Group of Wardandi Noongar people. Bunbury, Western Australia, early 1900s.

Perth & Bunbury : H. B. Albert & Co., Booksellers, [ca. 1906]. Chromolithographic postcard, 87 x 138 mm, recto with printed caption: ‘Group of Bunbury Aboriginal Natives, W. A.’, and brief inscriptions by the sender at upper left and top edge; verso with more substantial handwritten message (the whole of which must have been written on at least four postcards, as this is numbered ‘4’ by the sender), ‘…What do you think of Australian Natives. There are a few about yet, the[y] seem quite happy in their own way. We leave here for a place further down the coast about 100 miles to take about 500 loads of sleepers for Cape Town….’; the card is in excellent condition.

We have not been able to trace another example of this important postcard in Australian institutional collections. The postcard, which shows a large group of around 30 Wardandi Noongar men, women and children, was published in Bunbury no earlier than 1905 (it has a so-called “divided back” designed for a message on the left and address on the right), but the original photograph from which it was made could conceivably date to anywhere between 1900 and 1905. Note at the centre of the group the top-hatted whitefella – possibly a local dignitary (councillor?).