Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows silent colour home-movie footage of Maitland in eastern New South Wales during the flood of 1955. People wade through flooded streets, the Hunter River is in full flood and water breaks through the sandbagged banks of the River.

Educational value points

• The 1955 Maitland flood, along with Cyclone Tracy, the Newcastle earthquake and the 1939 bushfires, is considered one of the worst natural disasters in Australia’s history. During the worst of the flooding, the area of NSW under water was twice the size of Tasmania. In the Maitland and Singleton area, around 24 people lost their lives, more than 5,200 homes were flooded, 15,000 people were made temporarily homeless and more than 40,000 people were evacuated from 40 towns. Crop and livestock losses were considerable and damage to infrastructure took months to repair.

• The Maitland flood was the first Australian natural disaster to be captured by newsreel and still photography and broadcast to national and international audiences. Images of the flooded main streets and particularly of the attempted unsuccessful helicopter rescue of a man from floodwaters profoundly shocked the nation. Philip Noyce’s film Newsfront (1978), which has as its subject a behind-the-scenes look at the newsreel production companies of the time, included actual footage of the Maitland flood.

• While drought is the natural disaster most often associated with Australia, flooding is a costly natural disaster from which few parts of the country are immune. In 2007, the Bureau of Meteorology reported that floods cost the country more than $400 million per year. This figure includes lives and stock lost, and damage to homes, coal mines, other businesses, roads, utilities, property and equipment.

• The Maitland flood has been linked to the La Niña effect, which contributes to the formation of monsoons in Australia’s tropical regions. On 23 February 1955 a monsoonal depression moved south from Queensland, bringing torrential rain to an area of NSW that had already been experiencing high rainfall. Rainfall on this one day exceeded 250 mm and the Hunter River reached unprecedented levels. At Maitland, situated on a floodplain on the banks of the Hunter River, the water reached a level that was 1 m higher than the previous record set three years earlier.

• Floods are frequent occurrences in Maitland, but no flood has matched the severity of the 1955 flood. In the 19th century there were regular severe floods, but the first big flood accurately recorded occurred in 1893 when constant rain caused the Hunter River to sweep over levy banks; nine people died. Successive decades saw more floods until the 1955 disaster altered the course of the river and resulted in the construction of levy banks and flood channels. No flood of the same magnitude has occurred since that year.

• Home movies provide important historical and cultural records of significant Australian events at a time before television; especially when, as in this case, the camera operator is on the spot as the event unfolds. This colour film was made on 8 mm format film, introduced in 1932 to make film affordable to more people and later replaced by super 8. Home movies, unlike film made by professional filmmakers, are distinctive for their lack of a linear narrative or clear structure. Editing is usually done in the camera and events are taken according to the preference and location of the filmmaker rather than to a predetermined script. The power of home movies is in their general authenticity and the filmmaker’s intimate involvement with the subject matter.