Summary

This photograph depicts one man, three ladies, one boy and one dog posing on a rock face while on a bush picnic. The rock face they are sitting on is most likely somewhere in the Newcastle Range, a 150km volcanics group that runs north-south roughly 50km east of Georgetown. As Reverend Hall was appointed as Curate (and later Curate-in-Charge) of the Georgetown parish, the Newcastle Range may have served as an excellent option for day trips as it is not an unreasonable distance to travel by carriage from the townships of Georgetown, Forsayth and Mount Surprise. The man sitting with the dog appears to be wearing "bush dress," which includes a short lightweight woollen coat, collared shirt and light-coloured trousers, probably made of moleskin. He also appear to be wearing a pith helmet, also common in the region at the time. The boy appears to be wearing a "schoolboy"-style uniform of dark-coloured short coat over a collared shirt and knee-length breeches over stockings with lace-up boots. The three women are wearing high-collared lightweight dresses in light colours, a necessity in tropical climates, long gloves and wide-brimmed hats decorated with flowers and ribbon accents. Two of the women are holding bouquets of flowers, with one of those women also holding a parasol. The woman wearing darker gloves is wearing glasses with tinted lenses and what appears to be a pearl necklace.

The photographs in this collection were taken by the Reverend Frederic Charles Hall (1878-1926) during the period 1902-1909 when he was the Anglican Curate appointed to Georgetown in North Queensland. Hall's foremost hobby was photography. He used both a half-plate camera with tripod made by J. Lancaster & Son, Birmingham and a quarter-plate Austral No. 3 made by the Australian company, Baker & Rouse. Glass negatives from Ilford and Austral were used; developing was done by the photographer himself and printing by exposure to sunlight.