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Save all media.
Preserve Aussie culture.

There's so much media out there.

Over the years, it's bound to get lost.

The phrase "lost media" refers to any media that is no longer viewable in its entirety by the general public. There can be many reasons for this, from it being destroyed, not preserved, banned, or forgotten about, lost to the sands of time...

Australia has a wide variety of media that are considered partially or completely lost. From the world's first feature film to the original Wiggles pilot episode, Australia has so much iconic media that we can no longer view.  

Preserving all things Australian should be important to all Aussies. We should all help out where we can to maintain our cultural heritage. The National Sound and Film Archive has a dedicated audiovisual archive dedicated to Australian media. So why should we, as the general public, care about finding lost media? Because, believe it or not, you could have lost media at home.  

While it's an uncommon technology in the online era, you may be familiar with VHS tapes. Many Aussies taped TV shows they wished to watch at a later date on VHS tapes, which may have unknowingly recorded media we now consider lost.

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Other than old episodes of Aussie TV shows, there could be emergency news broadcasts, but a less talked about aspect of lost media is TV advertisements!

That's where we come in.

Film Reel Close-Up

The Lost Media Wiki is the largest crowdsourced archive of information regarding Lost Media. It documents lost media and whether it has been partially or fully found. Major Australian Lost Media can be found documented here.

Want to discover more about Australian Lost Media and Lost Media in general?
Here are some fantastic resources!

If you've been on the internet long enough, you've probably come across the iceberg chart. This one focuses on Australian Lost Media, with more well known things at the top, and getting more obscure as you go down. This image is hosted on Reddit.

The Lost Media subreddit is a place for anyone to ask about potential lost media, and provide up-to-date information about searches going on in the community.

A Note On Whether Some Media is Truly "Lost" 

In the lost media community, the "lost" part often focuses on whether it is viewable and accessible to the general public. There are countless cases of "lost media" being kept in private collections or in studio archives. Is that truly lost?

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As much as one person "hoarding" something and not allowing anyone else to see it sucks, we need to respect copyright and ownership.

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