Cinema Web: Quairading to Tuart Hill

Rivervale Gardens 1981

Riversdale Public Hall was opened on 22 February 1919. In 1935 Guildford Rd was renamed Great Eastern Highway: before that, that section of Guildford Rd from Belmont Ave to the railway line was known as Ascot Rd, and this is the section (between Norwood and Surrey Sts) in which the Riversdale hall was built, which might confirm that it was called the Ascot theatre. The local community (the Riversdale Progress Association, led by the Newey family) raised all the funds for the hall and were actively seeking to have the district named Riversdale, but were unsuccessful: the compromise was Rivervale, and the locals called the hall the Rivervale Theatre.
Films were shown there from very early (perhaps even from the beginning) and the Belmont Historical Society has photos of the hall with film posters displayed outside, even before the bio-box was built above the porch.
However, the local committee running the hall ran into debt and the hall was sold and used for various purposes, including as a billiard saloon. It reverted to use as a picture theatre after World War 2.
The original hall held only 250, and a gardens holding 300-350 was built alongside in about 1948, with a corrugated iron fence and canvas deckchairs: in 1958 it was enlarged to hold 350, and a new facade built.
The theatre and gardens were operated by R.R.Perrie, who had a circuit in the southern suburbs, taking in Armadale, Gosnells, Queens Park and Bayswater as well as Rivervale.
The theatre survived the early years of television, but closed in 1966. The building was used for offices, and later as a warehouse, and in the nineties was still there, but difficult to recognise as a former cinema: it was used as commercial premises.
Sources: Shire of Belmont, Historical Inventory, pp.66-69
Max Bell, Perth – a cinema history, The Book Guild, Lewes, Sussex, 1986, pp.19, 55
Film Weekly Directory, 1945/6 – 1966/7
Post OFfice Directory, 1946 – 1949
West Australian, 1951 – 1966
Conversation with Ann Spalding, Belmont Historical Society, 9 August 1997

Photos: 1 exterior, colour, 1981 (Bill Turner)
3 exteriors, b&w, (one of opening ceremony, one before bio-box was built, one after bio-box), various dates, Belmont Historical Society
1 exterior, colour, 1996, City of Belmont, Municipal Inventory, p.66

ROCKINGHAM

MELODY HALL & GARDENS, Kent St, Rockingham

Map

Fronting on Kent St, on the corner of Railway Tce, the Melody Theatre was built with 450 seats, and a 350-seat gardens behind (along Railway Tce), for Sylvia Pell. Bill Ray was electrical contractor on the job, and married Sylvia Pell soon after. The theatre opened first (in 1955), then the gardens, even though by now the Century Gardens was open next door. The two open-air shows shared a fence, their screens only feet away from each other: the sound from one could be clearly heard in the other – a state of affairs which would only be tolerated in the boom days of the fifties. On one memorable occasion, the Melody was showing Captain Horatio Hornblower and the Century had a love story. Each put up the sound to try to drown out the other. From the Century came the dialogue: ´What can I do to prove that I love you?’ From the Melody came the reply: ´Give her a broadside!’

The second Melody Gardens was built by Bill Ray and Les Westley, diagonally across the road – a larger premises which could hold 5-600, with a brick screen that covered the whole of the back of the block. The theatre and gardens continued for some time after the drive-in was built: Lindsay Morris remembers switching between the two venues when he was projectionist there in 1961-3. The gardens closed in 1963-4, and the theatre in 1967: the theatre was gutted, and a new front was built for the shops which then occupied the site, but the exterior walls of the theatre building were incorporated into the new development.

Sources: Max Bell, Perth: a cinema history, The Book Guild, Lewes, 1986 pp. 34, 60, 115-6
Daily News, 23 Mar. 1997
West Australian 1961 – 1962
Interviews (Ina Bertrand): Jack Bidstrup (1985), Lindsay Morris (1997)
Photo: Daily News, 23 Mar. 1997

ROCKINGHAM 3 CINEMAS/ ROCKINGHAM 6 CINEMAS, Leghorn St, Rockingham

Rockingham 3 Cinemas 1997

A triple cinema was opened in November 1981, on the south side of Leghorn St and opposite the intersection of Success Drive, operated by Coastal Cinemas. That first summer was also the trial of daylight saving in the state, and the cinemas suffered from this, but after the referendum Western Australia dropped ´summer time’ and the cinemas went on to be very successful indeed. They were operated in conjunction with Coastal Cinemas’ Fremantle venues, and screening the same product. Another three screens were added, opening 28 September 1995.

Hoyts took over the venue on 21 December 2001, along with the rest of Coastal Cinemas’ screens (in Fremantle).

Sources: Kino, no.39, March 1992 p.25; no.40, June 1992, p.26; no.43, March 1993, p.31; no.53, September 1995, p.31; no.54, December 1995, p.35; no.75, Autumn 2001, p.35.
West Australian 1991 – 2000
Interview (Margaret Howroyd): Peter Thomson (1994)
Interview (Ina Bertrand): Peter Thomson (1997)

Photos: 1 exterior, colour, 1997, Graeme Bertrand

ROCKINGHAM HALL & GARDENS/ CENTURY & GARDENS, Kent St, Rockingham

Map

When Reg Grigg, owner of the Rockingham Hotel, went to World War 2 he leased the hotel to a group of people who had been involved in the film business in Perth, including L. A. Brewer. This group replaced the tennis courts beside the hotel (next to Flinders Lane) with an open air picture show seating about 350. The small hall attached to the hotel, known as the ´Jazz Hall’ because it had been used as a dance hall and fun parlour (it still had the crazy mirrors around the walls), was operated with the gardens as Rockingham Hall and Gardens.

At the expiry of the lease (some time after the end of the war), Grigg resumed the premises, continued to operate the hall but replaced the picture gardens with a beer garden, and shifted the open-air screen further up Kent St, towards Railway Tce and next to the new Melody Theatre. He renamed the show the Century Theatre and Gardens. It was a simple ´gardens’ seating 6-700, with toilets on either side of the screen, at the far end of the site from the entrance, and three blocks of seating – two of deck chairs and one of metal-framed wooden benches with wooden backs. The cement walls were painted green and yellow, and trees were planted near the toilet entrances. There was a small shop for selling sweets and drinks. A feature was a private ´box’ (a railed area with comfortable seating) for the Grigg family, located next to the bio-box at the rear. In the fifties, films were screened in the gardens seven nights a week from Christmas to Easter, and one or two nights a week for the rest of the year. Jack Bidstrup operated the show in unofficial partnership with Grigg, moving the projection equipment up and down the street from the gardens to the hall, depending on which one was in operation that night. There were only three or four occasions when the Century Gardens was full to capacity, so the seating was never increased. The shared boundary with the first Melody gardens was a continuing problem, till the Melody built new gardens on the opposite corner.

The Century and Gardens closed in 1963, and no trace remained of them in the nineties.

Sources: Max Bell, Perth: a cinema history, The Book Guild, Lewes, 1986 pp. 65, 104-5
Nora Taggart, Rockingham looks back: a history of the Rockingham District 1829-1982, Rockingham District Historical Society 1984
Interview (Ina Bertrand): Jack Bidstrup (1985)

ROEBOURNE

ROEBOURNE OPEN AIR PICTURES, Sholl St, Roebourne

The first settlers in the Roebourne district arrived in 1863 and the town of Roebourne was gazetted in 1866. This makes it one of the oldest surviving settlements, but it has never been a large town and is now overshadowed by other towns in the Pilbara, like Karratha (which became the administrative centre for the Shire of Roebourne in 1975). Roebourne is on the coast, but was never an important port: it was served first by Cossack and later by Point Samson. Rather it is a pastoral and mining centre, servicing a large surrounding area.
In the fifties, Mr Tsakalos owned a blue asbestos trucking business, the butcher shop, the open air picture show and one of the town’s three stores. The picture show was located on the north side of Sholl St, between Padbury and Withnell Sts. On the road frontage patrons entered a passage between the bio-box on the right and the ticket box on the left, built into the concession building which opened into the theatre area. The front wall was of corrugated iron, the other walls of wire mesh. The firm gravel floor sloped down from the entrance, with the whites and town aboriginal people sitting in the back rows on metal-frame sling seats, and the aboriginal people from the Reserve in the front rows on metal seats.

The venue opened on Wednesdays and Saturdays in the fifties all through the year, unless there had been rain and the seats were wet. Even in cold weather, it was always packed, with patrons bringing two rugs – one to sit on and one to cover their laps.

This was what Maureen Whitby calls ´a more innocent time’: young people were not allowed into the hotel, so the picture show was their main social meeting place, ´the only place your old man could take you when you were courting’. She remembers that ´All the noisy buggers sat on that side [the left facing the screen], Mums and dads in the middle, and the smoochers on the other side. You knew you were serious when you moved over to the smoochers’ side.’ She remembers the serials Jungle Jim and Tarzan, and the frustration of finding that episodes of these were missing from the schedule.

It was functioning before 1956, but the exact date is not clear. It closed in 1970, and for a short while films were screened on Yandina flat, near the Old People’s Home, but the floor there was dusty and the wind always blew sand in people’s faces, so attendance dropped off and it soon closed. In 1997, nothing remained of the Sholl St premises, which was then the site for a transportable house, next to the Veterinary Surgeon.
Sources: Informant: Maureen Whitby (1997)

ROLEYSTONE

PANORAMA DRIVE-IN THEATRE, Soldiers Rd, Roleystone

Roleystone Drive in 1980’s

Roleystone Drive in 1980’s

Roleystone Drive in 1980’s

In 1956 Colin Hatfield closed the Roleystone Gardens and replaced it with a drive-in, opened about Easter on the south-west corner of the intersection of Soldiers Rd with the Brookton Highway. There was a small shop on the corner of the ten-acre block, which he adapted for use as an enclosed sit-in area, with comfortable seats like any theatre, but looking out through plate glass windows onto the huge drive-in screen. This sit-in area held 150 people, but he also built an open air section beside the house, which held a further 3-400. There was space for about one hundred cars in the drive-in section, though at first more could be squeezed in because for eighteen months sound was broadcast from loudspeakers, until he had time and capital to instal individual car speakers.

The venue was extremely successful, while drive-ins were a novelty and he could obtain product very quickly after city release because he was outside the twenty mile protection zone. It survived the arrival of television, but soon after that attendances began to decline, so he closed in April 1967, and the projection equipment was used to start up the Exmouth drive-in.

In 1997, the building used for the sit-in area was an antique shop, a real estate agent had premises on the site and the rest of the site was vacant.

Sources: Film Weekly Directory 1955/6 – 1966/7
Max Bell, Perth – a cinema history, The Book Guild, Lewes, Sussex, p.128
Daphne Popham, First stage south: a history of the Armadale-Kelmscott district, Town of Armadale 1980, p.149
West Australian, 18 April 1957, 1959 – 1966
Interview (Ina Bertrand): Colin Hatfield (1997)

Photos; 2 sepia, exterior , 1980’s Max Bell

ROLEYSTONE HALL AND GARDENS, Brookton Hwy, Roleystone

The Roleystone Hall was built in about 1922, north of the Brookton Highway, opposite the intersection with Croydon Rd. It was a small timber hall, with a corrugated iron roof, set back from the road and running parallel with it. It was constructed under the auspices of the Roleystone Progress Association, and only later passed over to the municipality.

On Saturday nights from 28 August 1948, Colin Hatfield exhibited in this hall, his first program being the double feature Miracle on 34th Street and Trail Street. Hatfield built a bio-box on the outside of the front wall, and the venue was so popular that on many occasions it was packed out – filling aisles, and squeezing in chairs wherever they would fit.

After only one summer season it became obvious that a less crowded venue was necessary during warmer weather, so Hatfield obtained permission from the Council to build an open air theatre, at right angles and to the east of the hall, taking up some of the parking space. This enabled him to use the same bio-box, turning the projectors to throw south, onto a screen placed at the foot of the hill, nearly on the highway. The natural slope of the ground provided ideal viewing conditions, and he installed a central fenced area of deckchairs on grass, surrounded by wooden seats.

Screenings continued here until 1956, when Hatfield opened the Panorama Drive-in. In later years the hall was leased to the Roleystone Theatre Inc, who added to the building and turned it into a live theatre.

Sources: City of Armadale, Municipal Heritage Inventory, R10
Max Bell, Perth – a cinema history, The Book Guild, Lewes, Sussex, pp.65-6
Daphne Popham, First stage south: a history of the Armadale-Kelmscott district, Town of Armadale 1980, p.149
Film Weekly Directory, 1955/6 – 1966/7
Interview (Ina Bertrand): Colin Hatfield (1997)
Photo: 1 exterior, colour, n.d., City of Armadale, Municipal Heritage Inventory, R10
1 exterior, colour, 1997, Graeme Bertrand

ROTTNEST ISLAND

ROTTNEST ISLAND PICTURE HALL, Rottnest Island

Rottnest Island Picture Hall 1985

Rottnest Island Picture Hall 2001

This timber-framed corrugated iron hall, seating 250, was built in the thirties and used for all the social occasions on the island. In the thirties, it was on Bart Mott’s Star Entertainments circuit, with Charles Legg visiting about once a month. In the forties the screenings were run by F.H.Lawrence, and in the fifties by V.C.Lucas. There was apparently an open air venue attached to the hall at least from 1953, and screenings in hall or gardens continued into the sixties. Screenings were revived in the school holidays in 1989, and the hall was refurbished in 1996. Over the summer of 2001-2 films were screened three times a week (Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday).

Sources: Max Bell, Perth: a cinema history, The Book Guild, Lewes, 1986 pp.47-8
Max Bell, ´Rottnest Island Picture Hall’, Kino, no.53, Sept.1995, p.23
Film Weekly Directory 1943-1971
Kino, no.29, September 1989, p.23; no.56, June 1996, p.31
Interview (Ina Bertrand): Charles Legg (1997)

Photos: 1 exterior, b&w, 1995, Kino no.53, Sept.1995, p.23 (Max Bell)
1 exterior, colour, 1985 (Robert Newton); 2001 (Graeme Bertrand)

SAFETY BAY

SAFETY BAY HALL/BAY VIEW, cnr Penguin Rd & Safety Bay Rd, Safety Bay

Mandogalup Hall was being paid for by the local community, which was so small that it could not keep up payments. When the State Saw Mills foreclosed, the hall was bought by Mr Dave Sparkes, who transported it to the north-west corner of the intersection of Penguin Rd and Safety Bay Rd, where it became the social centre of Safety Bay, housing a shop as well as a hall (used for dances and pingpong and birthday parties) and a supper room behind (used once a week as the doctor’s surgery). In approx. 1941, before he began working for Grigg at Rockingham, Jack Bidstrup took a lease on the hall and began screening fortnightly on Saturday nights, for the benefit of the local people (about 1,000 at the time), the guests at Kingsview Lodge, and the Americans at the naval base:

On Long Point, a rest and recreation base was established for the use of crews of American submarines patrolling these western waters. It was partly to provide the recreation part of the programme that John Bidstrup was encouraged to bring films down to Safety Bay Hall every Saturday night. This was no mean feat in those blacked-out war days. There were no street lights, and all car lights had to be carefully hooded, giving only the merest glimmer which barely lighted more than two yards of the road. The car in which he travelled was the usual open tourer of the time, with celluloid side curtains as the only protection against the weather. Hot or cold, rain or shine, winter or summer, John Bidstrup and his wife arrived about six o’clock at the Safety Bay Hall and, often in pitch darkness, prepared for the evening’s entertainment. Curtains hung across every door; think brown paper covered every window. The entrance hall was lit by a small ghostly blue light, the projector was most carefully hooded, and only the dimmest of lights used in the hall itself. After the show was over, he had to face the hazardous journey back to Perth. He could travel only at a snail’s pace, so it was usually two or three o’clock in the morning when he reached home. Petrol was strictly rationed, and tyres were almost unobtainable. He was constantly beset by a growing anxiety lest he should run out of petrol or have a puncture. After the war he was presented with a plaque by the government, in recognition of his efforts to keep up morale by entertaining people during the war. (Taggart, p.218)

The hall, christened the Bay View Theatre, held approximately 200 canvas deck chairs, a few long forms at the front for the children, and a row of standard theatre seats along the back wall. As time passed screenings became more frequent, till they were provided six nights per week. Similarly, the season, which was at first only from Christmas to Easter, increased as the population of the district expanded. As the business prospered, the family rented a house nearby at weekends, and finally moved to Safety Bay in 1945. It was always a family affair, with Mr Bidstrup projecting, and the children selling tickets, ushering and helping in the shop, Mrs Bidstrup working mainly at Rockingham once that had opened. Film was sometimes switched between the Bay View and the Century, Rockingham. At first, the Bidstrup family paid nightly rent, then when the lease ran out they bought into the building. The people who ran the shop in the other section of the hall also had a lease, and when both leases expired the two families bought the hall as tenant-in-common, continuing to each run their own business in the now jointly-owned premises. The Bay View closed in 1962.

Sources: Max Bell, Perth: a cinema history, The Book Guild, Lewes, 1986 p.121
Nora Taggart, Rockingham looks back, Rockingham and District Historical Society 1984
Interview (Ina Bertrand): Jack Bidstrup (1985)

Photos: 1 exterior, b&w, 1940, Richard Draper & Dale Kerferd, Rockingham: from city 1872 to city 1988, Sound International Public Relations & Seminar Consultants on behalf of Rockingham City Council, 1988, p.23
1 exterior, b&w, n.d., Nora Taggart, Rockingham looks back: a history of the Rockingham District 1829-1982, Rockingham District Historicalk Society 1984, opp.p.212

SANDSTONE

HALL & GARDENS, Hack St, Sandstone

Sandstone Hall 1999

The first biograph operator in the Central district to be registered in the Post Office Directory was in Sandstone, out towards what is now the sparsely-populated western portion of the Central district. However, this is less surprising when we remember that in 1909 Sandstone was one of the gold boom towns, with a large population and substantial buildings in a wide and prosperous main street.

Paddy Baker, who was later to be so successful touring further south, entered film exhibition in Sandstone as assistant operator for Charlie Hebbard. Hebbard was listed as operator at Sandstone in the Post Office Directory in 1911, but may have been showing films even before that if Paddy Baker’s memory is correct: Baker says he worked for Hebbard for five to six years, and left in 1914. In those days the machine was hand-cranked and had no take-up spool. In 1978, Baker described it like this:

I was assistant operator. I turned out the gaslight and picked up the films. There was no take-up in those days: it just came off the machine and was all handwound… My job was to pick up the two ends of each bundle and put them into a sack or a basket or something or other and keep the two ends together and hang them on to a hook in the film room and eventually we did get a take-up. It was hand wound by myself: if you pulled too hard you pulled the bottom loop through and if you didn’t pull hard enough it built up on the floor, and you got a kick in the tail in both cases.

Baker later took over the business and constructed a gardens as well as operating in the hall. Little is known about what this first hall and gardens was like, except that the Shire holds one photograph of the interior of the hall. It is a large hall, with a timber floor, and walls and ceiling lined with pressed metal. The stage is quite shallow, and there is no evidence of a permanent screen for films. There is no photo of the other end of the hall, to tell us if it had a bio-box. The gardens was said to be beside the hall.

When the first hall burned down, the current hall was built almost in the same place (perhaps slightly closer to Rowe St), and of very similar design. In 1999 it was being renovated, with plaster walls above wooden panelling to about one metre. The only relic of the gardens was the screen painted on the end of the Shire Depot building next door: this is what appears in the photo held by the Battye, though at the time that was taken (the sixties?) there was no fence, and in the nineties there is a wire mesh fence.

After Hebberd, this venue may have been operated by Griggs, and it certainly seems to have been conducted like the one Alf Peterson ran at Agnew: cars would drive up to face the screen, and other patrons would sit on seats between and in front of the cars, with sound broadcast over loudspeakers.

It is not clear when screenings began or ceased, but it was many years ago.

Sources: Post Office Directory 1911
Interview (Ina Bertrand): Alan Larkin
Interview (Peter Morris): Paddy Baker (1978)
Informant: Shire of Sandstone (1999)
Photo: 1 exterior (open air venue), b&w, n.d. (1950s?) Battye 3628B
1 exterior (open air venue screen), colour, 1999, Graeme Bertrand

SCARBOROUGH

FIESTA AND GARDENS/SCARBOROUGH AND GARDENS, 58-62 Scarborough Beach Rd, Scarborough

Fiesta Theatre 1981

The Fiesta Theatre was on the north-west corner of the intersection of Scarborough Beach Rd and Joyce St. Scarborough Theatres operated this venue and the Waldorf and Gardens at Innaloo: in fact, there is some confusion over the names of the venues, both of which appear to have been known as ‘Scarborough Pictures’ at some stage of their history. The Fiesta seems to have opened in 1953, though it may have been operating before that under another name. It was apparently a theatre first, with gardens added behind the hardtop quite late in the fifties, about 1958, with their entrance in Joyce St. It became a dance hall in September 1961 and then was used by the YMCA as a Youth and Community Centre.

Sources: Film Weekly Directory, 1953/4 – 1961/2
West Australian, 1951 – 1962

Photos: 1 exterior, colour, 1981 (Bill Turner)

SERPENTINE

HALL, Serpentine

The Serpentine hall was constructed of timber with a brick facade and a bio-box built onto the exterior wall.

The first regular screenings in the town were probably those of Bob Perrie, who sold out to Roch Evans’ Modern Cinemas circuit, which screened fortnightly, with Ken Alexander as projectionist. This circuit was bought in 1941 by Charlie Legg. One night he put the case containing the week’s takings down beside the car and drove home to Duncraig before he remembered he had left it on the ground: he raced back and was astonished and relieved to find it still there.

Legg’s circuit, including Serpentine, was taken over in 1949 by Lew Punch, who operated two circuits – one in the wheatbelt and one further south towards Bindoon. His screenings ended in 1958 and the Redman circuit continued in the town till 1961.

Sources: Film Weekly Directory 1940/41 – 1960/61
Interview (Ina Bertrand): Charles Legg (1997)
Interview (Colleen Pead): Ken Alexander (1986)
Correspondence with Judy Love, Mundaring & Hills Historical Society, 19 June 1997, including notes of interview with Lew Punc

SHACKLETON

SHACKLETON MEMORIAL HALL, Jermyn St, Shackleton

Shackleton Hall 1997

The small settlement of Shackleton is between Bruce Rock and Quairading. Local historian John Ewers explains:

On a block of land donated by Dr Jermyn the local settlers had built a small hall of corrugated iron in 1913-14. It served for entertainments until replaced by a larger one in 1920. Here in 1923 the first Shackleton school was opened by Mrs Leedman… The first separate school building, erected in 1926, had its second room added in 1953, and with the closing of the Kwolyin School overflow classes were held in the new hall, which the Road Board had built in 1955 at a cost of £9,700. (p.51)

The hall (built on the north-east corner of the intersection of Jermyn and Venemore Sts in 1955) clearly has a built-in bio-box, and the town was listed as on Columbia Pictures circuit in 1940, though it may also have had other exhibitors.

Sources: Film Weekly Directory 1940/41
John K. Ewers. Bruce Rock: the story of a district, Bruce Rock District Road Board 1959.

Photos: 1 exterior, b&w, n.d., John K. Ewers. Bruce Rock: the story of a district, Bruce Rock District Road Board 1959, Plate XV
1 exterior, colour, 1997, Graeme Bertrand

SHANNON

HALL, Shannon

Allan Jones’ circuit took in Shannon Mill from the early to the late fifties.
Sources: Film Weekly Directory 1951/2 – 1958/9

SHAY GAP

OPEN AIR CINEMA, Shay Gap

Shay Gap gardens 1980

Shay Gap gardens 1980

Shay Gap gardens, Screen 1980

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The town of Shay Gap was built at the start of the seventies by the Goldsworthy Mining company to house its workforce: it was a town designed so that motor traffic was confined to the perimeter road, with all facilities built in a pedestrian precinct in the centre. The cinema was within this precinct, between the shopping complex and the bowling green, built by the company as an amenity for the workers.

The sloping ground for the seating was formed by moving the earth into a retaining wall under the screen: this made a depression in the ground, which was known to occasionally flood in a cyclone, filling the depression in front of the screen up as far as several rows of seats. There was no fence, and the films could be viewed from the verandah of the sporting club, next door, which did not matter, as entrance was free. This siting also meant that the sound did not worry people in their homes, because the screen faced the sporting club and (further away) the single men’s quarters. Behind the main seating area was the bio-box – a metal box, which had arrived fully-equipped on a truck from Perth during the construction phase in the town.

No-one, however, knew how to project, and the first person given the task could not work out how to operate the rewind clutch, so the film piled up on the floor: he left it there, so next morning the film spilled out as they opened the door. This was how Murray Powell came to be head projectionist – he was offered the job because, as the owner of a Pentax camera, he was assumed to know more about film than anyone else in the town. Des Abermardie, from National Theatre Supply Co, provided advice over the phone, and a few weeks later came up to check on progress: he continued to visit irregularly, to maintain the equipment, and was still doing this when Powell left in 1978. There were two projectionists in the box each screening, the assistant trained by Powell after he had worked it all out himself.

There were three screenings each week – on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday (not Saturday, as that was club night). There was a different programme each night, the films travelling around the circuit – arriving from Goldsworty and being sent on to Finucane Island. Murray Powell cannot remember who chose the programmes: he assumes the company had a contract with a supplier in Perth. The casual operation of the cinema – no entrance fee, no fence, attended by whoever felt like turning up – could make for problems. Most people in town (women, children, and men – unless they were rostered on at the mine) would turn up for the start of the movie programme each time, and would stay for the newsreels and the cartoons, but they might then leave if they did not like the feature film. One evening the ‘R’-rated cartoon Sinderella caused consternation and puzzlement among this audience. The men on night shift had to catch the bus to the mine at 10.30 p.m.: if the film was a popular one and had not ended in time, the bus would leave late.

In the early days, the venue was popular enough that all 100 seats would fill. Richard Ensor can remember one screening of The Ten Commandments: everyone sat right through to the end of the movie, despite heavy rain. Murray Powell can remember another occasion when all the audience deserted the cinema because of the rain and lack of interest in the film (The Red Shoes) except for one Ukrainian man, who remained glued to the screen to the bitter end: the projectionists would much rather he had left with the others, so they could go home too.

While Murray Powell was in the town, in the seventies, the cinema was the only recreation, and everyone attended. By the time Richard Ensor lived there (in the eighties), there were other entertainments in the town, and movies were not as important to the community in Shay Gap as they were at Cockatoo. When the Shay Gap cinema closed, about 1988, it was because attendance had dropped off as video became popular.

The town continued for several more years, but was eventually closed, the buildings demolished and the area revegetated.

Sources: Interviews (Ina Bertrand): Jim Woods (1985), Richard Ensor (2000), Murray Powell (2000)
East Pilbara Shire Community Directory 1981-1982, pp.31, 33

Photos; 6 interior and exterior, colour, 1980 , Roy Mudge

SOUTHERN CROSS

GOODIN’S HALL AND OPEN AIR THEATRE, Antares St, Southern Cross

Arthur Herbert Goodin settled in Southern Cross in 1899 and set up in business as a builder. In 1904 he purchased lot 39 in Antares St, next to the Club Hotel which was on the south-east corner of the junction of Antares and Archenar Sts, and in 1915 he purchased part of lot 38 next door. In 1928, he built a hall across the two lots, but set back from the road, behind the shop building already on the front of lot 38. The hall had a good dance floor and was used for many community activities – dances, vaudeville shows, even boxing. It was also the venue for silent moving pictures, but as the arrival of sound coincided with the economic depression there was a period when the hall was transformed into a miniature golf course. After about a year, sound was installed and pictures resumed: these were particularly successful in the period 1933 to 1936, after the Mechanics Hall had burnt down and before the new Town Hall was built.

In 1936, when a mining boom brought many more people to the town, Goodin built an open air theatre behind the hall, at the back of lot 39, and was screening in either the hall or the gardens (depending on the season) four nights per week in the forties. Rupert Morris of Marvel Loch and Harold Enwright of Mount Palmer were screening in the Town Hall in 1941 for a short while, but then sold their film contracts to Goodin. After A.H.Goodin snr’s death in 1945, his son (also Arthur Herbert Goodin) carried on the business, opening Friday to Sunday in winter and adding a Wednesday screening in summer. In 1946, after A.H.Goodin’s son Jim returned from the war, the vacant shop in front of the theatre was opened as a theatre shop, run by Jim Goodin and his wife Irene. The family continued screenings in the hall and gardens after the second A.H.Goodin died in 1961.

The last screening was on 19 December 1965, in anticipation of the opening of the drive-in on 22 December 1965. In 1966, after the death of Mrs Goodin (snr), the building was rented to the Federation of Police and Citizens Youth Club, and purchased by them in 1967. It was later sold to the Club Hotel who demolished the hall and built a function centre on the theatre site, and a beer garden on part of the picture gardens site. In 1997 nothing remained of the hall or the gardens, though the shops on the street frontage were still there.

Sources: Shire of Yilgarn, Brief history of S.X. lots 33-40, n.d.
Film Weekly Directory 1940/41 – 1964/5
Post Office Directory 1941/2 – 1949
Battye Library, ms collection 1459, Public Health Department, building permit
Max Bell, Perth – a cinema history, The Book Guild, Lews, Sussex 1986, p.121
Informant: Jim Goodin (1997, 1998)

MECHANICS INSTITUTE HALL/ TOWN HALL, Antares St, Southern Cross

In 1895 the Miners’ Institute was built on lot 33, on the northern corner of the junction of Antares and Orion Sts. At first, it had a reading room and a small hall, and later a larger hall was built for community activities like dancing and meetings – but also moving pictures. By then it was known as the Mechanics Institute Hall. The earliest screenings in the town were probably those of the Salvation Army Biorama Company, which visited in September 1900, October 1902, March 1904 and November 1904. Paddy Baker’s circuit screened there in the twenties, and showed the first talkie in the town in 1931. But this hall burnt down on 5 February 1933, and Baker left the town for some time. He returned briefly later in the thirties, to screen in Liddles Garage and an open air venue on a vacant block next door to Metzke’s Hardware Shop.

A new Town Hall was built in 1936, on the northern corner of the junction of Antares and Achenar Sts, and officially opened on 16 December 1936. But by then, Goodin’s Hall was in regular use as a cinema, so the new Town Hall was seldom used for moving pictures. However, Rupert Morris of Marvel Loch and Harold Enwright of Mount Palmer were screening in the Town Hall in 1941 for a short while, before they sold their film contracts to Goodins.

In the early nineties, that Town Hall was demolished, and a new one built on the same site, opened in December 1996.

Sources:Shire of Yilgarn, Brief history of S.X. lots 33-40, n.d.
Informant: Jim Goodin (1997, 1998)
Limelight Picture Show Tours, http//:www.abc.net.au/limelight/docs/tours
Photo: 1 exterior, b&w, n.d. Shire of Yilgarn, Brief history of S.X. lots 33-40, p.21

STARVIEW/ SOUTHERN CROSS DRIVE-IN, Southern Cross

The Shire of Yilgarn negotiated a 99-yr lease on a Government railway reserve and took out a loan to build a drive-in. They then leased the drive-in for eighteen years to L. E. and J. W. Goodin, trading as Starview Drive-in: the monthly rental was set at a level to pay off the loan plus interest over the eighteen years.

It opened on 22 December 1965, with facilities for 150 cars. Mrs Goodin snr (L.E.Goodin) died only three months later, but the business was carried on by Jim Goodin and his wife Irene. It was very successful, opening four nights a week at its peak, until television arrived in the district in 1973. So from 1974 to 1979 Goodins sub-leased the screenings to Tony Wilmot of Merredin, and the concession to the Velic family.

The Goodin family (Jim and Irene and their sons Jim and Garry) then resumed the lease, and operated two nights each week until the lease expired in December 1983. The Shire bought the projection and sound equipment and the concession equipment, then rented the venue to Graham Ford who screened for only a few weeks till the drive-in closed in early 1984.

By 1997 the land had been re-absorbed into the Shire facilities, with the bio-box/ concession building being used for a playgroup and the surrounding land turned into Constellation Park.

Sources: Battye Library, ms.collection 1459, Public Health Department, building permit
Max Bell, Perth – a cinema history, The Book Guild, Lewes, Sussex, 1986, p.140
Film Weekly, 6 January 1966, p.6
Film Weekly Directory 1965/6 – 1971
Merredin Mercury
Western Australian 30 July 1997, p.7
Interview (Ina Bertrand): Alan Larkin (1985)
Informant: Jim Goodin (1997, 1998)

SOUTH HEDLAND

MATT DANN CULTURAL CENTRE, Hamilton Rd, South Hedland