Summary

This photograph is believed to depict a view of Georgetown, North Queensland, looking down St. George Street from the outskirts of town. A number of timber and iron buildings can be seen in the background. Due to the high cost of transport and labour, early twentieth century buildings in North Queensland mining towns 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.

Georgetown is located roughly 400 kilometres south-west of Cairns and 145 kilometres east of Croydon. Originally named Etheridge in 1869, the town was renamed Georgetown in 1871, in honour of a gold commissioner from Gilberton, Howard St. George. The rural town is the administrative centre of the Etheridge Shire and lies along the Etheridge River. The Etheridge Shire was over 38,000 km2 and included the townships and goldfields of Cumberland, Georgetown, Charleston and Einasleigh. Due to the sporadic nature of the ore and the difficulties in mining it efficiently, goldfields in the Etheridge Shire were often designated "poor man's fields," even though well over 500,000 oz. of gold was reportedly mined there by the start of the First World War.

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.