Historic news footage saved in Mildura find

Historical footage stored at a former Mildura TV news studio has been saved.

ABC reports archival news footage taken of the town in the 1960s and ’70s, documenting important local events such as flooding of the Murray River, has been salvaged from the former WIN TV building.

The building was occupied by Sunraysia Television 9 (STV8) in 1965, then was used by WIN News from 2006 before the station was forced to close in a statewide restructure in 2015.

“The footage goes all the way back to the STV8 days, when of course back at the start that was shot on 16-millimetre film, and eventually became tape all sorts of different type formats,” local history enthusiast and founder of Frames of History Ian MacWilliams said.

“The original materials are news film, and then later on, there was news film and commercial film, which used to make the ads so all of that materials been stored at WIN TV, since it was on TV.

“That material has over time become available to me. I got hold of the 16 millimetre footage and last year in 2022 I’ve been able to get access to the remaining footage, which is mostly tape, all sorts of different tape.”

Head of collections and preservation at the Australian Centre for Moving Image, Nick Richardson said regions were under represented in ACMI’s national collection.

“Our earliest item goes back to the 1890s but certainly the majority of that Australian-based footage tends to focus on the bigger centres,” he said.

“So the regional material is incredibly important. It gives us an insight into the social and economic history of those regions and I think it’s a really fascinating way for emerging current and emerging generations to connect with the past and with their area.

“It’s often been said that we can understand the personal look towards the future without fully understanding our past so the material is incredibly important to the country.”

You can read more here.

Photo: ABC