It gives us a date and a place – Mount Victoria on 18 September 1892. The setting is a quite charming cottage with a brick chimney, somewhere in the countryside. The edges of the photo are blurred, there are 30 figures posed in front of the house, and the silhouette of a woman indoors. There are ferns draped on some of the people, a horse is just visible on the far left, and a dog sits in the front of the group.
{The photo is part of the Warwick and District Glass Plate Negative collection of the State Library of Queensland. There are no identifying details, apart from the handwritten note at the bottom. The location is a puzzle – Mount Victoria at that time was a mining location near Rockhampton, a sparsely populated diggings, hardly a spot for such a bucolic gathering. There is a Mount Victoria in New South Wales, and it is possible that the photograph was taken there by a person based in Warwick, and that’s how the negative came to be part of that collection. This photo is so remarkable that I searched through the rest of the collection, looking at people who might resemble these picnickers. Sadly, no dice.}
What makes the photo remarkable is the level of dishevelment and intensity of the women in the photo. Three of the women appear quite composed, but the rest of the ladies appear tousled and a tad unhinged. What had they been up to in the bush?
Every face is a study.
The ladies.
The lady on the left wears a winsome air, a dainty sprigged gown, and a jaunty hat. And some herbage added as part of the day’s festivities. Presumably, her eyes were a rather pale blue, and the natural light photography couldn’t capture her eye colour, giving her a bad case of crazy eyes.
The lady in the centre is slightly disheveled, and the camera has caught her looking decidedly apprehensive.
The fabulous creature on the right probably left home that day with an impeccable coiffure, but after whatever fun was had with ferns and family, she had quite the Amy Winehouse ‘do going on up there. One can assume that it was a very windy day. Her expression is just a little intense, but nothing compared to those of the ladies below.
Two very windblown young ladies. The hunched intensity and focused expression of the lady on the right makes one wonder what kind of herbs had been gathered.
On the left, a lady whose racial identity makes her stand out. She’s very well dressed and groomed, which leads me to hope that she was a family member, not a family servant. She does look deeply uncomfortable, though. On the right is a well-dressed but rather frizzy-haired lady.
On the left, a handsome woman who is reclining uncomfortably on the ground in her wasp waist and bustle. Her coiffure seems to have been saved by her jaunty little hat. On the right, under a towering mop of frizzy hair, a lady who likes to do lady things. Or perhaps, just an aunt with an unfortunate resemblance to David Walliams. At least she looks amused.
The sinister “her indoors.” The matriarch of this windblown clan, or a servant? Or someone who just didn’t want to be captured forever in the main group.
The Children.
One suspects that on this occasion, they were both seen and heard.
Presumably, something or someone, really ponged.
One glum, one happy. But clearly members of the same family.
All apprehensive in their different ways. Perhaps Uncle Bert was taking a long time with that big camera thing.
The gents.
The unfazed appearances of the men in the photo is in stark contrast to the intense and frazzled look of the women. Whatever had been going on hardly affected them. Except perhaps for a blurred chappie on the bottom left of the gallery. I think he might have been a few sherbets in.
So many questions? What ponged so badly that the three little boys set aside years of rigorous best-behaviour training to pose with their noses held? What on earth had the intense, scruffy women been up to? Why all of those ferns? What was “her indoors” doing? Why is the only reasonable-looking character a small dog? We will, alas, never know.
Moreton Bay and More 