Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip from a silent newsreel shows scenes of travellers with suitcases on the footpath outside Flinders Street Station in Melbourne on 22 December 1928 preparing to take their Christmas holiday break. Subsequent scenes show shoppers crossing the street in pouring rain and a couple of swagmen in a Melbourne park. The travellers, including a man stacking suitcases on the running board of a car, appear prosperous, which provides a contrast with the intimate scene of the two homeless men. The clip has intertitles.

Educational value points

• The footage provides a view of Melbourne and its inhabitants during the late 1920s when the city, – with a population approaching 1 million – was enjoying a brief resurgence of prosperity before the decline that occurred after the onset of the Great Depression towards the end of 1929. This prosperity is reflected in the dress and luggage of the travellers. Car ownership increased greatly in the 1920s and a large number of cars can be seen in the clip.

• The representation of Melbourne at Christmas time in the clip is unusual because it ignores traditional festive motifs associated with the season, such as decorated streets or stores with Christmas window displays. Instead it shows people getting caught in an unseasonal downpour of rain, travellers on their way to holiday destinations and two ‘swaggies’. The closest thing to a celebratory tone is the bottle in the swagman’s hand.

• The clip reveals the presence of poverty alongside wealth in 1920s Melbourne by including footage of well-off travellers followed by the two swaggies in the park. A contrast is drawn between the prosperous holiday-makers on their way to comfortable holiday destinations and the two homeless men whose Christmas will be spent in the park. Their shabby clothes and gap-toothed smiles would have invited pity in many viewers.

• The two swagmen represent the face of unemployment in the 1920s one year before the 1929 Great Depression. Their name refers to the swag (usually a few possessions rolled in a blanket) that homeless men carried with them. The steady decline in the price of wool from 1925 led to widespread rural unemployment. From 1927 manufacturing jobs declined. After 1927 relief work for a small government allowance dried up and many unemployed took to the road seeking work.

• This actuality footage comes from a silent newsreel screened as part of cinema programming, providing audiences with local and national news. Newsreels were part of a thriving filmmaking industry in Australia that grew with the advent of sound in the 1930s and then declined with the introduction of television in 1956. In silent newsreels information and emphasis had to be conveyed visually, assisted by intertitles. Items commonly included sport and human-interest stories.