19/12/2025

A crystal radio microphone from on a pedestal from 1933.

https://www.nfsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-12/Best%20of%202025_1600x775_3.jpg

Stop. Rewind. Replay.

In 2025, the stories with the longest afterlife were often the quietest ones. Works that reward close listening, second looks and a willingness to sit with what’s already there.

Across the NFSA website, social channels and YouTube, the archive reopened onto moments shaped by memory, place and personhood – sounds and images that still carry weight, even as time moves on.

What connects these works isn’t a single genre or era, but a shared frequency. Familiar things, tuned slightly differently. History that continues to hum. Cultural artefacts that hold their shape, no matter how often they’re revisited.

Below are some of the works audiences kept coming back to.

The NFSA's 2025 round-up

Top stories:

Peter Weir on Picnic at Hanging Rock
The Revolution Will Be Televised
Tune In, Freak Out

Honourable mentions by category:

Music and sound
Pop archetypes
Classic TV
Film history
People, protest and public record
Play
Vintage ads
YouTube highlights
Social media highlights
Stories that keep circulating

Honourable mentions by category

Music and sound

How music, voice and noise travel – through memory, technology and repetition.

Sounds of Australia

A growing registry of the everyday noises, broadcast moments and musical fragments that shape how Australia sounds – from infrastructure and media to pop memory and shared ritual.
→ Explore Sounds of Australia

Australian War Songs

A collection of wartime recordings that carry memory through voice and melody, registering conflict through sound rather than monument.
→ Read Australian war songs

Wax cylinder recordings: the cello

Cellist Christopher Pidcock performs Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Bach using 19th-century wax-cylinder technology, producing something intimate, imperfect and transportive.
→ Read Wax cylinder recordings: The cello

Gone viral: from Gotye to Doechii

A study of musical afterlives, tracing how Australian sound continues to circulate, transform and reappear through sampling and remix culture.
→ Read Gone viral

Pop archetypes

Characters and personas that keep resurfacing on Australian screens.

Daggy dads of the Australian screen

A celebration of earnest, embarrassing and deeply loved father figures who became a national screen fixture.
→ Read Daggy dads of the Australian screen

Mean mums of the Australian screen

A playful look at scheming, swearing and barely-holding-it-together mothers across Australian film and TV.
→ Read Mean mums of the Australian screen

Top dogs of the Australian screen

From loyal companions to scene-stealing comedians, these canine performers left paw prints across Australian television history.
→ Read Top dogs of the Australian screen

Fredd Bear: a TV trailblazer

A joyful deep dive into the improbable career of a television original who met royalty and sang with a full orchestra.
→ Read Fredd Bear

Happy Birthday Humphrey B Bear

A celebration of a gentle, wordless presence that has entertained and comforted generations since 1965.
→ Read Humphrey B Bear

Excerpt from Bluey Series 3, Episode 1: Perfect (2021). NFSA title: 1700770

Classic TV

Shared rituals shaped by schedules, formats and the glow of the screen.

Neighbours: the first episode

A shaky debut in 1985 that marked the beginning of a suburban institution and Australia’s longest-running drama.
→ Read Neighbours: the first episode

Classic TV game shows

From polished quiz shows to supermarket chaos, this collection revisits an era when competition became prime-time ritual.
→ Read Classic TV game shows

Sale of the Century anniversary

A return to the polish, pressure and performance of prime-time television, where knowledge, charisma and spectacle collided.
→ Read Sale of the Century anniversary

Tween TV from the turn of the millennium

Children’s television of the 1990s and 2000s embraced heightened emotion, surreal energy and bold experimentation that still feels formative.
→ Read Tween TV from the turn of the millennium

From the suds to the stars

Nine careers that began in Erinsborough or Summer Bay before heading for international screens.
→ Read From the suds to the stars

Film history

Moments where Australian cinema expanded its scale, ambition or tone.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

The third Mad Max film widened the franchise’s emotional range with striking imagery and Tina Turner’s commanding presence.
→ Read Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

Crocodile Dundee turns ‘about 40’

Revisiting Australia’s biggest box-office success as it returns with a remastered cut and a making-of documentary.
→ Read Crocodile Dundee

The birth of silent comedy: Patineur Grotesque

A return to one of the world’s earliest films – made in Australia and cheekier than expected.
→ Read Patineur Grotesque

Patineur Grotesque by Frères Lumière, 1896. Courtesy: Association Frères Lumière. NFSA title: 737233

People, protest and public record

Moments where cameras and microphones caught history as it unfolded.

The shot that defined the Dismissal

A close look at the images and recordings that shaped how Australians remember 11 November 1975.
→ Read The shot that defined the Dismissal

Fighting for fair work: how Australia’s workers changed the rules

Stories of protest and persistence that reshaped everyday working life, captured on screen.
→ Read Fighting for fair work

First Mardi Gras: newly discovered footage

Recently uncovered news footage sheds new light on the first Mardi Gras in 1978 and its aftermath.
→ Read First Mardi Gras footage

Quaden Bayles interview

Actor Quaden Bayles reflects on collaboration, community and creative inheritance in conversation with NFSA Curator Dean Cross.
→ Read Quaden Bayles interview

Play

Spaces of play, spectacle and escape – built for fun, remembered for feeling.

Retro theme parks in NSW

From Luna Park to miniature towns and dancing horses, a head-spinning tour of kitsch and nostalgia.
→ Read Retro theme parks in NSW

Archival Obsessions: the unofficial Neighbours video game

A soap opera, a British meteorologist and an illicit computer game collide in pop-culture archaeology.
→ Read Archival Obsessions: the unofficial Neighbours game

Vintage ads

Archival Obsessions: Tina Turner’s NRL ads

A flash of 1990s spectacle where global stardom met local sport in a burst of pop-culture excess.
→ Read Archival Obsessions: Tina Turner’s NRL ads

Vintage food ads

Hollywood-scale storytelling, melodrama and musical flair applied to everyday products in another era of advertising.
→ Read Vintage food ads

'What You Get is What You See': Tina Turner promotes the NSW Rugby League, TV advertisement, 1991.

YouTube highlights

Life in Australia 4K restoration series

→ Watch the playlist

This ongoing restoration project brings mid-century Australian life into sharp focus. Presented in 4K, the films capture everyday moments – work, leisure, travel and place – with a clarity that feels both intimate and revelatory. The series offers a chance to see familiar histories anew, where texture, movement and sound carry as much meaning as narrative.

Picnic at Hanging Rock 50th anniversary – deleted scenes

→ Watch the playlist

Released to mark the film’s anniversary, this collection of deleted scenes and supplementary material extends the world of Picnic at Hanging Rock without resolving its mysteries. These fragments deepen the atmosphere around Appleyard College and its surrounds, offering insight into Peter Weir’s process and the careful balance between what is shown and what is withheld. For longtime viewers, they open up new ways of looking; for first-time watchers, they underline why the film continues to invite return.

What you shared, saved and sent on

Record shopping with the Avalanches (27 November)

→ Watch on Facebook
Before Since I Left You reshaped electronic music, the Avalanches were crate-digging in Melbourne record stores, chasing the weirdest and most wonderful sounds they could find. This 1999 clip, directed by Philippe Charluet for ABC Education’s ARTZONE, captures the band mid-hunt – camaraderie, curiosity and the eclectic elements that went into their still-fresh sound.

Supermarket Sweep frenzy (26 October)

→ Watch on Facebook
Supermarket Sweep turns the everyday grocery aisle into a racetrack. This 1992 episode distils wanton consumerism into spectacle – contestants sprinting, trolleys overflowing and strategy unfolding at breakneck speed. It’s both absurd and mesmerising.

Jane Goodall sings us goodnight (18 October)

→ Watch on Facebook
In this 2007 Enough Rope interview snippet, Jane Goodall traces her journey from childhood curiosity to decades of fieldwork. The clip closes with her imitating contented chimpanzee calls – a gentle reminder of how wonder and empathy can be conveyed through sound.

Cold cuts – what do you call them? (19 August)

→ Watch on Facebook
Is it cold cuts or luncheon meat? In a Bicentennial Minutes segment from 1988, Peter Luck reads regional variation in Australian English, homing in on lunchbox staples with names that shift from state to state.

Kylie, the Pink Wiggle (15 February)

→ Watch on Facebook
Long before diverse casts were an intentional part of kids’ programming, Kylie Minogue’s cameo as the fifth Pink Wiggle in 2009 hinted at playful experimentation on children’s TV. The clip invites smiles and a little nostalgic surprise.

Snow wombat (21 June)

→ Watch on Facebook
This 1982 documentary excerpt shows a wombat navigating snow with surprising grace. Commentary by Jack Thompson adds a period flavour, while the footage itself charms with its quiet persistence.

Bouncer’s Dream, Neighbours (6 September)

→ Watch on Facebook
Soap opera took a surreal turn in this 1990 Neighbours episode: Bouncer the dog dreams he’s marrying Rosie the border collie. Equal parts literal and absurd, the scene has grown into a piece of soap folklore.

Perth in bloom (1 September)

→ Watch on Facebook
Shot in 1957, Perth: Garden City Shows its Spring Creations takes us through King’s Park in full bloom – a curated tribute to place, colour and the lived experience of mid-century Australia.

The Matrix films in Australia (28 March)

→ Watch on Facebook
Before The Matrix became a global cultural touchstone, it transformed Sydney’s CBD into a backdrop for high-octane filmmaking. This 1998 news segment captures that transformation in real time.

Lighthouse keepers on Maatsuyker Island (20 September)

→ Watch on Facebook
This 1949 film records the exacting life of lighthouse keepers on remote Maatsuyker Island. Surrounded by ocean and stone, the everyday work demands absolute precision – or the light won’t reach the sea, and people could die.

Excerpt from ARTZONE: The Avalanches – The Making of 'Since I Left You' (Philippe Charluet, 1999).

Stories that keep circulating

An examination of how gender roles were constructed and sold through mid-20th-century advertising – images that remain familiar, and newly legible, at the same time.
→ Read Homemakers and breadwinners

An essential grounding in Indigenous screen culture, tracing continuity, innovation and authorship across generations.
→ Read A short history of First Nations filmmaking