Untold History of WA: Meet the true pioneers of the adventure-doco genre, Stuart Gore and Jan Kennedy

“Travel all over the countryside, ask the Leylands, ask the Leylands, “Travel all over the countryside, ask the Leyland brotheeeeerrrrrsssss.” The little ditty will be well known (once in the head it is impossible to get it out) to the millions of Australians who watched Mike and Mal Leyland and their wives and kids as they travelled far and wide filming their quirky home-movie style travel documentaries which went to air on TV in the 1970s and 80s. And of course, there was also Alby Mangles, a self-styled adventurer and documentary filmmaker, who became familiar to Australian audiences in the same period through his World Safari films — which he often marketed, sold and showed himself in small venues, and his Adventure Bound series. Yet in actual fact, they were not the pioneers of the adventure-doco genre they are often thought to be. Many years earlier a WA couple had travelled the outback in an old jalopy they named Annabel, armed with a thirst for adventure, cameras and a projector, and made similar home-spun documentaries — and showed them anywhere they could — along the way. In the 1940s Stuart Gore and Jan Kennedy’s adventures took them around the State and beyond, including through rugged parts of WA’s north, to Darwin, Alive Springs, down to Adelaide and back again across the Nullarbor to Perth. The State Library says Gore was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1905 and came to Australia with his parents at the age of three. “He began his career as a photographer at the age of 19. He was one of Western Australia’s first aerial photographers. “Early in his career, he operated Perth’s first same-day photo developing business in Market Street, Fremantle. Gore had also worked at times for The West Australian, covering sport. “With the outbreak of World War II, Stuart enlisted in the RAAF joining the Aerial Reconnaissance Unit based in Darwin,” the library says. “In addition to photography, he undertook other varied occupations, such as author, law clerk, gold miner, aerial surveyor, mail‐cart driver, filmmaker and lecturer. “He also wrote under the pseudonym Fiona Stuart,” the State Library says. Gore told Bob Reece in a recorded interview in 1982, now held by the State Library, that he was initially attracted to photography by “the first smell of wet film” and that “it was something I could do on my own, that I didn’t have to be beholden to anybody.” The Australian Women’s Register says Jan Kennedy was born Grace Webb in Pingelly in 1906. “When she turned 18 she moved to Perth and worked with the photographer Axel Poignant at his Hay Street studio, which subsequently moved to London Court, off the Hay Street Mall. Becoming proficient in all aspects of photography, during WWII she took over the studio and changed her name to Jan Kennedy. Gore and Kennedy — who later married — travelled across Australia for eight months, producing the See Australia First film series. And then they took off again, cameras rolling again, as they showed their work wherever and to whoever they could along the way as Annabel took on rocky tracks, boggy sand, spinifex, splashed across drying creek beds and rested up at outback stations. The State Library’s Facebook page summarised the “extraordinary adventure.” “Annabel” had been ‘a Queen of the Road’ – back in 1929.” “But her ancient glory had faded when photographer Stuart Gore first saw her in a backyard on the Western Australian goldfields. “Her tyres were sun-baked, cracked, and useless. Her paintwork blistered. Her headlights smashed and her speedometer showed 100,000 plus on its battered dial. “But underneath, she was ‘built like a battleship’. “Stuart bought Annabel for a song. Fitted her with second-hand tyres and a homemade wooden body. Poured petrol in one end and water in the other – and she went!,” the library says. The first stage of the journey reached Shark Bay. “They were given the local hall to give Shark Bay its first taste of the pictures but there was no electricity in the town and they couldn’t get their generator to work,” it says. The Northern Times of August 5, 1948, told readers of the couple’s stop at Carnarvon under the headline: “See Australia First, Stuart Gore and Jan Kennedy Show Documentary Films at Carnarvon.” The paper said residents of the north-west were also set for “a unique opportunity of viewing the first sound and colour documentary films of Australia.” It said the film program consisted of Water and Gold, a film about the history and life of the Goldfields; there was The Story of New Norcia; Wonders of The Barrier Reef; Rendezvous With Summer (“a colourful exposition of the holiday life of Perth”), and Southern Highway (“an armchair travel trip of the South West”). “These films are the outcome of an ambitious attempt by the authors to produce independently, and without sponsorship, sufficient pictures of Australian life to take with them overseas to America, England and South Africa where they will screen them personally in order to publicise Australia,” the paper said. “Meanwhile, whilst travelling through the country making pictures they find that local screenings of the full programme already made are exciting considerable interest wherever they have been shown.” Eventually, it was time to move and on they went to Roebourne. “Four miles out Annabel’s steering gear became solidly and immovably jammed. But fortunately, it was a straight road all the way into town,” the State Library says. “Stuart arranged to screen ‘See Australia First’ in the Masonic Hall while they waited for a spare part for Annabel. It came by air. There was a special air service three times a week to Roebourne in those days. Even a special plane to carry a dentist, a ladies’ hairdresser, and a photographer from place to place, visiting towns and sheep stations alike. “Annabel was towed from the garage to be stationed outside the hall so her motor could be used to drive the generator.” And on they rolled. Through mud flats to Derby, and — with Health Department permission — to show their pictures at the leprosarium about 15km out of town, where “roars of delight greeted every fresh image on the screen and caused the cockatoos roosting in the surrounding trees to flee screaming into the bush.” A coastal steamer — the Koolinda — took the couple and Annabel further north, where the film got a showing at an open theatre in the Wyndham Meatworks. When the Koolinda berthed in Darwin, the town was “in the throws of post-war reconstruction”, so “finding an empty hall was difficult, so after a week they decided to move on.” In Alice Springs “only thirteen people turned up to the film showing of ‘See Australia First’ in the big hall Stuart had rented.” “It turned out that the screening had been on the same night as the annual school ball and The Alice couldn’t stand two shows in one night. However, with the aid of a local priest, hastily stuck-up posters, and word of mouth, crowds were milling at the gates before the impromptu showing of “See Australia First” the following night.” The proceeds were enough to pay the bills and the fares to Adelaide as Annabel got a well-deserved rest and rode on the railway — the journey broken at one point as all on board tumbled off to listen to a broadcast of the Melbourne Cup in an isolated wooden house near the railway line. Adelaide was the point to turn for home. The company town of Iron Knob was the setting for the final picture show, and it was on to the vast emptiness of the Nullabor. Gradually the country changed from the red earth and salmon gums of the Goldfields to spreading miles of wheat country, the library says. “Then they reached the orchards and vineyards of the Darling Ranges from which peeks of Perth could be seen,” the library says. Their journey of more than 12,000km was set to end. The result of their trip was another film, focused on their 1948 travels, which was then shown at Perth Town Hall, and numerous suburban and country venues the following year. The South Western Advertiser on November 24, 1949, said Armadale residents would have a unique opportunity to see “something of their own country” when Gore and Kennedy presented “a full program of sound films in glorious colour” at Armadale Hall followed by a showing at Maddington Hall. “Due to the extraordinary public interest shown in Perth, when these films were given their Australian premiere, and the Perth Town Hall was unable to accommodate the large audiences, it was decided to screen for the benefit of people outside the city area.” The couple eventually took the films to Britain where they also worked in a variety of other photographic-related jobs.. The women’s register says that in 1950 Gore and Kennedy sold the films to the London County Council Film Education Board and Green Lanes Film Productions in the UK. In 1968 the couple returned to Australia. In 1981 Kennedy died of leukaemia at the age of 75. Gore died just three years later.