This is a wonderful film, on YouTube courtesy of Film Australia.
It’s a very skilful archive mash-up of film clips from the 1940s to the 1970s which show summer in Australia. Backed by the most wonderful soundtrack it shows an escapist sun-drenched paradise where everyone is drop-dead gorgeous, the surf is always “up”, and life is marred only by having to eat Christmas dinner on the beach in 90 degree heat and by the odd bush fire which everyone jolly well joins in to extinguish.
This is what us Poms paid ten quid for. And just think, we thought we were punishing the ancestors of some of these folks… (JOKE!)
And there is this little gem in a school room:
Teacher: I know it’s hard to concentrate in this heat children but we must try.
Wayne: Could we go for a swim, sir?
Teacher: You know the rule Wayne, nobody is let off school until the temperature is a hundred and ten. What is it now?
Wayne (disappointed – looking at thermometer): A hundred and eight, sir.
Teacher: Now, as I was saying…
(And there is, I believe, every possibility that the Wayne in the black and white schoolroom wanting to go swimming is the same Wayne who, in colour, later gets shoved into the swimming pool by the girl who says “Look Wayne, you’re sex mad!”)
The film is called “Another Sunny Day” and is the work of archivist Richard Carter:
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