Summary

This photograph depicts a man standing on the verandah of the rectory of St. Margaret's Church of England, Croydon, North Queensland. St. Margaret's was located on Aldridge Street, which is named for Walter and Dick Aldridge (brothers), two of the men who discovered gold in Croydon in 1885. Bishop Barlow dedicated the new all-cedar building 30 November 1896. It was considered one of the finest buildings in Croydon until it was destroyed (along with much of the town) by a cyclone 17 January 1942. This church was set on low stumps with ant-caps and constructed of cedar timber with external bracing. It has a side entry with a set of three steps and features a large stained-glass window facing the street, a neat white picket fence and a streetlight out the front. The rectory itself is a high-set timber and iron house with a wrap-around verandah with wrought iron balustrades.

Croydon is located in the heart of the Gulf Savannah, in north-west Queensland. When first settled in the 1880s, Croydon was a large pastoral holding until gold was discovered in 1885. By 1887, the town's population had reached around 7,000 and, during its heyday, Croydon was the third largest town in the colony of Queensland. Croydon lies 147 kilometres west of Georgetown and 156 kilometres south-east of Normanton, to which it was connected by the Croydon-Normanton railway. Between 1885 and 1925, Croydon goldfields yielded 1,360,000 oz. of gold mined.

Reverend Frederic Charles Hall was appointed Curate of the Georgetown parish in 1904, and later Curate-in-charge from 1906 to 1909. His parish included Georgetown, Croydon, Golden Gate and Normanton. He also ministered in Burketown, which is 345 miles (560 kilometres) from Georgetown.

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.