[Ted Parsons Home Movies: Reel 9]

Ted Parsons was a keen amateur filmmaker of the 1940s to 1960s. Ted’s films feature life in and around the Victorian regional city of Wangaratta post-war. This was a period of prosperity and optimism largely due to a successful textile industry that took Wangaratta from a small country town to major rural city, declared in 1959.

Ted captures the many sporting and social events, venues and clubs, holidays and travel along with scenes of everyday life. The collection also shows the broader issues faced by country people such as the regular flooding events around the Ovens and King Rivers.

Wangaratta’s success story as a manufacturing town traces the path of post-war migration and the accompanying growth of Australia’s economy, which makes these films particularly interesting.

The Ted Parsons Home Movie Collection has been donated to ACMI by the filmmaker’s grandson Barry Parsons. The films have been made on 16mm film.

This film, titled ‘Water into Power’, features a visit by Parsons and his two friends to the power stations of the Kiewa Hydro-Electric Scheme in the Victorian Alps. The film also shows a visit the Yallourn power station and open cut coal mine. Parsons uses title cards throughout to narrate his film for presentation.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:02:00 title cards read ‘E.J. Parsons Presents’, ‘Water into Power’, followed by footage of water rushing from dam pipes
00:00:16:00 title card ‘On the road to Bright and Mt Beauty’
00:01:30:00 three men sharing a beer beside their car on a country road, one smoking a pipe
00:01:53:00 title card ‘Control gates to Kiewa Hydro-Electric Project’
00:03:06:00 fire danger sign with rating set to ‘High’
00:03:19:00 guard manually raising a boomgate for the car
00:03:31:00 title card ‘No. 4 Power Station’
00:03:53:00 control panels atthe power station
00:05:33:00 the men walking across boulders beside the dam, seen from a high vantage point
00:05:58:00 ‘Diagram of No. 3 Power Station’ followed by views of the exterior and interior of the power station
00:06:51:00 an illustration showing the proposed Pretty Valley Dam
00:07:08:00 title card ‘3rd January 1957’
00:07:13:00 the friends playing with snowballs in a patch of snow, despite the apparently mild weather
00:07:54:00 man feigns throwing a snowball at the camera
00:08:01:00 title card ‘The End’
00:08:23:00 Yallourn power station and coal mine
00:11:37:00 a coal train