[Wallace Clarke Home Movies: Reel 28]

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 captures a ‘Walkabouters’ trip to the Werribee National Park in Victoria. As well as the landscape, wildflowers and insects that Wallace always likes to film, there are scenes of the campsite, pitching tents and preparing food on open fires as well as gas campstoves. A visit to Blackwood Pottery is also included where Wallace shows the mesmerising process of pottery being made by hand at a pottery wheel.

Originally made on Super 8mm film. The film has a soundtrack of music and Wallace’s narration but the quality is not good. The sound drops out early in the film for several seconds and is a little hard to understand at times.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:02:00 titles ‘The Walkabouters’, ‘Werribee Gorge Nov 1972’
00:01:13:00 putting up camping tents
00:01:37:00 taking a break at a picnic table near a campfire, possibly drinking wine from wine flagons
00:01;53:00 cooking sausages on a barbeque iron plate over the open flames, sitting in 1970s style folding chairs
00:02:02:00 an old utility style truck with participants packed in the back as other participants set off walking
00:02:38:00 assisting each other as hikers are traversing a rocky creek and bending under the barbed wire of a farm fence while others hold wire up
00:03:51:00 using cameras and binoculars while listening to a guide or club member talking about the Gorge, followed by precarious crossing over water by using an old fallen tree
00:04:50:00 views around the landscape
00:06:05:00 hikers rest among the trees
00:08:10:00 views around the landscape and from a higher vantage point down to the river and tents
00:09:16:00 getting rock samples
00:09:50:00 views of the Werribee River and the rocky steep banks
00:10:15:00 views along the river, rocky outcrops and trickling waterfalls
00:11:09:00 preparing a meal back at base camp
00:12:12:00 eggs and bacon cooking on the open fire and a view of the tents
00:12:49:00 clambering over a farm gate
00:12:58:00 horses and cows
00:14:12:00 a colourful bug on a leaf
00:15:12:00 soaking tired feet in the creek
00:18:40:00 sign for ‘Blackwood Pottery’ followed by the pottery studio
00:19:15:00 views around the studio and potters at their wheels
00:20:15:00 the pottery kiln
00:21:31:00 an old cement camp fireplace barbeque with billies boiling and meat cooking
00:21:49:00 serving the billy tea at a park picnic table
00:22:08:00 eating the barbequed chops in bread, sleeping under a tree and photographing the scenery
00:23:53:00 close-ups of wildflowers
00:25:17:00 outdoor eating back at the tents
00:25:26:00 canoeing down the river
00:26:09:00 title ‘The End’