Take a stroll with us through King’s Park in Perth, 1957. Our guides, two young women made up and posing like professional models, swing through the park’s West Australian Botanic Garden, home to over 3,000 indigenous species. Their professional expressions of delight may well have been mostly genuine: bushland full of bright kangaroo paws, golden wattle, the ‘rich ultramarine’ of blue dampier and windblown pink and white myrtle cast a balmy spell.

The segment, called ‘Perth: Garden City Shows its Spring Creations’, was part of a series called Australian Diary. Made by the Australian Film Board for the Department of the Interior, the films gathered a range of scenes from daily life around the country.