Among The Hardwoods

This early film from the Cinema and Photographic Branch was filmed by the intrepid cinematographer Bert Ive on yet another location where he had to haul over 200 lbs of camera equipment. Ive and freelance cameraman Lacey Percival had filmed an earlier and silent film of the same name in 1927 as part of the Know Your Own Country series. But in mid-1936 Ive and a sound recordist revisited the Pemberton region of south-west Western Australia to make a film that focused more on the atmosphere of the forest as it was irrevocably changed by the axe and saw of the loggers. While this new film was half the length of the silent, Ive's director Lyn Maplestone drew added impact by lingering on the sights and sounds of fewer phases of logging trees in the Jarrah and Karri forest in the Pemberton, transporting them to the nearby Pemberton sawmill, and milling the logs. In place of the original's many intertitles, the sound version makes sparing but more effective use of intertitles superimposed over the images.