[John Anderson Home Movies: Reel 4 and Reel 5] [excerpts]

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.

The collection is filmed on 16mm and 9.5mm film and the films can sometimes be a bit damaged and shaky.

This 9.5mm example is from excerpts of Reels 4 and 5, showing scenes of Jack’s family and friends enjoying their scrambler motor bikes in muddy conditions at Korweinguboora, near Ballarat, Victoria. A group of friends are then shown travelling around the Victorian countryside on motorcycles (motorbikes). Motorcycles have been filmed from a vehicle travelling alongside. The bike riders gather for the camera at the ‘Atlantic Garage’ possibly in Ballarat and then head off for a ride down a dusty country road.