In 1904 Joe Perry and James Dutton were key members of the Australasian contingent to a Salvation Army International Congress in London. After the Congress, Perry filmed Bushranging in North Queensland, which film historian Chris Long has noted was Australia’s first bushranging drama. After 1904 Australian production declined. This was due in large part to the expanding touring activities of the Limelight Department and Joe Perry leading his Biorama Company on several long tours of New Zealand. Another contributing factor was the 1905 resignation from the Salvation Army of Sidney Cook, one of the Department’s principal cinematographers.

In 1905, the principal Biorama Company was enlarged to 13 members, and later, to over 20. The addition of a 15 horsepower electric plant and arc illuminant to Perry’s company in early 1906, led to it being renamed the Electric Biorama Company.

Branches of the Limelight Department were set up in most Australian states and in New Zealand. By mid 1907, there were weekly film shows in a number of Army centres in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. Touring companies continued to travel throughout the states.

Large quantities of film were imported to feed the Department’s expanding exhibition activities. One Department produced Australian film does survive from that period. Shot by James Dutton in 1905 it captures employees leaving the Swallow and Ariell biscuit factory in Port Melbourne. Joe Perry took a number of films on his tours of New Zealand, including footage of the Christchurch Exhibition that was commissioned by the New Zealand Government.

In 1908 Thomas McKie conducted a Grand Memorial Service, which used film and slides to commemorate the lives of a number of Salvationists who had died while working for the Army. These included pioneer Australasian leader James Barker, who died in 1901, and Major Kenneth McLeod. McLeod had been the officer in charge of the Army’s boys home at Bayswater in Victoria, the scene of some of the earliest Limelight Department films. He died in January 1908 and his funeral was filmed. This film, which was a feature of the Grand Memorial Service, has survived.

The Limelight Department undertook an important Government commission in 1908, when the ‘Great White Fleet’ of sixteen American warships visited major Australasian ports. Joe Perry sent camera crew to Sydney and New Zealand and produced the filming in Melbourne.

Across late 1908 and early 1909, a new studio was built in Caulfield, in suburban Melbourne. Perry anticipated considerable production activity at the new location and purchased a house two blocks away. Production began on two new projects, Heroes Of The Cross and Scottish Covenanters. When the Salvation Army issued a transfer order to Thomas McKie, Heroes Of The Cross was rapidly completed and shown at a mammoth farewell Congress in Melbourne in May 1909.

Englishman, Commissioner David Rees was announced as Thomas McKie's successor. However, when health concerns for Rees’ wife prevented them from coming to Australia, he was replaced by Commissioner James Hay, an austere Scotsman, who for some years had been responsible for Salvation Army operations in England.

When Hay arrived in Australia in 1909, he curtailed the Limelight Department’s activities, effectively closing it down. He said a moral laxity in the film business was having a negative effect on Salvation Army screenings. Hay acted so quickly that the Scottish Covenanters was never shown in Australia. James Hay later admitted that there had been a substantial financial cost in closing the Limelight Department and many Salvation Army centres took years to recover from the loss of income.