[Charles Hayes Home Movies: Reel 6]

The Charles Hayes Home Movie Collection is a collection of home movies originally made on 8mm and 9.5mm film between the 1940s and 1970s by Charles Edward Hayes (1914–1993). The resulting footage shows us the life of a family living in Heathmont in Melbourne’s south east with their many pets and farm animals, their family holidays and gatherings, their suburb and their cars as well as scenes from Melbourne at the time.

A short film which features the early stages of construction of the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne made more dramatic by being filmed from overhead, through a window of an airplane.

We see a Trans Australia Airlines (TAA) airplane in the film, one of Australia’s domestic airlines between its inception in 1946 and its merger with Qantas in September 1992.

There are also scenes of life at home in Heathmont in Melbourne’s southeast, including family members modelling dresses, menswear and tennis gear for the camera.

Originally made using Standard 8mm film. Note that the film goes unexpectedly dark for several seconds at 00:2:12:00.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:02:00 landing gear of a plane filmed through a window during takeoff
00:00:13:00 landing gear retracting as plane rises into the air
00:00:28:00 residential areas in Melbourne (likely to be Essendon) filmed from overhead
00:00:35:00 views of each end of the Westgate Bridge during construction
00:01:17:00 a container ship in Port Phillip Bay
00:01:40:00 plane landing gear being lowered
00:01:54:00 passengers alighting from a TAA airplane on the tarmac (likely a Lockheed Electra Mk2 Aircraft)
00:02:44:00 women of the family modelling dresses walking toward the camera
00:03:25:00 showing the pets in the garden
00:04:23:00 the camera pans out over the residential fringe, capturing a view of the Dandenong Ranges in the distance
00:05:24:00 a view of the front of the Heathmont family home
00:05:31:00 women of the family modelling bathing suits of the day walking from and toward the camera
00:05:56:00 a classic car model from the 1940s