Sunday History Photo. Au

On February 18 1954, an advertisement appeared in the Melbourne Sun; "Opening tonight at 6:30 Australia's first drive-in theater". The Skyline in Burwood, a Melbourne suburb, became the first of more than 330 drive-ins that were built across Australia and changed the way Australians saw movies forever.
Most older people have gone to a drive-in at some stage in their lives and unfortunately there's a good chance that they will disappear altogether at some stage in the future. Going to the drive in became a national pastime in Australia at one stage when people would go out in a group and on entry would have 4 in the car and 2 in the boot. A sagging back end of the car was a dead give away but it doesn't stop people trying even today. Others would go out with partners as it was a bit more private than actually sitting in an indoor movie theatre but still had all the amenities as a indoor movie theatre such as toilets and snack bar.
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Fortunately there are still some left scattered throughout Australia but nowhere near the amount of 330. There are now only 21 drive-in theatres throughout Australia which are still running with 3 in Victoria, 4 in New South Wales, 6 in Queensland, 5 in Western Australia, 3 in South Australia, 0 in Tasmania and 0 in the Northern Territory. The reason so many drive-ins closed come down to 2 major factors. The first is that the land that the drive-ins occupied became so expensive that the owners cashed in. The other reason was the VCR with many people now choosing to stay home and watch movies in the comfort of their own lounge room. It became much cheaper to rent a movie from the video store and watch it at home rather than taking the whole family to the drive-in. This is still the case today for a lot of people when it comes to taking the family out to a movie theatre.

I also thank David Kilderry Summer for permission to use a couple of Photo's from his website . to check your town go toDrive-Ins