Market Place, Geelong, c.1861.

Stereoscopic albumen print photograph, each individual image approximately 82 x 73 mm, mount 83 x 165 mm; verso with original printed paper label of the photographer Edward Haigh; the stereoscopic prints and the mounts are in fine condition.

The English photographer Edward Haigh, who had studied with the Crimean War photographer Roger Fenton, arrived in Melbourne in January 1861. He opened a studio in South Yarra and spent over a year in the colony. Haigh specialised in stereoscopic photography and his views of Victoria, England and France won a first-class award at the 1861 Melbourne Exhibition. He returned to London in 1862, where his stereoviews of Melbourne and Victoria won a medal at the London International Exhibition that year.

Geelong’s Market Square occupied 8 acres in the centre of the township, on land that had been selected for this purpose by Governor Gipps. The distinctive clock tower, named the Austin Clock Tower after the Mayor of Geelong, James Austin, who had financed it, was completed on the site in 1856. It was a prefabricated construction, and featured a gilded weather vane in the form of a kangaroo. A much loved Geelong landmark for almost 70 years, the tower was scandalously demolished in 1923 to make way for the CML Building.

Edward Haigh’s very early view of the Geelong Market Square appears unrecorded.