New SBS docuseries exposes Australia’s dark recent past

Horrifying unearthed footage that will soon air on TV reveals some uncomfortable truths about Australia’s recent past.

A new SBS docuseries premiering next week cracks open a forgotten vault of Australian films to look at the social and political upheavals that defined the 1970s in this country.

Narrated by Aussie actor Jacki Weaver, Australia: An Unofficial History features much footage that would be shocking to today’s viewer, from a mother who unreservedly admits to smacking her children on camera to people who proudly reveal their identities before going out to commit hate crimes.

The films, unseen for decades, paint an an illuminating and, at times, confronting picture of how societal attitudes towards the Australian dream, politics, sexism, racism, parenting and LGBTI rights have evolved from the 70s to now.

In an exclusive clip from the series you can watch at the top of this story, writer Benjamin Law – one of several present-day commentators featured in the series – sits down to watch a particularly confronting piece of 70s-era found footage.

An unidentified youth brags about bashing gay men.

Commentator Benjamin Law reacts in horror.

He’s warned that the film he’s about to watch is “pretty disturbing.”

It shows a young man bragging that he’s bought a pair of steel-capped boots specifically for “kicking poofters,” and explains that the hardy boots have broken gay men’s ribs during previous bashings. On camera, with his identity blurred, he says he had to invest in the boots because he’d hurt his feet during previous attacks, and boasts of destroying evidence after participating in such violence.

Director Phillip Noyce, who shot the documentary footage early in his career before he became an internationally acclaimed film director, explained that he “did not expect that we would ever be accompanying those kids in a Holden sedan into the city, in what they called a ‘poofter bashing expedition.’”

Large gangs of youths were responsible for a number of suspected violent hate crimes against gay men in Sydney from 1970 onward. One hotspot for violence was Marks Park in Tamarama, where victims would allegedly be thrown off the cliffs to their deaths.

Many of the deaths – as many as 88 men were murdered – went unreported or were misreported as accidents or suicides at the time.

It’s one of the darkest moments in a series that looks at the ways in which societal change has transformed our country in a number of ways over the past 50 years.

Australia: An Unofficial History premieres 7:30pm March 5 on SBS and SBS On Demand.