Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip shows footage of the Olympic host city, Melbourne – its streets, its Yarra River and its modes of transport, followed by scenes showing the telecommunications systems for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne being prepared. This preparation included the installation of telecommunication cables and broadcast equipment at various venues. The clip shows the ABC television broadcast vans and concludes with the black-and-white televised footage of the Opening Ceremony with Prince Phillip declaring the Games open.

Educational value points

• This clip comes from a film sponsored by the Postmaster-General’s Department (now divided into Australia Post and Telstra) designed to celebrate and promote the achievement of a telecommunications system for the 1956 summer Olympics in Melbourne that was modern and of an international standard. The Games, the first to be held in Australia and in the southern hemisphere, were seen as a chance to prove Australia could stage a world-class event.

• The 1956 Olympic Games was the largest event staged in Australia up to that time and, as the narrator says, the great task for those working on the communications system was ‘telling the world the story of the Olympics’. Such was the scale of the communications operation that Games organisers called on defence force staff for assistance, mainly to operate teleprinters and act as radio technicians.

• In the lead up to the 1956 Olympics, as the clip illustrates, telecommunications were developed to meet increased demand, particularly from the international media. For example, underground cables were laid linking venues with Melbourne telephone exchanges, which were also expanded. The Overseas Telecommunications Commission (later Telstra) upgraded and increased transmission and receiving stations that dealt with international calls and telegrams.

• Today satellite technology and the internet makes communication instant, but in 1956 international communication as seen in this clip was much slower. The international media sent reports by telephone, telegram or telex, while radio broadcasts were transmitted by a radio–telephone link. The telex machine sent and exchanged messages via a telephone line with the messages printed by a teleprinter on strips of paper.

• The 1956 Olympics, which ran from 22 November to 8 December, were the first to be televised live, although only to a Melbourne audience. There were no satellites so the footage was flown both interstate and overseas and telecast after the event, which meant that audiences in other countries had to wait several days before seeing the coverage. Although the Games hastened the introduction of television in Australia, only about 5,000 homes had television sets in 1956.

• The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) served as the main stadium for the 1956 Olympic Games, and the clip contrasts an aerial view of it during the Opening Ceremony with a painting of the MCG in about 1860 to illustrate Australia’s evolution into an advanced, modern country. An epic soundtrack, particularly the fanfare accompanying the aerial shot of the stadium, and the narrator’s references to the complex communications system, reinforce this idea.