Billie and the Outback Dinosaurs

Billie is smart kid who lives in Fossil Flat, a tiny outback town somewhere between the Middle of Nowhere and the Back of Beyond. She likes science and history and tinkering with old bits of junk to invent new things in the ramshackle shed out the back of the town’s only Service Station where she lives with her dad.

At school, Billie is a bit of a loner. She’s got red hair and glasses and knows more than most of the other kids put together (and even, sometimes, more than her teacher, Mr Longbeen) so the other kids tease her. Her nemesis is Rodney Codswallop and his little gang of Oddbods – Lippy, Knuckles and Short Shaz. To avoid them at recess and lunchtime, Billie has invented the game of Soccer Rock, a lonely little game for one player that involves kicking a rock around the playground until the bell goes. One day, when it all gets too much, she runs away, across the highway, through the petrified forest and into the gorge where she comes across the Wet Wall Waterfall. Billie slips through the waterfall and finds herself in a secret valley where, to her utter amazement, is full of dinosaurs who have somehow survived extinction in this lost paradise.

Now, most kids can tell a T-Rex from a Triceratops, or a Stegosaurus from a Velociraptor but not many kids know that Australia has its very own dinosaurs – Muttaburrasaurus, Koolasuchas, Timimus, Mythunga Camera, Rhoetosaurus and the scariest if all, Australovenator. Yet here they were right in front of Billie’s face. For a while, Billie is scared… but pretty soon she realises that these lost creatures are not going to eat her or tear her to bits, and before long, she’s made friends with them all… even the Australovenator. It seems like she’s finally found a place where she can be happy, where she can be herself… until Rodney and the Oddbods follow her into the secret valley. Suddenly the dinosaurs, Billie’s happiness and the town of Fossil Flat itself are all at risk…

Billie and the Outback Dinosaurs uses text, music, physical transformation and visual images to tell a story about self-belief, independence and resilience in the face of bullying. Billie and the Outback Dinosaurs is an original story set to original music, in the tradition of Peter and the Wolf. It is simple, storytelling theatre that follows a rule of thumb, that as many of its theatrical devices as possible should be able to be replicated by the audience in their own spaces. There are no rubber suites or elaborate sets and costumes – one actor plays all four Oddbods and six dinosaurs using nothing more than body shape, movement and voice.