[Wallace Clarke Home Movies: Reel 21]

Wallace Clarke was an amateur cinematographer and 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.

After his signature opening title, ‘Round About Alice’, Wallace goes to the desert landscape around Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory, including close-ups of wildflowers and distance shots of ‘Mount Conner’. We see Alice Springs streets and landmarks, and the annual (since 1970) ‘Alice Springs Lions Club Camel Cup’ race. Features the historic Alice Springs Telegraph Station (1872), once also the site of ‘The Bungalow’ school, (1932-1942) for children then identified by government as ‘part aboriginal’. Wallace then films in the dramatic landscape of the ‘McDonnell Ranges’.

Originally made on Super 8mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:02:00 Wallace Clarke titles ‘A Walkabout Film’, ‘Round About Alice’, ‘A W.H.C film’.
00:01:10:00 classic Australian style windmill spinning in wind
00:01:14:00 Mount Conner in distance
00:03:26:00 Street scenes Alice Springs
00:03:47:00 John Flynn Memorial Church, Alice Springs, exterior and interior.
00:04:31:00 extended sequence of camel racing, including scenes of watching crowd, a Scottish pipe band, and particpants in fancy dress
00:07:21:00 night sequence with illumintaed ‘Lions Cup’ sign with outline of a camel in lihghts; fireworks
00:08:02:00 Anzac Hill War Memorial (dedicated 1934) at Alice Springs, followed by aerial views of the town
00:08:32:00 Alice Springs Telegraph Station buildings and surrounds
00:09:15:00 Gravestones in the Alice Springs Telegraph Station Cemetery
00:09:58:00 John Flynn gravesite memorial
00:10:19:00 Roadsign for Simpsons Gap followed by scenes of and in McDonnell Ranges, including camping activities.