Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white, silent clip shows three soldiers and their wives or partners walking through Dookie Agricultural College. Following an intertitle with the words 'Building Instruction’ they are shown inspecting the activities of men constructing the timber frame of a building. After another intertitle, “The Barber Said”, apprentice barbers are shown watching several men in barbers’ chairs being shaved. 'Instruction in Bricklaying’ introduces men applying mortar to brickwork, then 'Motor Body Work’ precedes men working with saws in a workshop. The final intertitle, 'Making Harvesters at Sunshine …’, is followed by footage of men with tools working outside on a line of harvesters.

Educational value points

• The clip shows the retraining of returned soldiers. After the First World War ended, returning soldiers needed to find work, be integrated into the community and potentially make the same valuable contribution to Australia in peacetime as they had made during the War. They are seen here busy learning new trades. Many returned soldiers, however, found the challenge of returning to society much more complex and difficult than is indicated here.

• A variety of vocational training schemes, such as those at Dookie Agricultural College, were made available to returned soldiers. The second government of Prime Minister William 'Billy’ Hughes passed the Australian Soldiers Repatriation Act 1917 to establish a repatriation service regulating assistance to returned soldiers and their dependents. A key role of this service was to return soldiers to productive civilian employment, with provision being made for training up to 20,000 men for new careers. By December 1919, 130,140 applications had been made for the range of benefits available under the repatriation scheme.

• The scenes shown are from an early public information film. Such films screened in cinemas around the country and were designed to advise the public on a range of subjects, informing attitudes and promoting the work of the government, with the aim of ultimately enhancing social cohesion and security. The example shown here highlights the need to reassure the public that the 'repatriation problem’ (or the question of what to do with returned soldiers who, without employment, might have become a social burden) was being well managed. This aim would have influenced the filmmakers in selecting what to film and in portraying an atmosphere of purposeful employment and general contentment.

• The clip includes footage of returned soldiers working on harvesters at Sunshine. Sunshine Harvester Works was the largest industrial enterprise in Australia in the 1920s, making a major contribution to the mechanisation of agriculture in Australia and abroad. Its founder, HV McKay (1865–1926), developed the Sunshine stripper harvester when he was 18 years old and revolutionised farming in the process. The company continued to introduce many innovations through the use of mass-production techniques and ultimately expanded the scale of Australian wheat production.

• The clip provides examples of technologies used in vocational training at the time. These scenes form a marked contrast to later technologies and methods. The mechanisation of labour, the development of the production line and new construction techniques involving concrete and prefabrication have changed the industries illustrated almost beyond recognition.

This clip starts approximately 3 minutes into the documentary.

This black-and-white, silent clip shows three soldiers and their wives or partners walking through Dookie Agricultural College. Following an intertitle with the words 'Building Instruction’ they are shown inspecting the activities of men constructing the timber frame of a building. After another intertitle, ‘The Barber Said’, apprentice barbers are shown watching several men in barbers’ chairs being shaved. 'Instruction in Bricklaying’ introduces men applying mortar to brickwork, then 'Motor Body Work’ precedes men working with saws in a workshop. The final intertitle, 'Making Harvesters at Sunshine …’, is followed by footage of men with tools working outside on a line of harvesters.