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Clip description
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, arrive in Sydney aboard the Royal ship SS Gothic, to be greeted at Farm Cove by Prime Minister Robert Menzies, and the Governor-General, Sir William Slim. The royal barge arrives at the wharf through a flotilla of small craft, and the quays along the harbour are packed with wellwishers. As she comes ashore, the film offers a quick summary of the nation – nine million people, spread across six states. A short scene characterises each state before we return to the official welcome in Sydney.
Curator’s notes
Stanley Hawes was steeped in an English documentary tradition, which was born in the 1930s under the influence of its visionary founder, John Grierson. Hawes was born in Birmingham in 1905 and came to London to break into the film industry. He was unable initially to get a job with Grierson’s GPO film unit, so he worked at Gaumont-British and other companies. After war broke out in 1939, John Grierson invited him to join him at the newly formed National Film Board of Canada, from where Hawes was recruited to come to Australia. Grierson had visited Australia in 1940, and suggested to Robert Menzies that Australia needed its own national documentary unit.
The Australian National Film Board was set up after the war. Hawes came to run it, determined to carry on in the Grierson tradition. By this conception of documentary, both national and international aspirations should be met; Grierson believed films could fire the public imagination, for the common good. The aim was to project the nation, helping to build and unite, without becoming simply an instrument of propaganda.
By the time Stanley Hawes arrived in Australia, there were various schools of thought about how this should be done. The more leftist approach, expressed by Harry Watt, another distinguished British filmmaker, said that the films had to be relevant to Australian problems. ‘I’m terrified that we will see kangaroos, koala bears and fields of waving wheat’, said Watt, who came in 1946 to advise the Labor government on the role of the Australian National Film Board.
By the time the new Queen arrived eight years later, Harry Watt’s fears had come true, to some extent. We do see kangaroos, koalas and emu in this clip, although the film is sparing in its use of the iconic national animals.
This early sequence is much more about setting up a sense of difference, within an overall unity. We see shots from each state, each of which expresses something of the character of that state. That may reflect Australia’s colonial history, as a series of colonies that were independent of each other. Each of these scenes is about production and ‘increase from the tawny soil’: sugar cane, fruit trees, timber, sheep, cattle, grapes and wine, as well as industry, mining, power generation and shipbuilding.
The narration is poetic, and voiced in this clip by the actor Peter Finch, who was already becoming well known. There were at least three strong writers of this narration. Tom Hungerford and George Johnston were both Australians, renowned journalists and novelists; Laurie Lee, the only non-Australian, would become well known in the UK as poet and novelist (of Cider with Rosie, 1959).
The scenes in Sydney Harbour at the beginning are incredibly rich in colour. Stanley Hawes chose Ferraniacolor stock from Italy, although he didn’t really have many choices, as Kodak was unable to guarantee enough supply to make a six-reel film (about 60 minutes). The film had to be flown back to England, processed at Denham Laboratories, and then edited in London. Stanley Hawes and his offsider Jack Allan spent months on the road in Australia before the Queen arrived, setting up the logistics, which involved multiple crews. Once the shooting started, Allan took over supervision of crews, while Hawes went to England to supervise the editing. Music was composed and recorded in Australia and sent to England.
The deadlines were punishing, partly because the Australian Government had promised the Queen that the film would be finished soon after her return from Australia. The first release prints had to ready by the beginning of April, but her visit continued till the end of March. The film had a major launch in the UK, with a royal performance at a cinema in Leicester Square. The response from public and critics was positive. There had been a number of official films of royal visits to parts of the Commonwealth. The Queen in Australia, declared one London newspaper, was by far the best of those yet made.
