Sid Bennetts Home Movie: Building a Backyard Barbecue

In this short excerpt from a home movie donated to the NFSA by amateur filmmaker Sid Bennetts, we see a group of young men and boys building a barbecue in their backyard. 

Long before barbecuing became big business in Australia, it was an Aussie tradition to build your own in the backyard on a slab of concrete using cement besser blocks and a few aluminium trays. For fathers and sons, building a backyard barbie was almost a rite of passage. Once built, the extended family and neighbourhood friends would be invited over to enjoy some nicely charred snags and chops. 

This home movie is a perfect example of such a ritual, with the newly built barbecue providing the setting for the social gathering. The film provides a rich snapshot of life in Australia in the mid 1960s.