. Brett is eating bad berries and becomes sick. Neri finds and saves him.

Now the two brothers have met Neri, the ocean girl. Neri takes her friends out on magical adventures.

By time, Dianne find out about Neri and persuade her to let Dianne and Winston study her in the project of the dictionary of whales. The tests of Neri become many. Finally Jason success to get Dianne to understand that what Neri love about ORCA is “family”. Time goes and gets invited to a party in the under water city. Dianne make a deal with Neri, if she agree to a specimen Dianne will help her getting dressed up. The party begins, and the crowd dances at a provisional disco. While they are having a good time at the party, Dr Hellegren at the UBRI institute are catching Charley, by playing a CD with Neri’s voice, into a trap. When he is cached, he desperately calls for Neri. When the emergency call reach Neri, a chaos brake lose

The book have many painting descriptions:

They made their way inland, Neri leading the way. Each turn of the track revealed new sights. Dripping clusters of bright tropical flowers. Little marsupials who sat up on their legs like tiny kangaroos and watched them pass. Huge emerald green frogs with golden eyes.

And have also many funny points as for example when Brett shall explain what a TV are:

“What is television I hear you talk about?” she was asking Brett today as they sat around the fire, munching the last yams raked from the embers. “Television?” Brett answered, his mouth still full. “Well, it’s like…a sort of box thing on the wall”. “What do you do with it?” Brett shrugged. “Nothing much. You just look at it.” “Why?” “Well, because there are things on it.” “What things?” “All sorts. You might get a movie” “Mo-vie?” Neri looked perplexed. “Or football maybe” “What’s football?” “It’s a game. A whole lot of guys run around passing a ball to one another.” “Why” “I dunno. That’s just the way it is.” “But how do they all get in the box?” Jason could see Brett was starting to get exasperated. “They’re not in the box,” Brett tried to explain slowly. “It’s just a picture of them. It’s all done with electricity.” “What is elec-tricity?” Neri leaned forward eagerly. “it’s not important, Neri” Jason broke in. “You don’t need any of this stuff here.”