Newsreels as dramas

In the first half of the 20th century, cinema newsreels drew audiences with dramatic re-enactments and reporting of unfolding real-life dramas. These newsreels, many of which have been archived by the NFSA, provided a behind-the-scenes look at police investigations, foreshadowing the modern crime procedural. In these Australia Today newsreels, for example, the murder of an unknown woman by a ‘fiend in human form’ is narrated to a cinematic score. The tone is sensationalist and excited, and the newsreel treats the horror and dread of the crime as a drama. 

Paradise lost

Towards the end of the century, there was a discernible shift in reporting to more subjective and emotive accounts, with an undercurrent of moralising. In this 1981 broadcast, Network Ten reported on the 15th anniversary of the Wanda Beach murders in 1965. The opening clip features a police officer warning teenage girls to learn from the tragedy, which saw two 15-year-old girls murdered, their bodies discovered on the dunes at Wanda Beach near Cronulla. The case remains unsolved, despite ongoing appeals for information.  

In 1966, three siblings under the age of 10 disappeared from an Adelaide beach and were never found. The vanishing of the Beaumont children, the mystery of which was documented in this 1967 report, followed the Wanda Beach murders, the kidnapping and murder of Graeme Thorne in 1960 and the exposure of serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke in 1963. This changed how Australians lived, ushering in a more cautious era of parenting. This anniversary broadcast of the Beaumont case describes it as ‘the story which made Australia lock its front door’. 

Inflection points

Australia’s television news media has captured pivotal moments in the nation’s history. In this 1967 report from the Nine Network, a reporter is stationed outside Pentridge Prison where Ronald Ryan is about to be hanged. He stands amid a sea of protestors, whose objections to Ryan’s execution helped lead to the abolition of the death penalty. That same year, Prime Minister Harold Holt vanished from Cheviot Beach in Victoria, shocking the nation. As documented in this 1967 report, a memorial service was broadcast just five days after his disappearance. It remains one of Australia’s greatest unsolved mysteries.  

The Hilton bombing in 1978, the country’s first terrorist incident, has spurred endless speculation about its true perpetrators. In 1977, anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and his body was never found. That same year, designer and socialite Florence Broadhurst was murdered in her Paddington boutique. News file footage from the scene shows her employees in shock, capturing the immediate aftermath of the crime. 

First on the scene

As network competition intensified, journalists raced to crime scenes. The 1987 Hoddle Street Massacre saw a 19-year-old gunman kill seven and wound 19 in a 45-minute shooting spree. Nine News reporter Paul Murphy was there shortly after the attacks, capturing footage of a police chopper overhead, shocked witnesses, and the wounded wandering in confusion.   

In 1994, this Seven Network news bulletin covered the arrest of a man charged with the murders of seven backpackers whose remains were discovered in Belanglo State Forest. The details of Ivan Milat's crimes were reported to a horrified but attentive nation. 

When, five years later, eight bodies were found in an old bank vault in Snowtown, South Australia, four men were arrested for the torture and murder of 12 people – crimes that had begun in 1992. A news bulletin from the Seven Network named the suspects, but their faces were pixelated, marking a shift in media reportage on crime. 

The language of crime

Australia’s history of crime has coloured our imaginations, its influence extending to Australian films. The Walsh Street shootings – the worst attack on police in Victoria since 1878 when the Kelly Gang shot and killed three police officers at Stringybark Creek – inspired the film Animal Kingdom (2010).

As with many cases documented in the NFSA collection, nobody was convicted of the crime, and its randomness – and lack of a tidy resolution – has ensured its staying power. Some true crime stories haunt us precisely because they withhold what we love about their fictional counterparts: a satisfying ending. 
 

Harry Windsor is a film critic for The Hollywood Reporter and the former editor of Inside Film. His byline has appeared in The Guardian, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper and The Australian. 

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