FEATURE FILM / 1954

The Queen in Australia

In 1954, recently crowned Queen Elizabeth II and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh embarked on a two month tour of Australia. It involved some 10,000 miles of travel by air and 4,000 miles by land and sea. The couple visited every state in the nation, and turned up at all sorts of events, from tennis at Kooyong to steel mills in Newcastle to woodchopping at Wagga to the Flying Doctor Service Service at Broken Hill. The film production arm of the federal government - the Film Division of the News and Information Bureau of the Department of the Interior - decided to cover the tour in 35mm colour film, sending the footage to England for processing and editing. Six weeks after the tour ended, the film was finished and became the first feature-length Australian film shot and financed by Australians in colour to be given a theatrical release.