Victorian Volunteer Artillery at the Dandenong Encampment, April 1882.

Two albumen print photographs in identical Paris Panel format, 170 x 245 mm, the rectos and versos of the matching gilt-edged mounts with the gilt imprint of J. W. Lindt, 7 Collins Street East, Melbourne; both rectos with faint contemporary inscription at left of lower margin: ‘Dandenong Encampment’, one with the additional caption ‘Gun Drill’; both prints lightly foxed but with excellent clarity, the mounts with a few handling marks.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth-century, an annual encampment was held at Easter for the Colony of Victoria’s volunteer forces. The encampment was always covered extensively in the Melbourne press: it provided an opportunity for the various units to be assessed on their level of skill and training, and for an enthusiastic public to be impressed by the firepower that might potentially be called upon to protect it in the albeit unlikely event of a Russian invasion (or indeed, violent social unrest). Between the 1860s and the 1890s a number of different locations were used, but in 1882 the encampment was held along the banks of the Dandenong Creek.

These large format photographs on deluxe mounts were taken by J. W. Lindt, perhaps the leading photographer in Melbourne at the time. They would no doubt have been desirable souvenirs of the Dandenong Encampment, for both participants and visitors alike. In the more close-up view, the field guns being used are Whitworth 3-pounders; in the other view Armstrong 6- and 12-pounders can also be seen.