Three photographs taken on Flinders Island in the Furneaux Group, Bass Strait, November 1893.

Three albumen print photographs, in uniform 100 x 150 mm format, on original plain card mounts 130 x 187 mm; versos with fully contemporary captions in pencil and ink; the prints have excellent clarity and are in fine condition; the mounts are very clean and stable.

These important photographs were taken on Flinders Island by Archibald James Campbell, a noted ornithologist from Melbourne, during an expedition by the Victorian Field Naturalists to the Furneaux Group in the Bass Strait in November 1893. Campbell was also a talented photographer, and was one of the first Australian naturalists to use photography to document his fieldwork. Museum Victoria holds a substantial archive of Campbell’s photographs (as well as his significant egg collection).

All three of these photographs show members of the Islander community, who are of mixed Indigenous and European heritage; two include their wooden dwellings. Although the captions in pencil are in a different hand to those in ink, it would appear that they were both written by expedition members – one possibly Campbell himself.

The first shows an Islander family posed outside their crude timber home with bark shingle roof. The Museum Victoria copy (MM 91748) is entitled Half-caste Islanders’ home, Flinders Island 1893, while the copy in the NLA has the title An Aboriginal family living at Trousers Point. The original pencilled caption on the verso of the print offered here (which has been gone over in ink) reads Our water carriers. Below this caption is an extensive annotation relating the image to a passage of text published in the Victorian Naturalist, vol. X, no. 11, p. 169:

‘Unfortunately, water was at an inconvenient distance away from us, but we soon made satisfactory arrangements with a resident to supply us during our stay, which ended our little difficulty.’

The second image is a topographical view that features an Islander woman holding a basket in the left foreground. It is captioned in pencil: ‘River near camp, Strzelecki at back‘. The note below refers us to a description in the Victorian Naturalist, vol. X, no. 11 (this time without a page number).

The third photograph is captioned in pencil ‘Scene 4 miles from camp, near Mr Summers’ residence.’ We believe the Islanders pictured at bottom right of this image include John Summers (b. 1849 in Bass Strait, Tasmania, d. 1918 on Flinders Island) and his wife Margaret (Maggie) Smith (1848-1901), a descendant of Pleenperrenner (1796-1845).