Ordinary Lives

Brisbane on camera 1870-1900

A Draper’s Business in Queen Street

*Drapery Store of RA Kingsford in Queen St Brisbane ca 1870, photographed by Richard Daintree.*

A moment in Queen Street, captured by photographer Richard Daintree, presumably from a window across the street.

The building at the far left is a “commerce court”, and C W Fegan & Co are open for business in a building proudly established in 1861. The drapery’s building is more impressive, with large windows on the second floor, and a rooftop balcony. In the third window, barely discernable, a man looks out to observe Daintree and his apparatus.

Small groups of people go about their business on the footpath. The three gentlemen near the door are aware that they are being photographed, but a group of three children are oblivious. The little girl has moved, her skirts a blur. The two chaps near the edge of the footpath are in close consultation.

A lady confers with a man outside the drapery store. She is wearing the standard daytime clothing of a woman of the middle classes – a bonnet, shawl and full skirt. A lady of leisure (someone with servants to look after the household and buy groceries) would be wearing something less practical and more elaborate. It would not have occurred to this woman to dress to the climate, or even to a whim. The posture of the man seems a little too relaxed and familiar, and she seems to be angling slightly away from him, as politely as she can.

A Caisson at Dry Dock

Caisson at the dry dock South Brisbane 1879 by Albert Lomer

What is a structure for, if not to lean on?

99-f — In those days, everyone wore a hat. No matter how wildly ill-fitting. The gentleman on the left would not fear sunburn, covered as he is by hat brim and wild facial hair.

Going to the Post Office

General Post Office, Queen Street, Brisbane 1879 by Albert Lomer

A lady in the full regalia of respectability is seen doing business at a window, while various men loaf around, leaning on everything that can possibly be leaned on. That section of the building is now a coffee shop, and today, the lady would be ordering her to-go, while the men would be at little tables, checking their devices. Nobody would be looking up or around.

A woman waits in a cart while a gentleman watches.

A woman sits in a dilapidated looking cart – perhaps she is waiting for her respectable friend at the post office window. Or she is waiting for one of the menfolk to get his lazy rear end off the post office steps. Parking outside the GPO has not been this easy since the invention of the horseless carriage. Today there’s a taxi rank that starts near where the man stands, and the sound of impatient cabbies honking their horns to get a berth there echoes around the street.

The SS Leichhardt

SS Leichhardt at the Brisbane dry dock, 1885 by Albert Lomer

A Trip to Roma Street Station

Roma Street Railway Station, 1886, by Albert Lomer

Occasionally, one can still get a glimpse of the old Roma Street station, hidden as it has been for years by newer buildings, including the recently-demolished brutalist abomination called the Transit Centre. This is how it was meant to look.

Details from the photograph show a man in his shirtsleeves looking out of an upstairs window, a gentleman waiting to pick someone up, and a couple of men conferring by the gates.

The Supreme Court

Supreme Court Building, Brisbane, 1879, by Albert Lomer

Another grand old Brisbane building, doomed to be replaced by a brutalist horror, which has in turn been replaced by something self-consciously modern and “upmarket.”

Three workers at the entry – probably clerical staff at the Court. The window is open to admit some breezes in the days before air conditioning.

A Trip Down Queen Street

Looking south along Queen Street, Brisbane, 1879, Albert Lomer.

A young girl in a leghorn hat and apron is walking near or with a chap in a straw boater and white trousers. A less prosperous-looking man slouches by the side of the road. On the street, carters compete with pith-helmeted grandees for space. On the opposite side of the street, another chap in a pith helmet strides purposefully towards a store awning, and the banana trees (yes!) outside the Bank of New South Wales are in evidence.

Albert Street

Either the cart is heavy or the street is steep, but the chap driving it had to enlist a small boy to help push him uphill.

Gordon & Gotch were booksellers, stationers and magazine-sellers, who had been in business in Brisbane since 1862.

Albert Lomer (A Lomer & Co) was a photographer active in Queensland – mostly Brisbane – between 1862 and 1899. Lomer recorded as much as he could of early Brisbane, conscious that times were changing quickly. The commercial side of Lomer’s business involved studio photography that tended to make everyone’s ancestors look like humourless, overdressed mannequins.

Lomer took a lot of panoramas and photographs of important structures, but his best work shows glimpses of old Queenslanders caught in the business of everyday life.

Richard Daintree was a surveyor, geologist and photographer active in Queensland in the 1860s and early 1870s. His photography was superb, having a natural eye, and the talent to pioneer its use in geological surveys.

Photographs are in the collections of the National Library of Australia and the State Libraries of Queensland and Victoria.