Summary

This photograph depicts a sole pedestrian crossing deserted Samwell Street in Croydon, a North Queensland mining town, in the early 1900s. The buildings lining the street are timber structures with corrugated iron gabled roofs. The building halfway down the right side of the street with a large clock and a spire is the Shire Hall. Visible at the end of the street is Croydon Railway Station.

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. Many of Croydon's historic buildings remain with some still being utilised for their original purposes, for example, the Shire Hall and the Railway Station.

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. As a great number of miners travelled from field to field following reports of new gold discoveries, many mining towns experienced waves of desertion. Re-establishment would often follow, however, when gold rushes dried up, new fields became over-populated or reports of payable gold turned out to be false. Smaller townships and mining camps were unable to recover from such a mass exodus and became completely abandoned.

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.