Samuel François-Steininger has colourised footage from the NFSA collection of Benjamin, the last Tasmanian Tiger in captivity.

Naturalist David Fleay shot the original footage in black-and-white at Beaumaris Zoo, Hobart in December 1933.

Through his company, the Paris-based Composite Films, Samuel François-Steininger has developed a well-deserved reputation as a leader in the field of colourising black-and-white archival footage.

His impressive list of credits includes his collaboration with the NFSA and Stranger Than Fiction Films on the award-winning series Australia in Colour and Australia in Colour Season 2.

Read more about the challenges and process of colourising this precious thylacine footage.

The Life in Australia series showcased Australian cities in an idyllic light, hoping to attract prospective immigrants with carefully tailored visions of a peaceful, prosperous life in attractive settings. They were made by the Commonwealth Film Unit in 1966 during the final years of the White Australia policy, and their invitation to middle-class families is clear.  

Life in Australia: Hobart (now restored in 4K) uses the device of a cheery mail deliverer on his round to stitch together various scenes of the city, from its parks, fountains and shopping arcades to its harbourside views and glamorous theatre crowds. Factories, schools, laboratories and construction sites are shown as sites of calm and orderly industry, with the camera and soundtrack rendering production lines in almost balletic terms. Bowls, beers, bands and boats are the reward for a productive day.   

Small-town friendliness with comfort, beauty, leisure and plenty is the offer, a ‘Lucky Country’ vision that captures the ideals of 20th-century officialdom – and its omissions. The divisions, diversity and complexity of 1960s Australia are smoothed into a homogenous dreamland with a soap-opera soundtrack, even as the film captures fascinating details of mid-century Hobart.   

Find out more about the Life in Australia series  

In this recording, Fanny Smith talks about being the last of the Tasmanians. She then sings in both English and her own language. It is part of a series of recordings made between 1899 and 1903.

Summary by Sophia Sambono

Tasmania is calling! This travelogue, thought to be part of a longer film produced for cinemas in 1935, is pitched at tourists but often takes a more formal, educational tone. To the accompaniment of chirpy newsreel strings, we’re shown the attractions of Hobart and its surrounds: cruising the unspoilt Derwent River, trundling along in double-decker trams, sailing on the harbour and playing on Sandy Beach.  

There’s an element of parochial pride in the narration, which extols Hobart’s harbour as one of the five best in the world, lingers on the IXL factory with its annual production of 13 million tins, and sings the praises of Tasmanian apples, ‘which might grace even the table of the Royal house.’ That touch of Anglophilia is echoed in the descriptions of the Derwent valley, with its crops of fruit and hops, as reminiscent of ‘old England’. 

This may be quaint in the context of orchards, but takes on a more sinister note in a visit to Hobart’s Beaumaris Zoo, where a Tasmanian devil on a leash is chivvied while the narrator accuses it of being ‘spiteful and cunning’. Harder still to watch is the footage of the last surviving thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) in captivity, pacing its small, barren cage. It’s a reminder of the care that must be taken to preserve and protect what makes Tasmania wonderful. Since 1996, Threatened Species Day has been held in Australia on 7 September, the day this thylacine died.  

Tasmania the Wonderful, although it seems to be incomplete, remains a detailed and valuable record of Hobart in the 1930s.  

See more Tasmania in 4K. Watch footage of the Tasmanian Tiger in colour.

A production still of a Tasmanian Devil from the documentary Feral Peril about the threat feral foxes are posing to the native animals of Tasmania, one of the world's last great wildlife havens.

The Queen In Australia includes the Queen's 1954 visit to Hobart. 

Made by The National Film Board and directed by Colin Dean this film is the official record of her trip. The Queen in Australia is a landmark in Australian history. It not only records the first visit by a reigning monarch to Australia, it was also the first colour, feature-length film made in this country. 

This historic program provides nationwide coverage of the 1954 Royal Tour by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh - a two-month journey that took in every facet of Australian life: garden parties at Government House, dancers at the Tivoli, racing at Randwick, tennis at Kooyong with Rosewall and Hoad, cricket with the Don, even a meeting with Papua New Guinean tribal chiefs. The young royals visited every state in the nation, and this film captures it all. The result is a remarkable and revealing insight into our nation in the 1950s.

This documentary – a partly-dramatised look at Tasmania’s animals and birds – is a good example of innovative documentary making in the early 1960s. Summary by Damien Parer.

A trip by the Tasmanian Sea Fisheries' Board patrol boat 'Allara', and its skipper, Tom Challenger, from Hobart to Storm Bay where a barracouta fishing fleet are at work. The boat sails down the Derwent River and rounds the `Iron Pot' beacon at the mouth of the Derwent River. Barracouta are caught and landed on the deck of a boat using a jig attached to a pole. Fish are cleaned and filleted and the waste thrown overboard. The site for a proposed factory at Parsons Bay to process barracouta for stock feed and oil is shown, and proposed methods of catching the barracouta with trawl and purse-siene nets is also illustrated with diagrams. From the Film Australia Collection. Made by the Cinema Branch.

Located within a forgotten travelogue, Tasmania the Wonderland (1935), this recently digitised footage represents the preservation of the last-known surviving moving images of the now extinct thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger).

Less than a dozen source films, amounting to little more than three minutes of silent, black-and-white footage, of the elusive animal are known to survive. All derive from thylacines held in captivity and photographed in only two locations – Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart and London Zoo.

This precious 21 seconds of ‘Benjamin’ at the long-defunct Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart features the animal calmly pacing in his enclosure. Zookeeper Arthur Reid and an associate can be seen rattling his cage at the far right of frame, attempting to cajole some action or perhaps elicit one of the marsupial’s famous threat-yawns from the zoo’s most famous inhabitant.

The film’s (unknown) narrator makes mention of the animal’s rarity, and indeed, this is the only professionally produced sound film screened to audiences while a specimen was still alive in captivity.

Tasmania the Wonderland was probably filmed by the prolific Brisbane-based filmmaker and exhibitor Sidney Cook (1873–1937). The surviving nine-minute travelogue is incomplete and retains no end credits.

A guided car tour around Tasmania starting in Hobart, going west then north, east and south. Focuses on the natural scenery. Shows the Mount Lyell mine, a steam train, a copper mine, hop picking, and a steam ship leaving Hobart.

Made by the Cinema Branch 1933. Produced by GA Gamon. From the Film Australia Collection.

Black-and-white actuality footage of three women walk along the shoreline of Blackmans Bay Beach in Tasmania. They then cartwheel across the sand. The same women are shown later on, wearing different clothes, walking through scrub along a fence line. They climb over the fence. Summary by Poppy De Souza.

These film fragments represent the earliest known surviving moving images of Tasmanian Australian Rules football action, filmed in 1911.

This film documents the clash to decide the 1911 Tasmanian State Premiership between the premiers of the Northern (NTFA) and Southern (TFL) leagues. Cameras were present along with nearly 6000 spectators at Hobart's Tasmanian Cricket Association (TCA) Ground on Saturday 9 September 1911 to witness Cananore and North Launceston battle for the state's top football honours. The contest was a one-sided affair with southern champion Cananore victorious by 104 points, claiming their third consecutive State Premiership. The final score was Cananore 16 18 114, North Launceston 1 4 10.

The surviving three minutes consists of four brief segments located within two reels of 35mm nitrate film. These segments were not in their correct chronological order and had been spliced between sequences from other Tasmanian events such as a religious service, an athletics steeplechase event, a group of motoring enthusiasts and a soldiers' march. The footage presented here is therefore an attempt to edit the four isolated film fragments back into an approximation of their original correct running order. The original duration of the film of this match remains unknown at present but is likely to have been 6-10 minutes.
 

This beautifully filmed home movie contains some of the earliest examples of home movie footage held by the National Film and Sound Archive. Summary by Poppy De Souza

This shot of the 'Aurora', moving away from Queens Wharf, may have been taken by Richard Primmer, Hobart, 2 December 1911. 'Home of the Blizzard' (1911--1916).

Large, fully rigged trading barges compete for sport in a sailing race on the Derwent River in Hobart. Close-ups of crews working the boats. A warship can also be seen on the river. Movietone News A0098 (No. 03). 1 January 1936.

Staff and two horse drawn vehicles outside the Hobart Butcher's shop owned by the Higgins brothers' father, Henry. 115 Elizabeth St, Hobart.

The Higgins family are responsible for some of the earliest examples of home movie footage held by the NFSA. See Ernest Higgins' home movie of his family at Mount Wellington.