Australian
Screen

Clip description

Kangaroos are hunted in the bush to be collected for museums and zoos. A kangaroo hide is presented to the camera. Kangaroos hop into a fenced enclosure and are trapped there. Two men force a hat on one reluctant kangaroo and hold its paws up for the camera. The captured animals are packed into wooden crates for transport to the zoo where, the narrator says, they will live in 'steady, respectable, suburban comfort’.

Curator’s notes

The McDonagh sisters (like their contemporary Frank Hurley) were still experimenting with the best ways to effectively combine sound and image for audience entertainment, with both sound effects and use of voice-over. This style of commentary is common to newsreels and documentary featurettes at the time (see Frank Hurley’s travelogues, such as Jewel of the Pacific from 1932, or an edition of the Cinesound Review). The informal and chatty tone, sprinkled with puns, aspires to connect with the audience and presents the kangaroo as a character. The animals are variously described as 'victims’ (after being skinned in the name of science), 'chaps’ and 'prisoners’ (when put into crates for transport). There are kangaroo-themed puns aplenty, such as 'here’s where the hops come from’ and 'no wonder it’s leap year’, making light of the serious work of capturing specimens for zoos and scientific purposes.

This clip includes kangaroos being kicked and provoked, and two men forcing a hat onto a reluctant kangaroo. In a later scene, a man boxes a kangaroo. In Frank Hurley’s Siege of the South (1931), made a year earlier, members of the Antarctic expedition ride the backs of distressed elephant seals. These scenes are examples of action shaped precisely for the camera for audience entertainment and were not uncommon in short documentaries of the period, even if today they might seem cruel. Kangaroo boxing also features in Ken G Hall’s feature Orphan of the Wilderness (1936), made a few years later.