Sherpa and beyond: ten of the best Australian documentaries

From ‘rats’ in politics to cane toads in Queensland via ice-bitten tragedies in Everest and Antarctica, we round up the best documentaries from Australia

Documentaries have been a part of Australian film history from the beginning. A whole 10 years before The Story of the Kelly Gang claimed the title as the world’s first feature-length movie, Marius Sestier was making nonfiction short films that detailed the extravagance of the annual Melbourne Cup and the mundanity of passengers disembarking from a paddle steamer at Manly. Not too long later, photographer Frank Hurley was documenting his travels to Antarctica in South and Home of the Blizzard.

Sestier, an employee at the time of film pioneers the Lumière brothers in France, is just one of many documentarians whose importance to Australian cinema culture has long been ignored. It’s disappointing considering documentaries are frequently among the world-class cinema this country produces; even our first Academy award winner was a documentary: Ken G Hall’s 1942 newsreel Kokoda Front Line.