Summary

This photograph depicts one man with a dog and two ladies with another dog posing on a large rock formation while on a bush picnic. The rock formation they are sitting on is 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 man sitting with the dog appears to be wearing "bush dress," which includes a short lightweight woollen coat, collared shirt and light-coloured trousers, probably made of moleskin. He also appear to be wearing a pith helmet, also common in the region at the time. The two ladies are wearing high-collared lightweight dresses in light colours, a necessity in tropical climates, belted at the waist and wide-brimmed hats decorated with flowers and ribbon accents. They are both carrying parasols as protection from the sun.

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.