Early Mackay photographs: Victorian colonial history preserved in time
Have you seen the old Mackay’s FB founder Glen Hall looks back at the evolution of photography in Mackay from the Victorian era to the digital era and the studios that came — and went.
Mackay
Don't miss out on the headlines from Mackay. Followed categories will be added to My News.
In every natural disaster, the first thing to be packed away are family photographs.
These visual memories of our past resonate with nearly everyone. Our memories stored in images are held very close to us.
Photography is a quite recent invention in the timeline of our history.
French inventor Nicephore Niepce produced the first known photographic image in 1822.
Another Frenchmen, Louise Daguerre, improved the process and snapped the first photograph to include a person in 1838.
By the 1850s, photography had taken off around the world with the introduction of the wet plate collodion process.
The isolation and distance of early European settlement in Mackay meant the first known photograph of the region was not produced until 1868.
It shows a view of some buildings close to the Pioneer River.
By the early 1870s, travelling photographers like Arthur Kipling from Clermont had visited Mackay.
In 1874, William Boag and John Mills established a studio while Mills had formed another partnership with Reckitt, who operated out of Mount Britton goldfields from 1881 to 1889.
Many photos of Mount Britton survive to this day and make a wonderful collection.
Towards the late 1870s, more renowned travelling photographers from the south plied their business in Mackay like Phillip George Rosenthal in 1876, and H. Leslie and W.T. Bennett in 1877.
There were small operations in the 1880s that did not operate for long but it was the 1890s that marked the start of established photographic studios in Mackay.
Frederick Watson Bernays and Walter Eustace Perroux started in 1890; Bernays managed the Vita Studio until he moved to Bundaberg in 1895 while Perroux relocated to Toowoomba that same year.
The Vandyck Studio in Sydney St opened in 1897 under the partnership of Otto Rohr and Arthur Dixon Bunn.
From reports at the time, it became a large and popular business but Rohr died in 1905 and the business had ceased operations by 1906.
Probably the longest operating photographic establishment in Mackay was the St. Austell Photographic Studios.
Collan Nicholas, originally from St Austell in Cornwall, England, started the studio in the late 1890s before Cecil John Graham took over in 1909.
The studio later sold to Robert Alick Law in the 1950s and operated as Law St. Austell Studios until it closed in 1980.
Robert “Bob” Belbin was a prolific panoramic photographer in the 1920s and many of his photos still exist. He operated from at least 1918 to the early 1950s.
Now with the introduction of digital photography and its popularity surging in the 2000s, we have lost the permanence of what photographs gave us.
However, they will always remain with us on social media platforms until the next innovation arrives.
Join the conversation
MAPPED: Every SEQ croc sighting as fisherman shares shock encounter
A fisherman who says he’s seen the “humanised” campground croc rangers are searching for has spoken out as an expert explains why the “vagrant” reptile’s future is likely bleak and the history of recent southern sightings is revealed.
Read more
Four dead in four years: Inside notorious Qld jail
Following the latest death in custody at a Queensland jail, we look back at others who have died there in just a few years and the 20-year history of the grey cellblocks known for housing some of the state’s most high-profile prisoners.
Read more