Beautiful Ballarat

Australia, c. 1940s-1950s

Film

John Robert (Jack) Anderson (1924–1993) was a film distributor, cinema owner and photographer as well as an enthusiastic filmmaker in and around Ballarat in Victoria. Jack developed an interest in film very early at cinema shows and gained his first film experience while serving in WWII, photographing wartime conditions and aircraft involved in the defence of Australia’s north, including the aftermath of the Darwin bombing raid.

It was whilst working in photographic studios that Jack met his future wife, business partner and fellow film enthusiast Marie Bourke. Starting out by hiring films and showing them around regional Victoria, Jack and Marie established cinemas such as the Astor Cinema in Ararat, Bell Post Hill Drive-In in Geelong and the Southern and Northern Drive-Ins and Vegas 70 Cinema in Ballarat. In the 1970s, the Anderson family acquired and restored the Regent Theatre in Ballarat which would then become the first multiplex in regional Victoria.

Along the way, Jack filmed his family and friends activities and outings, horse racing, Ballarat street scenes, motorcycle scrambling and travel scenes on the road – an unusual and wonderful look at life in regional Victoria during the 1940s to the 1960s.

The collection is filmed on 16mm and 9.5mm film and the films can sometimes be a bit damaged and shaky.

This film presents scenes from in and around central and suburban Ballarat in the 1940s to 1950s.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:05:00 title card “Beautiful Ballarat”
00:00:29:00 1950s tramcar passing old Ballarat post office on Sturt Street, Ballarat
00:00:58:00 FJ holden Radio Cabs lined up
00:09:13:00 snowfall 1940s Ballarat town centre and surrounds
00:11:03:00 odd looking snowman
00:11:14:00 snowball fight between grown men with some funny ham acting
00:11:26:00 nice shot of RADIO CABS neon sign lit up at night
00:11:30:00 lights on buildings celebrating the municipality of Ballarat 1855–1955 “100”

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Collection

In ACMI's collection

Credits

creator

Jack Anderson

Duration

00:15:41:00

Production places
Australia
Production dates
c. 1940s-1950s

Appears in

Group of items

[John Anderson Home Movie Collection]

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Cite this work on Wikipedia

If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/114455--beautiful-ballarat/ |title=Beautiful Ballarat |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=18 January 2025 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}