Summary

This photograph depicts four ladies and two boys posing in front of large rock formations while on a bush picnic. The rock formations are 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 four ladies are wearing high-collared lightweight dresses in light colours, a necessity in tropical climates, belted at the waist with wide-brimmed hats decorated with flowers and ribbon accents placed on the rocks around them. One of the ladies appears to be wearing glasses with tinted lenses and what appears to be a pearl necklace. The two boys posed on the rocks appear to be wearing rumpled light-coloured long-sleeved button-down shirts with knee-length breeches and knee-high stockings and wide-brimmed felt hats.

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.