[Wallace Clarke Home Movies: Reel 23]

Wallace Clarke was an amateur filmmaker who was particularly keen on capturing the Australian landscape from the 1960s to the 1990s. 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 the scenery around the You Yangs and other nature spots in Victoria. Wallace includes lots of close-ups of wildflowers along the way as well as old farm machinery, some lovely old buildings, monuments, rocky outcrops, scrub, trees and sky.

Originally made on Super 8mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:02:35:00 walkers in the scrub
00:03:22:00 a koala peers at the camera
00:03:36:00 remains of a wooden sluice in a creek that may have been an old gold mining site
00:03:50:00 hearing instructions or a talk at a campsite with a fire
00:04:45:00 setting off on a walk through farm lands and gates
00:05:05:00 sheep run across a paddock and a swirling, foaming river spilling across rocks with spectacular waterfalls
00:06:52:00 collecting driftwood by the dramatic river
00:07:18:00 scenes showing the treacherous route for walking the banks of the swollen, fast flowing river
00:09:54:00 jumping from rock to rock over a creek
00:10:18:00 using logs to cross a creek
00:10:27:00 hikers walk up a long grassy hill with some sheep running by, toward a gravel quarry or storage area
00:11:03:00 looking for rock specimens or stones in the gravel
00:11:13:00 some hikers stop for a chat before scrambling over a rocky part of the hills
00:12:15:00 flowers, mushrooms and toadstools
00:13:08:00 a long lizard close-up followed by a centipede
00:14:40:00 a trickling creek before scenes of rushing waters in a small creek
00:15:50:00 country roads
00:16:29:00 filming a photographer taking pictures of wildflowers followed by close-ups of flowers
00:18:16:00 several wild orchids
00:19:15:00 a campfire at night
00:19:44:00 stone monument with a plaque that reads ‘Erected 1951. In memory of the pioneers of Steiglitz and the discovery of gold 1851 - 1853’
00:19:50:00 the the lovely brick Steiglitz Court House among gumtrees, a plain but lovely old house across the road and a farm cottage next to an old chimney that could be all that remains of an earlier house
00:20:33:00 a flock of ducks or geese
00:20:45:00 an old brick fireplace surrounded by the trees and bushes that have overtaken it, followed by several ageing weatherboard buildings
00:21:23:00 sign ‘Walking track to Flinders Peak’ (in the You Yangs, Victoria) followed by views from a higher vantage point in the You Yangs
00:22:19:00 views of jutting rocks and outcrops and some of the farmland beyond the You Yangs
00:23:48:00 plaque for ‘Matthew Flinders RN who stood on this rock to survey the bay’