[Wallace Clarke Home Movies: Reel 12]

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 very short film is shot entirely at night, capturing the fireworks display at the annual ‘Moomba’ festival held in Melbourne from the early 1950s. It is thought that the word ‘Moomba’ may have been chosen for the event from a local Indigenous language meaning ‘to come together to have fun’.

Promotion of the Moomba festival often included images of Indigenous boomerangs which by the 1950s had become a recognisable Australian symbol. A boomerang is an Indigenous curved throwing stick traditionally made from mulga or wattle trees and used as a tool or hunting weapon.

Originally made on Super 8mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:07:00 neon ‘Moomba’ sign in the shape of an boomerang followed by exploding fireworks
00:01:32:00 a glimpse of the Yarra river in Melbourne, below the fireworks
00:02:31:00 neon lit stick-figure puppets against the night sky