[Wallace Clarke Home Movies: Reel 32]

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 shows a trip made by the ‘Walkabouters’ to the Wyperfeld National Park in northwestern Victoria. Wallace as usual focuses on the landscape, flora and fauna and in doing so, captures the arid beauty of the region. A highlight of the film is the usually hard to find malleefowl (or hen), an endangered bird in Victoria that Wallace films in its dry, inland scrub habitat. The malleefowl is a mound builder which, unlike any other birds in Australia, uses its large strong feet to create enormous mounds of soil in which their eggs are incubated, heated by the sun or rotting leaves.

Originally made on Super 8mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:05:00 titles, ‘A Walkabout Film’, ‘Wyperfeld’, ‘Filmed by WHC’
00:00:33:00 a paddock of grazing sheep
00:00:46:00 a sign for ‘Wyperfeld National Park National Parks Service’ and some wildflowers
00:01:27:00 a malleefowl at work on top of its mound, followed by more wildflowers
00:02:08:00 emus
00:02:28:00 chopping fallen logs
00:02:58:00 a brown beetle
00:03:12:00 walkers on a walking track in the Park
00:03:28:00 a bird in a eucalypt (gumtree)
00:04:01:00 sandy terrain and wildflowers
00:05:34:00 a scary looking banksia plant seed pod close-up followed by more examples of banksia pods
00:06:17:00 the ‘Walkerbouters’ itinerary on a black board, including daily destinations and when to carry lunch
00:06:30:00 views of the landscape around the Park and what is likely to be a variety of blue-tongue lizard
00:08:23:00 the walkers’ campsite and another blackboard itinerary notice
00:09:33:00 the walkers rest on a large, fallen tree log
00:11:05:00 birds flying overhead
00:12:38:00 a particularly wide trunk eucalypt (gumtree) tree in the Park attracts the walkers’ attention
00:13:38:00 sandy dune-like mounds throughout the Park
00:14:18:00 walking under what appears to be old tea tree branches and possibly saltbush among more close-ups of wildflowers