Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Voice of a Nation (c.1918)

  1. At 2:23-2:26 the ornamentation over the doorway, plus the size of the visible windows lead me to speculate that it is in front of 35 Elizabeth St Sydney; the footage taken from the west side of the the street looking east, and about 10m south from Martin Place.

    The doorway archwork is still there today (2010)...

    http://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=elizabeth+st+sydney&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Elizabeth+St,+Sydney+New+South+Wales+2000&gl=au&ei=nOehS_SFHNCgkQWWjNjaCA&ved=0CAgQ8gEwAA&ll=-33.86809,151.210535&spn=0.000792,0.000805&t=h&z=21&layer=c&cbll=-33.868185,151.210524&panoid=0IVwCHZU2dXFG9A-8UF4Mw&cbp=12,102.02,,1,-1.36

    2. #1 from johnmee – 14 years, 9 months ago.

  2. My gut feeling is that the bulk of the footage (0:00-2:23) is also on Elizabeth Street but looking Southwest. Primary suspects are where Elizabeth meets Market, or perhaps where Elizabeth meets Bathurst. The corner building with the long awning at Market is quite similar to the one there today but the first floor windows do not match. I can't nail down anything concrete to confirm my intuitions; I'd have to resort to secondary evidence such as a photo/plans of the buildings on the SW corners at the time. I might be way off.

    3. #2 from johnmee – 14 years, 9 months ago.

  3. The last shots are not from the Great War, but, I presume, World War II. The uniforms are WW2 vintage and the most obvious give-away are the soldiers are wearing gaitors rather than WW1 puttees. The film quality is also superior.

    4. #3 from SeanBrawley – 9 years, 10 months ago.

  4. Thanks Sean for your comment. It certainly seems possible that the last 20 seconds or so of the clip date from a later period. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

    5. #4 from Editor – 9 years, 10 months ago.

  5. The first brass band @ :30sec mark is an Army Brass Band, the second band @ the better quality 1:15sec mark is in fact a very large drum and bugle corp approximately 12 ranks of about 8 files perhaps larger.

    6. #5 from Byronthegrate – 3 years, 6 months ago.
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