Cartoon/puppet stuffed rabbit & umbrella crow

Question

I've a vague memory of a cartoon, possibly shown on ITV (UK) or RTE (Ireland) circa 1985. The animation/puppetry was quite basic, but it was kind of creepy, even though it was a kids program. It definitely had fantasy and horror elements!

The rabbit had an Australian accent, and could have been a discarded cuddly toy, there was another character a "crow" which was a black wire umbrella, its head was the handle and its wings were the shredded remains of the umbrella fabric.
I think the umbrella was out to get the rabbit.

The rabbit was the main character, I think his name was something like Wollamaloo, and the TV program was named after him.

Any ideas what the rabbits name was?

Answer 1

Another source found the answer. I was out by a decade, and I had misremembered the umbrella crow, but it was called Oscar (where I got the notice Australian name from I don't know).

The above picture is one of my most vivid early memories of TV, Oscar. It was a short ITV programme in the Black Theatre style: puppetry in which the operators were clad head to toe in black velvet, against a backdrop of same. This allowed them greater control of operation than was available with stringed marionettes or traditional “hide behind the table” glove puppetry, giving the performances more precision and grace. There was also something else, though, a strange quality to do with the apparent weightlessness of the characters and the odd luminosity that came from the use of ultra-violet lights. It was this unworldliness that made Oscar so mesmerising. For a few years either side of 1980, Black Theatre was all over kids' TV, working its dreamlike magic via the skilled hands of a variety of practitioners.

_{You can't do that on T.V. anymore, Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain!}

Answer 2

Could this be Woolamaloo?

Join Bonny in the village of Woolamaloo, the home to a large collection of woolly characters who can sing, dance and generally like to have a lot of fun.

You can see episode one here;