The Building

The Swanpool and District Memorial Hall was built in the 1950's with voluntary labour on donated land. Typical of halls built around that time, it has a full stage and dressing rooms, entrance foyer and ticket box and of course, a bio (projection) box built into the reinforced concrete structure. Most of the timber for the floor and ceiling structure was locally supplied and milled.

Once opened, a little 16mm was run but TV soon killed that. Acoustically the hall was poor and wasn't improved until the Hall Committee installed an acoustic ceiling about 1990.

SOUND SYSTEM

We still have the original RCA valve mono amp, but our prime requirements for commercial operation are high quality picture and high quality sound. So, regrettably the valve amps are museum pieces and we use a high tech dolby decoder and modern power amps with modern stereo solar cells fitted into the Racophone heads.
We run left - centre - right - subwoofer - and surround channels from the optical Dolby sound tracks.

CANDY BAR

The Candy Bar has a range of traditional confectionery and icecreams and drinks, plus a selection of hot food.
Remember to bring along your own cup - the coffee is much cheaper and it saves us using non recyclable polystyrene ones. Don't forget to try our own locally made choc tops.

In winter we have an open fire in the adjacent supper room/kitchen/candybar area

Although this was constructed as part of the original building, it was never fitted out - just a concrete shell. Much of the 2 years pre opening work was spent fully equipping it (if only it was bigger it would have been easier!)

The PROJECTORS

The 35mm are genuine 1948 Cumming and Wilson CP7's (Australian) with Racophone . rear scanning sound heads.  Lovingly rebuilt and maintained and still going strong. We run 2000 ft spools with manual changeovers. The projector originally came from Rainbow, Victoria via Halls Gap and Melbourne and we have accumulated a few more since then for spare parts.

We are equipped to run all ratios (Silent, Academy standard, wide screen (1.66, 1.75. 1.85) and Cinemascope (prismatic anamorphics). And yes, we still use carbon arc lamphouses. (RCA Hilites) ( We do have a pair of very nice Westrex lamphouses which will hopefully be installed one day!). 

Although we have several 50's 16mm projectors we have gone super modern with a 1970's Hokushin 1.5kw Xenon pedestal opto-magnetic which does produce a very good 16mm fullsize picture.
We still use 3-1/4 " glass slides with an RCA Hilight stereoptic slide projector (carbon arc!).

We make our own local hand coloured advertising slides and have a collection of original 1950's and earlier slides.  You get to see the old originals after interval. (We are always on the lookout for more early glass slides if you know of any).

STANDBY GENERATOR
As an ex SEC (State Electricity Commission) engineer with some scepticism of our now privatised electricity industry, we installed a dear old 1940's (wartime) Meadows Diesel 55 kva Generator from the now defunct Birchip drivein. This generator is just about large enough to run the whole of Swanpool. Hence the Swanpool Cinema ALWAYS operates. 

 FURNISHINGS 
Real cinema seats collected from around Victoria and NSW make up the bulk of the seating. These have cast iron frames and flipout seats. We are gradually rebuilding rows to improve the comfort level - our tip "Pick your seat carefully, some are much more comfortable than others!'

Well, we are looking for a pair of 18 inch diameter ex-military searchlights for the front of the building (sort of like the 20thCentury Fox logo!). Know of any?