Richard Townshend photographs of Victoria River Downs Station, ca.1904-1918

PXA 1566

fonds

ca.1904-1918

Graphic Materials, Photographs

911084

approx. 710 photographs - mainly postcard prints

Richard Townshend was manager of Victoria River Downs Station from 1904 to 1919 (Schultz, C. & Lewis, D., Beyond the big run (2008), Chapter 2 footnote 3, citing Makin, J. The big run : the story of Victoria River Downs Station (1992), p.183; accessed via Google Books, 24/9/2013).

The donor, Judge Barrie Ronald Thorley's maternal grandmother was a Townshend. Richard Townshend was Judge Thorley's great-uncle and the judge was the executor of his great-aunt's estate. Judge Thorley could not identify his uncle in any photos, as he never saw him. -- Field Librarian's notes on ML file, 18 November 1980.

Photographs with inscriptions:

Tennant Creek Telegraph Station, Banka Banka Station halfway between Powell & Tennant; Randall Stafford & mail; Ben [illegible] [soldier], 1942;
[Indigenous Australian] women Wave Hill Station, photo R. J. Winters [8 women with 8 infants and children in front of corrugated iron wall]; P. G. Kelly’s camp (dinnertime) at Rock Hole. Last mob of the season; Govt. Aboriginal [...] School, A. Springs [Alice Springs] [8 young women and 23 children with a schoolmistress[?] in front of a corrugated iron building]; Smallest [Indigenous Australian] children, Govt.[Aboriginal] HC School Alice Springs N.T. [4 children]; N2 [steamship, Fremantle] at Darwin N.T.; Granite boulders Murchison Range [with camels]; postcard of Cleopatra’s Needle from 161 Cpl Wm Sedgwick, D Company 3rd Battalion A.I.F., London, to “Ivor”, 9/6/17; Peter’s Creek [man with horses]; Tennant Creek Telegraph Station; Wave Hill boys camp, Katherine River 30th -4-1914; C. Dickenson [man on horse]; Pyron[?] Hole garden 1915 [vegetable garden beside water hole]; Montiginnie kids [3 Indigenous children]; Boys [Aboriginal men] carrying up bore piping at the Depot – W. G. Brown [4 Indigenous labourers carrying piping, overseer standing nearby]; Camp, Katherine River, Willie & Sambo, Wave Hill boys, 30.4.1914; Nellie’s Hole, Montiginnie; Pyron[?] Hole men’s quarters; Mail camels at Oodnadatta; Christmas Day 1918 [three Aboriginal men standing in front of a water hole]; Five Mile Creek in flood - Mr Brown’s overland trip with camels. Left Victoria River Down N.T. 3-1-18 Arrived Oodnadatta S.A. 12-5-18; postcard from E. Gould [pictured?, seated on camel] to Mrs Townsend

Photographs featuring people, mainly at Victoria River Downs Station:
Include Aboriginal and European families, workers, stockmen, and babies; group of 10 Aboriginal males, standing, with spears and traditional body painting; three Aboriginal men in body paint standing in ceremonial pose in front of a campfire where a group of Aboriginal people in traditional headgear & body paint are seated; two Aboriginal men with wrists tied with ropes, standing beside men mounted on horses; Aboriginal women carrying laundry tubs; one-armed man standing beside horse; rowing and sailing on wetlands

General views and activities, mainly at Victoria River Downs Station:
Photographs are mainly of station activities, animals and buildings; working horses; team of horses pulling a boiler; bullocks and carts; pack camels; Northern Territory Railway freight cars; grave of Katherine Townshend, d.23 April 1911[?]; domestic cats; include some commercial postcards, mainly Geraldton views

Boring plant crossing at Dashwood’s 28-12-18 [water bore being transported across river]. 13 silver gelatin photoprints made 1981 from nitrate negatives, destroyed.

Ephemera
Anzac Mounted Division Christmas card, 1917, from Frank Brazill to M. Townshend
Greeting card "From the Dear Homeland", signed by Tom & May Adams, containing pressed flowers

Most photographs are not inscribed or captioned. Original order of photographs did not have any obvious system of arrangement. In cataloguing, photographs have been broadly grouped into photographs with inscriptions on verso; photographs in which people feature; and other views.

Out of copyright: Created before 1955
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Original inscriptions and annotations on material within this collection reflect the attitude of the period in which they were written, but are now considered inappropriate today and may be distressing to First Nations peoples.
Includes a note "In loving memory of the Fizzer / Henry Ventlia Peckham", written in a later hand (possibly a transcription by a Library officer); it is not clear which item this relates to.