[Wallace Clarke Home Movies: Reel 7]

Wallace Clarke was an amateur filmmaker during the 1960s to the 1990s. Wallace was particularly keen on capturing both the Australian landscape and the people who enjoyed it. As well as Australian urban settings and some world travels, Wallace’s films focus on the many hiking and camping destinations that he visited.

Often carrying the credit, ‘A Walkabout Film’, Wallace’s movies indicate that he was part of a nature study and walking group called ‘The Walkabouters Club of Victoria Inc’. The ‘Walkabouters’ formed in 1968 as a result of a Council of Adult Education (CAE), Outback Study Tour to Central Australia’. Some of the attendees decided to start the Club in order to continue educative walks particularly around Victoria. The Club encouraged their resident artists and photographers to capture their activities.

The collection of Wallace’s films was donated to ACMI by his widow Gwenda Clarke and is shot on various formats, predominantly Standard 8mm and Super 8mm film.

This film captures a group trip by tourist bus, four wheel drive vehicles and truck around the ‘Gulf Country’. The Gulf Country is the region of woodland and savanna grassland surrounding the Gulf of Carpentaria in north western Queensland and parts of the Northern Territory, Australia.

We see many dirt roads and sandy tracks so that we see both a tourist bus and four wheel drive vehicles being dug out of the sand. As always, Wallace includes close-ups of any flora and fauna that catch
his eye along the way.

Originally made on Super 8mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:03:00 titles ‘A Walkabout Film’, ‘Gulf Country’, ‘A WHC Film’
00:01:15:00 sign for ‘Four Wheel Drive’.
00:01:21:00 a large lorry style truck travelling ahead on dirt road.
00:01:31:00 digging a vehicle out of sand on a track.
00:02:30:00 tourist bus being hauled from the sandy track by a truck.
00:03:42:00 particularly colourful bird in a tree.
00:03:57:00 people in a small boat catching fish.
00:04:55:00 a row of tents for camping lined up along a riverbank.
00:07:45:00 close up of a blackened ‘billy can’ set over a fire and then a wider shot of a group of picnic-goers.
00:08:09:00 a woman in an example of a 1970s style ‘halter-neck’ top.
00:08:32:00 animal footprints in the dust followed by a large snake making progress through the grass
00:09:14:00 large truck and bus with baggage loaded on roof travel down a dusty road
00:09:57:00 cattle in stockyards
00:10:27:00 wetlands and wildflowers
00:11:45:00 swimming in a river
00:11:53:00 a close-up of a spider in the middle of a large web wit the blue of the river in the background
00:12:53:00 title card ‘The End’