[John Anderson Home Movies: Reel 4]

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.

This film captures Jack’s family and friends enjoying their scrambler motor bikes in muddy conditions at Korweinguboora, near Ballarat, Victoria. There are also visits to Geelong Racecourse and to Melbourne for some rowing races.

This film was originally made using 9.5mm film.

Selected highlights list:
00:00:07:00 a member of Jack’s circle on a motorbike
00:00:25:00 a group likely to be members of the Radio Cabs cooperative that Jack and Marie established in Ballarat
00:00:28:00 translucent title across the screen, ‘Ballarat Harley Club Mud Scrambles at Korweinguboora…’
00:00:39:00 riding the muddy track with sidecars
00:01:00:00 scrambling motorcycle riders
00:01:17:00 a fall in the mud for a motorcyclist
00:01:25:00 two stylishly dressed women pose for the camera
00:01:48:00 horses racing at Geelong Racecourse followed by the camera panning out over the Racecourse attendees from a higher vantage point
00:02:31:00 two men cycling through a quiet town street
00:03:01:00 two women and a man posing for the camera in front of the Eureka Stockade Memorial in what appears to be a cold wind
00:03:14:00 rowing races on a river
00:03:30:00 strolling through public gardens