Aboriginal cricket team at Deebing Creek Mission, Ipswich, Queensland, 1894.

Photographic glass magic lantern slide, 82 x 82 mm; the negative has a manuscript caption along the left and right edges: Deebing Creek Cricket Club / from Deebing Creek Mission Station, and across the top and bottom edges are written the names of the eleven players who feature in the portrait: Billy Brown, Coolool, Thompson, Curtis (Captain), Sandy, Culham (standing), Edward Thomas, Wood, Charley George, Roger Bell, Stanley Bell (seated); in the negative at lower left the photographer has written his trademark ‘Edward, Photo. Ipswich.’; although the image itself is very sharp and has survived virtually unscathed (there’s some minor staining at upper left), the slide has lost its clear cover glass and most of its black-papered border.

This important photograph of the Deebing Creek Mission cricket team was taken in mid-1894. The image is a known one, as it was reproduced in The Queenslander at the time (see below). However, there appear to be no extant original lantern slides or albumen prints of this image in public collections, which makes the lantern slide offered here singularly rare.

The Deebing Creek Mission (aka Reserve) was situated on the southern outskirts of Ipswich. It was founded by the local Aboriginal Protection Society in 1887 and was run by them until 1914, when it was relocated to nearby Purga. The population of approximately 150 comprised displaced Aboriginal people from throughout Queensland who had been forcibly settled there after being removed from Country; among them there was a significant number of Yuggera-Ugarapul speakers upon whose lands the European settlement of Ipswich was established.

The image was reproduced in The Queenslander (Brisbane), 16 June 1894, where it accompanied the following article:

‘Coloured Cricketers. The Deebing Creek aboriginal cricket team has more than once of late figured in the reports of matches played in Ipswich. The Deebing Creek mission station was established about two years ago on a site of about 120 acres on the creek bearing that name, near Ipswich. Here a number of blacks are domiciled in huts or cottages of their own building. As is usual with such institutions, the mission is not too well supplied with funds, but the energy of the Rev. Peter Robertson, who is chairman of the committee which controls the affairs of the mission, is gradually fathering in subscriptions in coin and in kind, though as yet the support is not all that could be desired. The natives on the station have taken very kindly to cricket as an amusement, and have become such adepts that a team has been formed which has on several occasions acquitted itself well against ” crack” elevens of Ipswich. This natural talent is being turned to good account, as a charge is made for admission to these matches, the proceeds of which go to swell the mission banking account. The captain, Curtis, and Thompson, the next best player, are not full-blooded aboriginals, but all the others are aboriginals with no white blood in their veins. Curtis is the most civilised black on the settlement, and has built a comfortable cottage that would do credit to many a white bush carpenter. Our engraving is from a photograph by Mr. Edward, of Ipswich.’