Summary

This item is one of our 50 Treasures: Celebrating 50 years of James Cook University.

Trisha Fielding answers the question 'Why is this significant?'

The Reverend Frederic Charles Hall was an Anglican priest with a keen interest in photography. While ministering to the people of Georgetown Parish, in the Diocese of Carpentaria between 1904 and 1909, Hall took hundreds of photographs of everyday life in remote north Queensland communities.

Born in 1878 in Woollahra, New South Wales, Fred Hall was educated at St Andrew's Cathedral Choir School in Sydney. In 1904, he was ordained as a deacon and appointed curate at Georgetown, north Queensland, and in 1906 was ordained as a priest at the Quetta Memorial Cathedral on Thursday Island. He then returned to Georgetown as curate-in-charge. The Parish of Georgetown covered an extensive area, encompassing the townships of Croydon, Golden Gate, Normanton and Burketown.

Hall travelled to his parishioners on horseback or bicycle, and by train between Croydon and Normanton. A talented amateur photographer, he carried a timber and brass Thornton Pickard half-plate camera (with tripod) and a quarter-plate camera made by Baker and Rouse everywhere with him in a Gladstone bag. Images were captured on glass plate negatives by removing and then quickly replacing the camera's lens cap.

Hall's photographs are now an invaluable historical record of the period 1904-1909, and cover broad-ranging subjects including landscapes, interiors and exteriors of dwellings and churches, fashion, bush picnics, weddings, transport, farming and mining in north Queensland. Hall's photographs of miners and mining equipment, in particular, are an important record of alluvial gold-mining techniques on the Oaks and Etheridge goldfields.

Apart from his portrayal of people both at work and at play, Hall seems to have had a real love of the north Queensland landscape because he took his cameras everywhere with him, and they would have been cumbersome to carry — particularly on a bicycle. His photos encompass a range of vastly different landscapes: parched, almost treeless country; lush rainforest, rivers, creeks and gorges; and remote locations such as Yarrabah and Thursday Island.

Hall may have also had a genuine interest in photography as art, rather than just a simple desire to capture scenes of everyday life. In some of his photos, he appears to have asked his subjects to pose in rather artful scenes. A series of photos taken in a rugged mountain range, with his subjects lounging on large boulders while dressed in their Sunday best, would seem to provide examples of the photographer's desire for artistic composition.

Hall left north Queensland in 1909 to marry his fiancée of eight years, Edith Searle, in Sydney. He did not return north, dying in 1926, aged 48 years.