[Wallace Clarke Home Movies: Reel 31]

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 88m film.

This film showcases Wilson’s Promontory in Victoria, in particular the coastlines and islands as the filming is done from on board a motorsail boat. Wallace captures the dramatic rocky formations of the shores of the Promontory as well as fishing off the boat and preparing the catch. The fish is likely to be local favourite, ‘King George Whiting’.

Originally made on Super 8mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:08:00 a woman takes photographs from the deck of a moving ‘motorsail’ boat
00:00:45:00 a mountainous island comes into view followed by views of rocky shorelines and cliffs
00:03:03:00 a boat crosses the water
00:03:18:00 fishing off the back of the moving boat
00:05:35:00 seagulls sitting on the wavy water surface
00:05:51:00 spectacular rocks on the shoreline
00:06:17:00 fish catch in a crate and struggling to remove the fish hook
00:07:10:00 views from the boat looking toward the rocky shoreline
00:08:40:00 lighthouse at South East Point built in 1859
00:10:55:00 waterbirds standing on shoreline rocks
00:11:18:00 gutting and filleting fish on old wooden crates in the stern of the boat
00:11:26:00 a speed boat passes by
00:12:11:00 pier and fishing