[MELBOURNE] The staff of J. O’Callaghan furniture removals, Chapel Street, St. Kilda, at a picnic at Half Moon Bay, 26 January 1922.

Gelatin silver print photograph, 87 x 136 mm, printed on Kodak Austral postcard stock; verso annotated in pencil by an O’Callaghan staff member with details of location and date of the photograph ‘Half Moon Bay [i.e. Black Rock] A. N. A. Day, 1922 Victoria’, and another note with directions for a local removal job: ‘Mr. Jackson, 3rd house Larch St. from Jasmine St., Caulfield’ (this note is also written in fountain pen); the print is in very good condition (some very mild corner wear), verso with scattered light marks.

Formerly known as Prahran South, the suburb of Windsor – including the St. Kilda end of Chapel Street, where removalist J. O’Callaghan had his business premises – came into being in 1891. From its beginnings it was a working-class pocket in Melbourne’s inner southeast, wedged in between the more salubrious neighbourhoods of South Yarra, St. Kilda Road and Armadale – and remained so until its relatively late (for Melbourne) and gradual gentrification, which was still taking place in the early 2000s. For the O’Callaghan staff, the annual picnic at Half Moon Bay in 1922 would certainly have been a memorable outing in the fresh seaside air.

Note: Australian Natives Association Day was one of the former names for Australia Day (the present name was not officially introduced until 1935).