Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows the role of the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) in facilitating media coverage of the 1954 Royal Tour of Australia. It shows one of the press bureaus set up at post offices in each capital city and fitted with up-to-date equipment to allow local and international media to dispatch their reports. The narrator says landlines were installed for nationwide radio broadcasts. An uplifting music score accompanies the clip, which begins with Queen Elizabeth II’s arrival in Sydney and concludes with newspaper photographs of the visit.

Educational value points

• The PMG, which sponsored this film, was responsible for managing Australia’s postal and telecommunication services and hence had responsibility for ensuring that national and international media coverage of the 1954 Royal Tour was possible. The size of the Tour and the demand of media outlets for up-to-the-minute coverage made this a huge task and required a year of intense planning and the installation of new equipment and infrastructure.

• The 1954 Royal Tour was the first visit to Australia by a reigning monarch and the clip reflects the support within Australia for a constitutional monarchy, a strong identification with Britain and the way the young and glamorous Queen captivated the public. About 75 per cent of Australians went to see the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II (1926–) during the eight-week tour, which began on 3 February and visited every state and territory except the Northern Territory.

• In 1954 there was no television coverage in Australia and the only means of electronic communication nationally and internationally was by telephone, telegram or telex. The telex was a new technology introduced by the PMG in 1954 and, as seen in the clip, involved a message sent from a telex machine via telephone lines and printed out onto a strip of paper by a teleprinter. International communication relied on radio transmissions or undersea cables.

• Photographs were transmitted by picturegram, a technology that involved wrapping the photograph around a cylinder and focusing a spot of light on the photograph as it turned. The light was picked up by a photosensitive selenium cell, which then converted it into electric currents to be sent along the telephone lines. At the receiver end a pencil of light used the incoming signals to trace out the image on photographic paper, which was then developed.

• ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) Radio provided live coverage of parts of the Royal Tour and the PMG, which at the time was responsible for the technical side of the ABC, laid landlines to transmit the broadcasts nationwide and fitted out mobile vans so that reporters stationed along the route of the Tour could relay reports back to the station. Radio coverage provided by the ABC included the opening of Parliament in Canberra by the Queen.