South Africa has a coastline of about 3000 km in length and along that length the environment ranges from arid desert in the north west to lush tropical forest in the north east, with all kinds of variations in between.

South Africa is home to the richest plant kingdom in the world on the Cape Peninsular and the most varied grass species in its highland grasslands.

The oldest known human habitations are also to be found within its borders, and many extremely old human sites are found along this fascinating shoreline.

So it is no surprise that a television series has been made following this wonderful coastline from the arid north west to the lush north east. The series, called "Shoreline", was shown in weekly episodes on Monday evenings on the South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC) Channel 2.

The episodes have been totally fascinating, well produced and beautifully photographed.

The format of each hour-long episode is similar: an anchor presenter introduces the episode and then three experts give inputs on various aspects to be found in that area of the shoreline.

In addition other “guest experts” give inputs on particular stories or features of the landscape. These experts usually are linked to the place featured in that episode. One guest presenter is famous South African author and editor Max du Preez who, in some of the episodes, tells stories linked to particular places.

As a further lure to viewers a weekly competition was held which entailed answering a simple question based on the facts shown in that episode with a prize of a complete set of the DVDs of the series.

The anchor presenter was South African actor Peter Butler, who was always accompanied by the mascot of the series, a black and white terrier called Jack. Jack is apparently Peter's own dog, and a fine time they had together!

The history presenter is Nomalanga Mkhize who is a PhD student at the University of Cape Town. She has a Master's degree in history from the University of Rhodes in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape.

Matters biological are presented by Eleanor Yeld, a marine biologist researching shark parasites through the University of Cape Town.

Archaeological aspects are dealt with by Gavin Whitelaw, archaeologist at the Natal Museum where he is currently researching the Nguni-speaking people of South Africa.

The director of the series was Sanet Olivier and the scriptwriter well-known South African writer Tom Eaton, who wrote a lively and interesting script. Music for the series was specially composed by Grant McLachlan.

The first episode, broadcast on 13 July 2009 on SABC 2 was an overview of the whole series with introductions to the four presenters. Included in this episode was a segment on DNA and what it can tell of the ancestry of South Africans. Peter Butler interviewed geneticist Dr Himla Soodyall of the University of the Witwatersrand's Genomic Diversity and Disease Research Unit. DNA samples from all four presenters were tested and Dr Soodyall gave synopses of the ancestry of each of them. It was truly fascinating stuff.

The next episode began the journey around South Africa from the mouth of the Orange River, the border between South Africa and Namibia, which was known in the earliest times as the !Gariep. This great river flows from the foothills of the Drakensberg and Maluti Mountains far to the east until it spills its sediment-laden waters into the icy Atlantic, bringing with the sand the fabled “shining stones” which washed up on the shore where, in August 1925 one Jack Carstens found a perfect blue-white half carat diamond, starting one of the most feverish diamond rushes in South African history. Unfortunately for Carstens, he lost everything to unscrupulous people, and died in poverty, leaving the fortunes to be made by others.

The series captured stories like this in all the locations where filming was done, giving the series a wonderful human flavour to complement the factual content of the sea creatures, the history and pre-history of the coast.

The story of South Africa's shoreline is one of biological diversity on both land and under water, as well as of human diversity, of human triumph and human tragedy, of shipwrecks and industry. This complex tapestry was captured on film by director of photography Christopher Lotz. The camera one moment was showing vast vistas over ocean and across the landscape, and the next was zooming, in dramatic close-up, onto a little crab darting out of its hole to grab a fallen leaf and drag the leaf back into its hole.

Some of the most fascinating scenes in the series had to do with two very ancient creatures of the sea – the coelacanth and the leatherback turtle. Indeed the most moving scene was of the mother leatherback, a creature which existed before the age of the dinosaurs, heaving her 500 kilogram body up the sands of Sodwana Bay to lay her 100 or so eggs in a hole which she painstakingly dug out of the sand, and then covered again when the laying was done. There was something quite awesome about these night shots, which I found very moving. The crew apparently also found that scene moving and it seems to have stuck in their memories, according to the final episode of the series, which was a behind-the-scenes making-of episode.

The series took a year and a half to complete, from start to finish. Six months of that was in the preparation and research needed to make the project work.

The team spent 210 days filming, and 70 hours in a Euro-Squirrel helicopter filming with a Cineflex heli-gimbel high density camera, the same camera that was used to film the Planet Earth series.

The team travelled 40000 kilometres on land, in four-wheel drive vehicles and a micro-bus.

In all the series is a great document about a South Africa that few people are privileged to see in that way. Many South Africans have knowledge about and have experienced specific locations on the shoreline, but not many have seen the dramatic sweep of it, the incredible variety, the rugged beauty of the mountainous coast and the gentler scenery of the east coast.

It was a series with great historical significance also, as some of the scenes recorded are of fragile and threatened places or animals, like the tiny seahorse of the Knysna Lagoon, whose habitat is threatened by development.

It has been a wonderful, enlightening experience to see this series. Now I hope that I win one of those sets of DVDs!