Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip shows the communications operations at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, such as the Overseas Telecommunications Commission and telegraph and press offices. It shows the Olympic flame, spectators, officials and an ABC television cameraman, as well as footage of track and field events and of New Zealander Norman Read winning the 50-km walk. The final sequence features one of four post offices built to serve the public during the Games with shots of the commemorative Olympic stamps. It includes narration and music.

Educational value points

• The 1956 summer Olympic Games, the first to be held in the southern hemisphere, were seen as a chance for Australia to prove it could stage a world-class event and thus not only show Australia’s maturity as a nation, but aid the expansion of Australian industry into international markets. The Games were held in Melbourne from 22 November to 8 December and 67 nations attended. By contrast, 199 nations were represented at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

• This clip comes from a film sponsored by the Postmaster-General’s (PMG’s) Department (now Australia Post and Telstra), and its focus on the communications system and technology used at the Olympics was designed to show that telecommunications in Australia had attained an international standard. To this end the clip stresses the magnitude of the PMG’s task at the Olympics and focuses on the modern equipment that facilitated international press coverage.

• The language used by the narrator is designed to reinforce the PMG’s message that Melbourne’s communications system was among the best in the world. For example he says, ‘No country had ever witnessed anything to equal the press and radio coverage for these games’ and quotes the approving remarks of the Reuter’s editor. The buoyant and at times triumphal music score underlines this message.

• The clip shows a television cameraman filming the Games, the first Olympics 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.

• By today’s standards the forms of telecommunications shown in this clip are dated. Journalists had to report their stories by telephone, telegram or a telex machine that transmitted and exchanged messages via a telephone line with the messages printed by a teleprinter on strips of paper. International calls and telegrams were transmitted via radio or cable circuits, some of which were the longest in the world. Radio broadcasts were sent over a radio–telephone link.

• The clip includes footage of New Zealander Norman Read crossing the finishing line with arms upraised to win the 50-km walk in 4 hours, 30 minutes and 42.8 seconds. Read, who migrated to New Zealand from Britain in 1953 and was affectionately dubbed the ‘Pommie Kiwi’, won New Zealand’s only gold medal at the Melbourne Games and its fourth at an Olympic Games. He later recalled being urged on by the Australian crowd who lined the route of the event.