Summary

This photograph depicts four children in fenced yard with three billy goats harnessed to a billy cart. A painted sign on the cart reads "J. Tiernay Carter, Georgetown." In the cart are a little boy wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a little girl in a lacy dress wearing a wide-brimmed hat and flowers in her hair. An older girl, standing barefooted by one of the goats, wears a decorated straw hat with a wide, very low brim, and a light-coloured, long-sleeved dress. A boy who stands by another goat is wearing a felt hat, light-coloured, long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and shoes. In the yard behind them is a well-made weatherboard house with corrugated-iron roof and a garden with banana and perhaps citrus trees. Beyond this house is a neat painted paling fence and a house constructed of some form of sheeting.

Early twentieth century houses in North Queensland mining towns frequently consisted of two rooms, often with balustraded verandahs front and back, and outbuildings such as kitchen, bathroom and toilet. Due to the high cost of transport and labour, the houses were commonly constructed by erecting a timber frame with belt-rails and braces, set upon timber stumps, with corrugated-iron gabled roofs, and cladding of corrugated-iron and perhaps timber. These simple constructions were often extended and added to over time.

Goats were both a blessing and a curse in North Queensland. Though they would cause destruction and were difficult to control, they were an important - albeit less-favoured - source of milk and meat for many families and communities, and also provided much entertainment for children in the form of billy-goat carts and racing.

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.