Schoolboys playing cricket and leapfrog outside the Camberwell Common School building, Melbourne, c.1867.

Albumen print photograph, carte de visite format, 63 x 104 mm (mount); verso with the imprint of ‘Paterson Brothers, Photographic Artists. Portrait Rooms, 8 Bourke St. East, Melbourne’; both the print and the mount are in fine condition.

A very early colonial cricket photograph. 

The Camberwell Common School opened on 19 August 1867, roughly on the site of the present-day Camberwell Primary School in Camberwell Road, a short distance east of the Junction (although at this time the roads in the area were not yet paved). This photograph is one of at least two known that were taken at the school on the same day by Paterson Brothers. Both show children playing cricket outside the distinctive school building. The carte de visite offered here, however, might well be the only extant example of this particular image. The top-hatted headmaster, Mr. R. Camm, can be seen at the centre of the group; at far right, two boys are playing leapfrog; and the detail is so sharp that the words ‘Common School’ on the tiny sign above the main entrance can be easily read.