[Charles Hayes Home Movies: Reel 7]

The Charles Hayes Home Movie Collection is a collection of home movies originally made on 8mm and 9.5mm film between the 1940s and 1970s by Charles Edward Hayes (1914–1993).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.

This film shows a family holiday along the east coast of Australia, beginning with the suspension bridge and dramatic cascades of water at the Hume Weir on the Victorian and New South Wales (NSW) border.

The family travels on to Timbertown near the town of Wauchope in NSW. Developed as a re-creation of an 1880-1910 working timber settlement, the tourist attraction ‘Timbertown’ was opened in the 1970s with some original buildings and some built to historic plans.

We also see a restored steam train, ‘The Green Hornet’ travel through bushland, a group of working bullocks and a glimpse of whip cracking. It’s then on to the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour, a Sikh Temple in NSW and some bushwalking.

Originally made using Super 8mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:16:00 footbridge over the Hume Weir
00:00:30:00 close-up of the Hume Weir slipway followed by views around the Weir works
00:01:45:00 pelicans on the water
00:02:02:00 ‘Timbertown’ sign and a steam train with a great example of 1970s fashion ‘flares’ being worn in the foreground
00:02:15:00 children looking around ‘Timbertown’
00:02:25:00 a team of bullocks on a dusty road accompanied by a man carrying a large axe, followed by an old fashioned horse and cart
00:02:55:00 a demonstration of manual short plank splitting
00:03:25:00 children enjoy a ride through the trees on a steam train
00:03:50:00 whip cracking exhibition followed by ‘The Green Hornet’ in close up as it steams by
00:04:15:00 close up of the bullock yoke workings followed by a demonstration in a small arena of the bullocks team at work hauling a single large log
00:05:11:00 ‘The Big Banana’ and admirers at Coffs Harbour
00:05:40:00 sign for ‘The Vincent Tree’ after which the camera pans up a very tall tree trunk
00:06:54:00 botannical sign for ‘Yellow Carabeen Sloanea Woollisii’ and views of the tree
00:07:30:00 the family pose in the stocks of an old set of buildings which could be Middle Head Fort on the NSW coast
00:08:29:00 seabirds and various views of coastline and sea
00:09:13:00 the family on the beach
00:09:20:00 sign for the ‘Guru Nanak Sikh Temple’ rests on a brick wall, followed by the Temple
00:09:58:00 dramatic views of a ravinne and waterfall
00:10:30:00 children playing in an ‘Apex Park’ playground