
In this short excerpt from a home movie donated to the NFSA by amateur filmmaker Sid Bennetts, we see a group of young men and boys building a barbecue in their backyard.
Long before barbecuing became big business in Australia, it was an Aussie tradition to build your own in the backyard on a slab of concrete using cement besser blocks and a few aluminium trays. For fathers and sons, building a backyard barbie was almost a rite of passage. Once built, the extended family and neighbourhood friends would be invited over to enjoy some nicely charred snags and chops.
This home movie is a perfect example of such a ritual, with the newly built barbecue providing the setting for the social gathering. The film provides a rich snapshot of life in Australia in the mid 1960s.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.