The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive includes a taxpayer-funded gay porn archive of over 100 medium and hard-core titles.

Filed alongside Muriel’s Wedding, Crocodile Dundee and Picnic at Hanging Rock and delicately attended to by (overpaid) public sector library clerks are early 1990s Kristen Bjorn and Chi Chi La Rue films like True Blue, Manly Beach, Down Under, and Taken Down Under, as well as Outback Stripper, Sydney Boys Go Off and Aussie Rules.

The erotica collection is partly made up of titles donated by pornography makers over the past thirty or so years, with the Archive only paying for one title in the collection. Some were donated anonymously, and you can search for your favourite here.

The Archive’s senior curator, the wonderfully-named Graham Shirley, defended the collection, saying it formed a legitimate part of Australian cultural history. It includes films dating back 80 years, documentaries, silent films and some ancient blue movies that would be received by modern audiences as art films rather than porn.

No reports on whether this soft porn short ad for Avondale College starring a very young Russell Crowe is also part of the Archive’s collections, but since the audio track has been removed due to a copyright claim, it sort of makes sense to view it as one of Australia’s secret silent gay porn films: