An unusual photograph album, featuring images of the making of the film Eureka Stockade near Singleton in 1947, has prompted me to do some research into the interesting production. The album of photos, credited to photographer Ronald Fuller, was owned by Mrs Doris Parsons and provided by her grand-daughter, Kris Eyre.
After World War 2 the British film industry was struggling to survive. Impoverished by the war, Britain was trying desperately to stop what remained of its battered economy from bleeding to death as the US dollar became the global currency of trade. Every dollar was precious, and one way these scarce greenbacks were leaving Britain was through the film studios of Hollywood. People loved American films and were happy to pay for the privilege of watching them. British film-makers didn’t have the funds or the depth of talent available to the Americans, but they tried their best to stay in the race. Using Commonwealth countries for film-making was seen as a helpful idea. Despite the dramatic changes in alliances and loyalties wrought by the war, the Commonwealth was still tied to Britain’s apron-strings. Australia had turned to the USA as its new protector, but traditional bonds with Britain were durable and movie-making in Australia apparently offered potential tax advantages for British firms.
According to John Baxter in his book, The Australian Cinema, the British Government in 1945 suggested to noted film industry figure Michael Balcon that the firm he headed, Ealing Studios, might consider making a film about Australia’s war effort. The Australian Government is said to have first proposed the idea. Balcon sent director Harry Watt to Australia to scout for possibilities and, although the propaganda film didn’t eventuate, Watt heard a story about 85,000 head of cattle that had been driven overland from the Northern Territory to the coast in 1942 – under the shadow of the supposed Japanese invasion threat. He loved the story and decided it should be made into a film. The resulting movie was The Overlanders, with a script based on research by Newcastle-born author Dora Birtles, who published a novel of the same name in January 1946. This film, now regarded as a classic, premiered in September 1946 and was a commercial and critical success, despite its then-enormous £100,000 budget. Delighted, Harry Watt and Ealing Studies were eager for a follow-up.
That follow-up was to be Eureka Stockade. Apparently Watt was personally quite left-leaning in his political views. During his time in Australia he helped a Dutch film-maker, Joris Ivens, secretly make the film Indonesia Calling (funded by the Australian Waterside Workers Federation) promoting the rather heretical idea of Indonesian independence. Watt became excited by the story of the gold-miners’ rebellion and all it had come to symbolize for Australians. He immersed himself in study of the historical event, interviewing descendants of rebels and borrowing various artifacts for use in the film.
Much to the dismay of some Ballarat residents, in May 1947 it was announced that the film would be shot in the Hunter Valley of NSW. A property at Blind Creek, near Singleton, was chosen as the main outdoor filming location. Ealing negotiated for the re-opening of the mothballed Pagewood Studios in Sydney for indoor scenes and Pagewood became the home of Ealing’s Australian operation for some years. Watt explained to the disappointed Victorians that he needed a greenfield site on which he could recreate the look and feel of Ballarat in the 1850s. Singleton citizens were overjoyed, of course. Many Hunter Valley locals were to be employed on the project including as extras, playing the roles of rioting miners and head-belting troopers.
The film ended up costing twice as much as The Overlanders and it was dogged by problems from the start. It was almost brought completely unstuck when the British Government, fretting about the dominance of Hollywood movies in its home market, proposed a 75 per cent tax on profits from films made overseas. Eureka Stockade was caught up in this proposal and work on the project stopped while tense negotiations took place. Ealing had to agree to bring more British personnel to Australia for the film, making it a “British film on location” and avoiding most of the tax impost. Another issue arose when Watt was forced to cast the Australian star of The Overlanders, Chips Rafferty, in the lead role in Eureka Stockade. Rafferty’s success in the first film had led to him signing a contract with Ealing. Unfortunately, although Rafferty’s standard Aussie character was perfect for The Overlanders, he wasn’t a good fit when it came to portraying Peter Lalor, the Irish-Catholic firebrand of Eureka.
A huge effort went into setting the scene for the film at Blind Creek. The film’s program – now something of a rarity – outlines some of the story.
Little articles such as clay pipes, for instance, were necessary for authenticity, but quite unobtainable. Nobody knew anything about clay pipes. They weren’t even interested in them. Then out of the blue, somebody remembered an old German who once made clay pipes. Leslie Norman traced this man, only to find he’d been dead for many years. Finally, after weeks of searching, a case of clay pipes was found in an old storeroom near Milson’s Point, Sydney, NSW. The procuring of just one small item gives some idea of the enormous job entailed by film producers to get the real thing.
Hundreds of old-time weapons were needed. They came from all over Australia. People responded marvellously to Press stories appealing for muzzle-loader pistols. Police officials in all States also helped with museum-pieces from their own collections. An armourer had to be found to put the old-timers in working order.
The armourer, Bill Foster, reconstructed to working order a broad array of 240 old weapons, including a blunderbuss.
Make-up expert, Tom Shenton, was brought from London to train Australians to be his assistants during production of the film. The men he picked were keen. It was all new to them, and meant they would be the only local experts in the field when Shenton returned to London. They made hundreds of beards from human hair for the actors and “extras” to wear. This meant knotting each hair singly on a base of hairnet. It was dreadfully tedious work, but it was the only way to make an artificial beard that looked more real than some of the natural beards grown by the actors.
At Blind Creek – out of Singleton, associate producer Leslie Norman had set up an exact replica of Ballarat. Signs were up – Bentley’s Eureka Hotel, Ma O’Rourke’s Lemonade, the Ballarat Times, the Theatre Royal, the Court House, and other well-known (in those days) establishments. Miners’ tents were strewn along the roadside, mine shafts with hand winches were everywhere. Blind Creek ran through the centre of the location. At the bottom of the main street, where it was deepest, with a dam banked up on one side, the art department had built a bridge true in every detail to construction plans of 100 years ago. This bridge, about 40 ft long, was strong enough to carry the weight of hundreds of horsemen galloping at full speed.
The producers hired an old fossicker named Fred King to teach the actors how to pan for gold. One actor, Tom Doble, even found some gold during shooting on location below Mount Dangar and staked a claim on the spot. For many months the 20 ha site was home to at least 100 people while most of the senior production personnel were accommodated at the nearby Army camp. The Army loaned 200 soldiers to act as extras in the crowd scenes. In a newspaper interview Watt remarked that:
We brought 25 full-blooded aborigines from Queensland, imported bullock wagons from the timber country, even obtained koala bears from a reserve 100 miles away. The only authentic detail we failed in was Chinamen. They were earning too much money as waiters in Sydney, and refused to come! Some of the “props” took a lot of finding. We combed Australia for period muskets and pistols, and we had to borrow the Governor’s coach from a museum.
Weather was one of the biggest problems Watt faced during the production. Unseasonal rain prevented filming for weeks on end and turned the site into a muddy bog. At one point a gale blew down the tents of the miners’ settlement and damaged other parts of the set, causing more delays. It took six months to get all the outdoor shooting finished. The climactic mass protest scene, involving hundreds of actors and extras, was shot in mid-January 1948.
Health and safety issues loomed large. Star Chips Rafferty broke ribs twice and kept filming with his chest bound up. The English female lead and love-interest, Jane Barrett, was hospitalised in February 1948, suffering from sun exposure and infected insect bites. (Meanwhile her husband was in St Vincents Hospital in Sydney being treated for meningitis he contracted shortly after arriving in Australia.) On one day in April 1948 a stunt man and an actor were treated in Singleton Hospital. The stunt man missed a cushioned piece of ground he was meant to fall on and landed on rocks instead. The actor went too close to 5m drop and fell over. Another actor managed to stay focused during a shoot when a snake crawled up his trouser leg. In July 1948, as filming at the Sydney studio neared its end, a dramatic fire scene was made more dramatic when the fire took hold too strongly. According to a report in The Sydney Morning Herald:
Chips Rafferty, Australian film actor, made a real fire rescue on the Eureka Stockade set at Pagewood Studios last night. He was waiting on the set for his cue to dash into burning Bentley’s Hotel to rescue Sydney actress Dorothy Allison. The fire, started by property men, obtained a good hold too quickly, and Miss Allison’s screams started long before the director, Harry Watt, gave the order for her to scream. Rafferty realised her danger, rushed up to the landing, and carried her out of the fire area. His hair caught fire and his hat fell off and started to burn. The film company’s fire control unit quickly put out the fire and then started to reassemble the scene for re-shooting.
The film premiered in London on Australia Day 1949, in Sydney on May 6 and in Melbourne on May 21. The Sydney and Melbourne premiere’s were huge events, attracting large crowds. Singleton got to see the show before Melbourne did, on May 16. Naturally the town’s Strand cinema was packed, since so many locals had been involved in making the movie. Singleton folk were thrilled to see themselves not only in the film, but also in the movie trailer and the printed program [see header to this post]. The Singleton Argus reported:
Three Singletonians are easily recognised in the Strand Theatre’s Souvenir Programme for the film “Eureka Stockade,” filmed here, and which will be showing at the Strand from next Monday. In colour on the front cover are Messrs. Stan Parker and Albert Rooney. Mr S. Parker, a well-known Upper Hunter footballer, sits nursing a rifle in the cover foreground, which depicts the miners’ last stand. Mr. Charlie Smith may also be seen clearly in another photograph. Michael O’Regan, well known Hunter Valley radio personality is also included. Appearing in the film trailer at present showing at the Strand is Singleton personality Mr Bob Hipwell.
Was the film any good? Critics gave it mixed reviews, at best. Australian journalist Rupert Lockwood made the following interesting comments:
When Harry Watt went to Australia to make the Eureka Stockade, he claimed that it would be an “historical picture without distortion of facts.” His intentions were good, but it is alleged that Australian reactionaries, who fear the spirit and meaning of Eureka, started writing home to London. One can be thankful that the modifications ordered were not sufficient to spoil the film.
This photo came from a different source; the late Bob Myles, of Wallsend. Bob provided the caption: “Left to right : My cousin Bill Ballantyne, his mother Olive Ballantyne, Chips Rafferty, my mother Ethel Myles and my grandmother, Sara Myles.
Front: my sister Janice Myles.”
Many English critics, however, were harsh in their comments. The production was described as “amateurish”, the dialogue was panned and Rafferty’s performance was described as unconvincing. When the film opened in the United States the following year, under the title “Massacre Hill”, American audiences were baffled by the Australian accents and words and confused by the story itself.
It’s fair to say that Eureka Stockade was a flop. Still, Ealing Studios persevered in Australia, and so did Harry Watt. But the election of the conservative Menzies Government in 1949 didn’t help. In the 1950s the government cancelled Ealing’s lease on the Pagewood Studios and introduced capital controls that are credited with putting film-making in Australia into the doldrums for the next two decades.
