In 1973 American singer/songwriter Paul Simon released a song called Kodachrome which contained the lyrics:

“Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away”

My auntie recently sent me a large box containing over 2,000 slides taken by my grandmother, Thelma, mostly in the first half of the 1980s when she was in her seventies. It contains predominantly Kodachrome slides which still retain to this day those nice bright colours. Kodak did in fact takes its Kodachrome away in 2009 when it finally ceased production of Kodachrome 64 film. The last roll of Kodachrome film was developed in the USA in 2010.

I am in the process of digitising all these slides and have started sharing some images with the extended family and, thanks to the quality of the Kodachrome process, there has been very little deterioration in the film.

Thelma lived most of her life around Murwillumbah on the far north coast of NSW. Her interests were her family and the day to day events in and around her home town. She had seven children and many grandchildren. Her first husband, my grandfather Jim, died in 1979 at the age of 66. Thelma remarried in 1984 and her second husband, Dawson, died about three years later. After Jim died she learnt to drive for the first time, much to the consternation of some of her children. However, it did allow her to regularly make the short drive from Condong to Murwillumbah to photograph what was going on in town.

The majority of photos in the collection are from just before Thelma’s second marriage and the three or four years after. During this time she captures days trips around the North Coast, family events and the mundane commercial development of downtown Murwillumbah. There is an extended series of photos showing the demolition of old homes in several streets near the centre of town to make way for the construction of government buildings and the first large supermarket complex. Thankfully, almost every slide is meticulously labelled. Perhaps my grandmother was a conservationist at heart. She may not have used that word but I get the impression from looking at her slides she felt it was a great shame the old weatherboard homes had to go to make way for a new Coles.

Everything looks worse in black and white?

Tony
SilverTone Studio