[KenRa Films Present: the Kenneth Rankine Home Movie Collection: Reel 23]

Kenneth Carruthers Rankine (1890 - 1968) was a keen amateur cinematographer and filmmaker. This collection of his home movies has been donated to ACMI by Kenneth’s granddaughter. The collection represents a wonderful slice of life in Australia; with contents including scenes of everyday life, major family occasions, holidays around Victoria and views of Melbourne.

This film shows the Australian ‘outback’, focussing on Alice Springs. The start of the reel has shots of roads, erosion alongside the roads, surrounding countryside and distant views as well as Kenneth’s car on the road - an image he often used to indicate the film will capture a roadtrip.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:00:00 starts with a title card ‘Hello Alice’.

00:31:00:00 Map of Australia honing in on Alice Springs.

00:46:00:00 sign ‘Pichi Richi Pass - Caution - Creeks and Corners’.

00:1:09:0000:01:47:00 we sight a small steam train.

00:02:10:00 a rail bridge.

00:02:38:00 travellers arrive at the township of Quorn (South Australia)

00:03:01:00 the Quorn train station; long transport steam trains. sign for the township of Marree.

00:04:15:00 footage includes looking at the wheels and tracks, passengers awaiting trains, local Indigenous people, scenes of the outback taken from the train.

00:06:10:00 the traintrip reaches the township of Beresford and then the William Creek Hotel at 00:06:40:00 where we see passengers having fetched bottles of beer from the hotel sprinting back to the train.

00:06:50:00 a glimpse of (probably) brumbies and more scenes of locals and the surrounding countryside from travelling train.

00:09:27:00 we sight traindrivers or workers walking alongside the train, travel by a sheep station and through a very arid landscape.

00:10:20:00 the sign for Alice Springs comes into view. Kenneth starts a tour of the town with some police officers speaking to the camera and footage of families and their cars in one of the streets. Footage includes wandering around the wide dusty roads, people walking and on bicycles and then a look at the buildings - houses, a focus on an older building made (unusually of brick), eucalyptus trees and a flowering garden,

00:11:33:00 we see a sign for the ‘Australian Inland Mission Hostel for bush mothers and children’ on a building that Kenneth gives us several views of including a motorbike outside. This is followed by a view of a new and very modern looking building, surrounded by vegetable or market gardens and out front of which Mrs Rankine chats with acquaintances who point her up to a monument on a hill.

00:12:10:00 is a view from the monument, overlooking the town including views of its oval and what appears to be a prison.

00:13:19:00 view of eucalypts in the surrounding landscape.

00:13:40:00 we see a marker for ‘Flynn’s Grave’ which is a beautiful boulder perched on a stone pedestal.

00:14:04:00 a sign for ‘Standley Chasm’ appears and begins a sequence of dramatic and beautiful scenes of rocky outcrops, foliage and trees. Kenneth films some walkers among the rocks which shows the size and context of the environment.

00:15:31:00 we see two Indigenous horsemen followed by a sign for ‘Hermannsberg’ and some shots of the mission church building, some members of the community and a group of children smiling for the camera. The reel ends with some last looks at the landscape.