Summary

This photograph depicts one man and three ladies posing while on a bush picnic. The setting is most likely somewhere in the Newcastle Range, a 150 km volcanics group that runs north-south roughly 50 km 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 appears to be wearing dark-coloured fly-front trousers, belted at the hips, with matching short coat over a light coloured button-down collared shirt with a felt hat. He is also wearing glasses and his pipe can be seen poking out of his coat. The youngest lady of the four, sitting next to him, appears to be wearing a darker-coloured pinafore with details along the neck and shoulder lines that may be lace over a long-sleeved white dress with a high collar. The three women are wearing high-collared lightweight dresses in light colours, a necessity in tropical climates, and are holding wide-brimmed hats decorated with flowers and ribbon accents. Two of the women are wearing dresses with ruffles on the bodice and puffed sleeves while the fourth woman is wearing a simpler dress that is belted at the waist as well as 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.