A key artefact of Australian Skeptics’ history, and an important moment in the scientific testing of paranormal claims, has been resurrected after 45 years.
In 1980, Dick Smith brought magician James Randi to Australia for a test of water diviners. A TV documentary was made, titled James Randi in Australia, that was screened several times over the next couple of years.
It proved to be one of the most significant documentaries from a skeptical point of view, as it was the inspiration for the growth of the Skeptical movement in Australia. And it was almost lost until a recent painstaking restoration has brought it back to life, looking and sounding better than ever.
“Bringing Randi to Australia was a great pleasure for me,” Smith says, “as I’d been following his exploits for years. It would prove to be the start of decades of friendship between the two of us. And it would also prove to be the birthplace of Australian Skeptics.”
Following the 1980 water divining tests, Smith suggested that there should be an Australian organisation to do more of these sorts of thing, investigating pseudoscience and paranormal. Several people immediately put their hands up, including lawyer Mark Plummer in Melbourne and exhibitions organiser Barry Williams in Sydney.
“That was the start of Australian Skeptics,” Smith says, “with Mark setting up the main group in Melbourne and Barry and others soon following with groups in other states.”
The documentary covered Randi’s arrival in Australia, tests of a group of water diviners – the first ever undertaken in Australia – part of a lecture he gave demonstrating ‘psychic surgery’, and even spoon bending.
After it was screened in the early 1980s, it disappeared from public view and indeed the TV channel’s recording itself was left to rot … literally, as Skeptics investigator Richard Saunders discovered in 2003 when he first tried to restore it only to discover it was damaged beyond repair.
Luckily, Barry Williams, who later became president of Australian Skeptics, had recorded one of the repeats in the 1980s onto a home video tape and there it sat for over 20 years until 2003 when Saunders digitised it – the only known copy in existence.
It was watchable, but of low quality.
In recent months, Saunders become aware of new AI technology to upscale and clean up old videos, so he tested a few clips from the documentary with this system and was amazed by the results. When he mentioned this on his Skeptic Zone podcast, listener Glenn Brady got in touch saying he would be happy to upscale and colour correct the entire 44 minutes of the documentary. He did this and the results were stunning.
“After I received his new file of the video I spent many hours (I would normally say too many hours, but every second was worth it) to remove the dirt and the scratches and some camera shakes from the original,” Saunders says. “That’s 66,000 frames and each one had to be viewed to make sure the quality and clarity were as good as we could possibly get them. I also took the opportunity to remix the sound to make the voices clear and even found the original music to give it more impact.”
The result is the 45th anniversary edition of James Randi in Australia and is free to view on the Australian Skeptics’ YouTube channel at tinyurl.com/RandiAustralia.
We hope that the final result will not just be a fitting tribute to the work of James Randi and of the birth of Australian Skeptics, but will be of relevant interest to current and future Skeptics in how specific claims are tested, whether 45 years ago, now, or 45 years into the future.
