After wowing Australia, England and Europe with her marathon swimming prowess, Annette Kellerman became famous for her vaudeville performances.

‘After making examinations of ten thousand girls, Annette Kellerman is the closest to physical perfection of any’ declared Dr Dudley Sargent, director of the Harvard University Gymnasium in 1912.

Annette Kellerman is credited with being the first woman to appear nude in a film – in the grand epic A Daughter of the Gods (Herbert Brenon, USA, 1916).

Title cards are intercut with static shots of well-known Melbourne public buildings and streets including the Treasury Building, Little Collins Street, Federal Parliament House, the General Post Of

Luna Park Melbourne has remained hugely popular since its opening on 13 December 1912.

This clip shows the Henley-on-Yarra regatta and celebrations; the agricultural showgrounds and ‘fair barrackers at a football match’. Each segment is introduced with an intertitle.

This clip captures scenes of daily life in the main streets of Footscray, Melbourne, in 1910 and 1911.

Summary by Poppy De Souza

This rare example of amateur or home movie footage provides a glimpse of a society wedding about 1914, probably in an eastern suburb of Sydney.

The lost 1916 Australian silent movie The Pioneers is known only from contemporary descriptions and a few stills such as this one, probably from the closing scenes of the film.

A scene from the NFSA Restores digital restoration of Raymond Longford's 1919 film The Sentimental Bloke, starring Arthur Tauchert and Lottie Lyell.