[Wallace Clarke Home Movies: Reel 27]

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.

In this film the ‘Walkabouters’ go to Werribee Gorge State Park in Victoria for one of their walks. On this visit, they see spiders, flowers and fungi, look for rock samples and do some fence making and tree planting.

A particular point of interest is an early Coolabah brand wine cask. Established in 1962, Orlando Coolabah was one of the first commercially successful cask wine brands in Australia and very popular in the 1970s. The wine cask itself was invented and perfected in Australia, initially by Angoves Wines in South Australia.

This film also shows some mushrooms and the practice of ‘mushrooming’ in grassy farm paddocks, equipped with buckets and knives.

Originally made on Super 8mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:34:00 close-up of a moth on a leaf
00:00:38:00 large mushrooms in a grassy paddock
00:00:46:00 a woman slicing the mushrooms from the ground and collecting in a bucket
00:01:07:00 a largish spider runs up a canvas tent wall and the underside of a mushroom
00:01:22:00 peeling a large mushroom
00:01:52:00 a Coolabah brand wine cask and a poodle dog, mushrooms cooked on a camp stove
00:02:10:00 climbing over a stile in a fence
00:02:53:00 hikers climbing and helping each other over a rocky part of the trail
00:03:07:00 close-up of a spider in its web
00:04:07:00 descending a steep rock face
00:05:49:00 a iridescent blue and green beetle, tree lichen and a brown spider in its web
00:06:09:00 perfect light brown mushroom soon followed by another species of mushroom
00:06:54:00 several spiders on their webs
00:07:42:00 a variety of leather mushrooms
00:08:30:00 likely Ambicodamus crinitus spider
00:09:13:00 sign ‘Werribee Gorge’
00:09:30:00 hikers group sitting on the edge of a rocky cliff looking at the view, including a woman with binoculars
00:11:18:00 koala in close-up and and then climbing a tree
00:11:40:00 soaring Australian wedge-tailed eagle
00:12:07:00 group of (likely) bombadier beetles in green leaves
00:12:52:00 crossing the creek rock by rock
00:13:05:00 a small brown frog (likely litoria paraewingi)
00:13:12:00 hikers take a break - cameras, snacks and beer
00:15:02:00 overlooking tents at the camping site
00:15:17:00 wading the creek and a hiker rests with his dog on a hillside
00:15:55:00 leaf impressions on the rocks
00:16:36:00 1970s style cars - station wagons and camping van
00:16:55:00 two men using a manual post hole digger followed by scenes of fence making
00:17:29:00 planting new trees