Picture gardens, theatres and cinemas collection

The first screen entertainment in Western Australia took place on July 29, 1853, when a travelling showman pitched a tent in Perth and gave a magic lantern show.

J.H.M Honniball writes: "Soon after the birth of cinematography and the first film screenings in Europe in 1895 this new medium of art and communication came readily to far-flung corners of the world like Perth, because of its convenient format and easy mobility. Here, as elsewhere, films developed within a few years from a novelty to a widespread form of popular entertainment, at first edging into place alongside melodrama and vaudeville and eventually largely supplanting them. The commodious theatres at which the films came to share the programmes, were only just beginning to make their appearance in Perth in the late 1890s and their advent was in response to the rapid increase in population which the gold rush brought the city, as well as the back blocks." 

The earliest known film screening in Perth, Western Australia was at an outdoor cinema on November 21, 1896, and records showed it was a film of the Melbourne Cup run a few weeks earlier, states Richard Mr Offen.

The first cinemas were all outdoors. Hard-top theatres that could show movies during the day and in all weather, began to appear at the beginning of the 20th century.

The show must always go on and film, cinema, pictures gardens with the accompanying entertainments, form a lively backdrop to the social lives of people then and now.