Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows colour, silent, home-movie footage of the muddy aftermath of the flooding of Maitland in eastern New South Wales in February 1955. The mud in the streets, collapsed riverbanks and the resulting damage to the foundations of houses, collapsed homes and the collapsed bridge are all shown in the film.

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. More than 5,200 homes were flooded in the Maitland area, 24 people lost their lives,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.

• Evidence of the aftermath of flooding is shown in the clip. Mud and debris to a depth of 1.2 m were dumped in the streets of Maitland, which lies on a floodplain. Debris from buildings, trees, dead livestock and motor vehicles had ripped out fences and smashed into windows and the sides of houses. Silt and mud were deposited in homes and businesses. The farmlands surrounding Maitland became a befouled lake. Many homes were so badly damaged that they had to be pulled down. The floodwaters receded within days but the clean-up took many months.

• Flood damage to infrastructure can have a sustained impact on the whole district. The damage to the Maitland district’s bridges, roads, railways and telephone lines took months to repair. However, the damage to the economy of the town was felt for much longer. The railways between Sydney and Brisbane and the north-west of NSW, which meet at Maitland, were cut for a period of time and this affected the town’s economy, as did the flooding of the commercial district and the flood’s destruction of surrounding farmland, coal mines and livestock.

• 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 1955.

• 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, on the banks of the Hunter, the River reached a level that was 1 m higher than the previous record set three years earlier. There were many heavy rain episodes in eastern Australia between late 1954 and the end of 1956, when La Niña conditions prevailed.

• 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 authenticity and the filmmaker’s intimate involvement with the subject matter.