Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This silent black-and-white clip shows a series of slow pans across Sydney Harbour from aboard a ship. Other craft move across the water, including steamships, a small rowboat and the Manly ferry. The Sydney Harbour Bridge is visible in the distance. A skyline of buildings can be seen around the fringes of the Harbour. Another slow pan shows the structure of the Bridge, followed by a closer shot of the Bridge’s metalwork.

Educational value points

• This home movie footage indicates the level of interest in the newly built Sydney Harbour Bridge, shown here in about 1932. Opened in 1932, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is the largest steel arch bridge in the world. Construction began in 1924 and it took 1,400 men eight years to build it at a cost of £4.2 million. In 1932 the Bridge could be crossed on foot or on a bicycle, by tram, train or car. Sailing under it provided a novel way to view and appreciate it.

• The camera here focuses on a small portion of the Bridge’s 53,000 tonnes of steel, held together by more than 6 million hand-driven rivets, suggesting an interest in the Bridge’s design and structure. However, construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge evoked different feelings for other members of the community at the time. Some 800 families were removed when their houses were demolished to make way for the Bridge’s construction. No compensation was offered to these residents.

• The clip provides historical footage of Sydney Harbour at a key stage in its development. The Sydney Harbour area, originally home to around 14 Indigenous Australian clan groups, developed rapidly after a British colony was founded in 1788, becoming a vital port for Australia’s expanding agricultural industries. From the 1820s the colony’s export industry increased rapidly and the port quickly became the busy shipping thoroughfare seen in this footage. Industry and housing developed around the shores as the colony grew, particularly after the building construction booms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Evidence of this can be seen in the distant skyline views.

• Although steamships are shown on Sydney Harbour, the steam era in shipping and global transport was winding down by the time of the Bridge’s opening. The steamship had begun to supplant the sailing ship in the late 1850s, once the screw propeller had replaced paddlewheels. In 1881 the first steel vessel was launched and within a decade the great era of the steam-driven ocean liners had begun. In the early 20th century steam gave way to diesel-powered ships.

• The footage exemplifies typical features of the home movie genre. The camera is hand held with resulting instability of the image. Editing is achieved 'in-camera’ simply by turning the camera on and off and the content is shown in real time. Travel and tourism were common themes for early home movies, as they are today.

• Although historically regarded as amateur and only of interest to their creators and immediate family, home movies such as this have now gained the status of historical documents. With the 20th-century explosion in film culture and the dominance of the moving image, home movie footage has increasingly been sought out to help reconstruct history, for example in documentaries and museum displays. Family film collections, like this one, have been mined for their 'authenticity’ and 'spontaneity’, as they are perceived to be less prone to professional manipulation.