er. Far from viewing early silent films in monochrome, audiences were often treated to dazzling displays of colour through the application of pigments and inks to images that were already photographed. Colour was often applied to film stocks in early silent cinema in an aesthetic that aspired less to realism than fantasy.  Motion picture photography in colour, which took many years and the efforts of hundreds of people to perfect, was often referred to as ‘natural colour’ and, at least partly, associated with realism. Kinemacolor, the most successful of the early ’natural colour’ film processes, which flourished from around 1908 to 1913, was often described as “presenting the colours of nature”. , In Australia, reviews of what appears to have been our first Kinemacolor short Melbourne in her Natural Colours, also emphasised the remarkable realism of the colours. Immediacy was often emphasised with phrases like ‘colour in the moment’. A common objection was that colour motion pictures were fatiguing to the eye. Red, especially, was suspect in this regard. 
It is estimated that more than two hundred separate processes went into the development of Technicolor which was to dominate colour film production from the 1920s to the 1950s. It was promoted as the finest ‘natural colour’ picture ever produced and even “Technicolor is natural colour.” The process was said to “throw upon the screen a continual succession of natural colours that copy nature with the fidelity of a finely executed oil painting.” For several decades, producers wanting access to its colour film process were required to rent Technicolor cameras, employ an additional cameraperson supplied by the company, purchase make-up specially designed by Max Factor, buy film stock from Kodak Eastman and have all film processing and printing carried out by the company. In addition, they were required to employ one of the company’s Colour Consultants and adopt restrictive rules about the use of colour in the film’s production design. Given Australia’s relatively small population, distance from film processing laboratories in the United States, not to mention its particular climatic conditions, the challenges of shooting a feature in ‘natural colour’ were considerable.
Much of the interest in colour feature films in Australia focused on the possibilities of presenting the unique colours and light-plays of our landscapes and scenery to local and international audiences. Since the 1930’s, via correspondence courses offered by his Chauvel School of Scenario Writing, director Charles Chauvel urged writers to find stories by immersing themselves in the romance and adventure of the Australian bush. Working with the most basic of resources, two of Australia’s most acclaimed cinematographers from the silent film and early sound era invented colour processing systems designed to be reliable and inexpensive alternatives to Technicolor. The two new Australian systems emerged around the same time just as new ‘natural colour’ film systems were becoming available internationally. Kodachrome, in formats primarily suited to amateur use, was released in 1935 whilst in the following year Agfa introduced an Agfacolor negative-positive system for professional production.
Commonwealth Film Laboratories launched a 35mm colour process Mal-comm Colour, named after inventor and cameraman George Malcolm, in 1937.  A bi-pack operation, the processing of Mal-comm Colour involved floating the film in paraffin in one long trough. The film was dipped one side at a time, firstly into blue and then red. The process was reportedly able to “reproduce primary colours true to life”. Although it was intended that Mal-comm Colour would be made available to locally-produced feature films, its use appears to have been restricted to cinema advertisements. A short anti-Hitler animation produced in the early 1940s is the only remaining film produced in Mal-comm Colour identified to date.
Hot on the heels of Mal-Comm Colour, Arthur Higgins, one of three brothers prominent in Australia’s early film industry, announced 