Cyril Grant Lane papers and photographs, ca. 1900-ca. 1930

MLMSS 7709

fonds

ca. 1900 - ca. 1930

Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Photographs

456025

0.13 metres of textual material (1 box) - manuscript and typescript
Photographs

Cyril Grant Lane, traveller, photographer, lecturer, author, and member of the British Empire Naturalist Association, first came to Australia in the 1890s. He travelled extensively in the Gippsland region and High Country of Victoria where he lived for many years in bush camps and huts and trapped animals for their skins. He recorded stories told around the camp fires and photographed bush landscapes and native animals, birds and reptiles. After returning to England he published a book 'Creature-life in Australian wilds' (London: Henry J. Drane, c. 1912) illustrated with his photographs, and toured England and Scotland giving lantern-slide lectures on the Australian bush and wildlife. He then returned to Australia and travelled mainly in Queensland where he spent time living with Aboriginal people in the far north. His experiences and the photographs he took there were published in his second book 'Adventures in the big bush: in the haunts of the Aboriginal' (London: Hutchinson, 1928). At the time of publication Lane was again resident in England at Keynsham, Somerset; in the book's introduction he states that he had spent a total of twenty nine years in Australia.

1. MANUSCRIPTS:
'Lecture notes on wild Australia', undated; typescript copies of English newspaper reviews of Lane's lantern-slide lectures, some of which were published as 'Press Notices' in the preliminary pages of 'Creature-life in Australian wilds' (c.1912)
List by chapter of photographs taken by Lane for possible inclusion in 'Adventures in the big bush: in the haunts of the Aboriginal', with a pencil annotation 'Hutchinson may ask me to arrange photos - so keep this 2-1-28'
Manuscript, dated 12/11/[19]01, of a story set in the Australian bush (pages numbered 1-42)
Manuscript, undated, of two sections of a novel[?] set in the Australian bush (pages numbered 92-100; 113-135)
Typescript drafts (2), undated, of an autobiographical[?] story of two English boys, Frank and Squirrel, who live in a vicarage near the Windrush River in Gloucestershire (4 pages)
Typescript draft, undated [post 1928 publication of 'Adventures in the big bush: in the haunts of the Aboriginal'], of unpublished book titled 'Adventures with blacks and bushmen in Australian wilds', comprising stories set in the Victorian bush and in Far North Queensland (179 pages); with some earlier drafts of various pages

2. PHOTOGRAPHS: 40 photographs, [c.1900 - 1920s] mainly albumen prints, mounted on 34 leaves; all taken by Cyril Grant Lane except for two by Dudley Le Souef; most of the photographs were intended to be used in Lane's unpublished book 'Adventures with blacks and bushmen in Australian wilds' and have captions and chapter numbers
1. Frontispiece. (The author) [Cyril Grant Lane, in evening dress, giving a lecture in front of a lantern slide of kangaroos in the bush; the photograph of the kangaroos is in 'Creature-life in Australian wilds', page 35]
2. Rabbit-trappers in the Bush [Four men with horse and cart and dead rabbits]
3. Three old men of the camp [Aboriginal men sitting on the ground]
4. This beautifully built little boy, with fine, soft black eyes, led me to the bower-bird's play-ground [Young aboriginal boy sitting next to bowerbird's bower]
5. Aboriginals netting and spearing fish [Group of Aboriginal men and boys in river with spears and nets]
6. Roasting water-snakes [Two Aboriginal men roasting snakes on sticks over a fire]
7. Crocodile lagoon [North Queensland]
8. A typical bush hut in the ranges, situated above "frog-land". It is the hut referred to in Ch. XXV [A photograph of the same hut is on page 91 of 'Creature-life in Australian wilds']
9. An ancient hut in the Kelly-gang country, reported to have been used by those notorious bushrangers. [Slab hut in the Victorian bush]
10. Drought - In search of grass [Cyril Grant Lane and another man with two horses and tent in the bush]
11. A fallen giant mesmate (eucalypt) on the trunk of which was sufficient space to set up an 8x12 tent [Cyril Grant Lane and another man beside a fallen tree in the bush]
12. A mountain-ash Forest
13. A practically dead forest - the result of a fierce bush fire
14. The River in flood
15-16. [2 photographs taken by D. Le Souef of a man in the snow in the Victorian alps]
17. Rifle-practice in the back-blocks [Cyril Grant Lane wearing a blindfold in the bush with a rifle]
18. Rifle shooting in scrub country [Cyril Grant Lane with rifle]
19. In the depths of a forest [Cyril Grant Lane sitting on a fallen tree in the bush]
20. Those "Fascinating Regions of Rock" [Victorian mountain scene]
21. Thunder-storm in the mountains [Sky with storm clouds]
22. Departing Day in the Australian Bush [Sky at sunset]
23. A genuine Moonlight photograph (25 minutes exposure), taken by the author, near one of his bush camps [River at night]
24. Where dingoes of the Big Bush hunt and howl [Bush scene]
25. The track Little Wanderer lost. [Bush track]
26. Boobook Owl ("mopoke")
27. The Australian Lyre-bird. One of the cleverest "mocking-birds" in the Bush.
28. The Great Brown Kingfisher of Southern forests. (Alias, "Laughing-Jackass")
29. The Blue-tongued lizard
30. Victorian "Tiger Snake". Short Death Adder. Lat: Hoplocephalus curtus



31. Australian locust, and small species of cicadae
32. A huge moth found in many parts of the bush [Bogong moth]
33. Stick-insect
34. Large species of Cicadae
35. Brown Ring-tail opossum and young
36. Spurious flight of Squirrel Flying Opossum [Museum specimen]
37. Brown (male) Ringtail Opossum [Museum specimen]
38. Full grown River Silver-Grey Opossum [Museum specimen]
39. Black-tailed Wallabies. Drawn from life by the author [Photograph of pen and ink drawing of wallabies in the bush]
40. In at the death. An old-man kangaroo [Dead kangaroo with small child and two dogs in the bush]