Summary

This photograph depicts a man and a woman, an older girl, and a boy seated on craggy boulders surrounding a waterhole while on a bush picnic. The well-dressed group is accompanied by a dog. The man wears a light-coloured pith helmet, dark open jacket with light-coloured shirt underneath, long trousers and a belt. The woman wears a lacy, light-coloured dress and has her hair pinned up under a broad-brimmed hat secured with a large, lightweight scarf tied under the chin. The girl also wears a lacy, light-coloured dress, dark stockings, dainty light-coloured shoes, and a dark-coloured broad-brimmed hat under which her hair is worn pulled back and secured with a ribbon. The young boy wears a broad-brimmed felt hat, light-coloured long-sleeved shirt, dark-coloured breeches and is barefoot.

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 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.