A Trip to Australia in about 1970

The rather long vintage home movie featured in this post was taken on a trip to Australia sometime around the year 1970. Although I don’t know the precise locations visited, there are certainly scenes in Sydney, including the harbour and Opera House featured.

About the film

This film was purchased about a year ago now, along with some other films taken in more exotic parts of the world than standard vintage home movies. There is a film shot in Bermuda in, I believe the 1960s and another in the country which was at the time called Yugoslavia which also has a sound track.

This film is shot in Standard 8, and consists of several reels edited together to make the final film. I’ve categorised the film stock as Kodachrome in the site metadata because that is what is written on the first few feet of film, but I wonder if it was actually shot on several different film types. I say this because there is a marked difference in the quality of the film as it plays. Some parts are bright, colourful and have a distinctive, ‘Kodachrome’ look, but other parts are washed out and pretty poor quality.

Perhaps the photographer had different film types and just used whatever was at hand when a reel needed changing; or possibly they bought film stock during the trip and purchased the film that was in stock.

Whatever the reason, the quality of the film is distracted because of this.

After I’d converted the film to digital, I ran it through a stabilization filter because there was some jitter – this has resulted in some parts of the film showing some odd frame movements – I apologise for this but the overall stability of the film is better with the filter applied.

Sample stills from the film.

The gallery below shows some sample stills which I’ve taken, predominantly from the better sections of the film.

Film of the trip to Australia

The film of the trip to Australia is embedded below.

There are scenes where I recognise the location such as Sydney Harbour and the Opera House, and other places which are unknown, so if anyone who watches the film can provide any locations I’d be interested to know – as usual please use the comments form below to let me know.