Whaling scene at Twofold Bay, Eden, New South Wales, 1870.

Stereoscopic albumen print photograph, each image approximately 82 x 82 mm (square format), signed and numbered by the photographer at lower right of the right-hand image ‘C. Walter 166’; on original black card mount, 87 x 177 mm, verso blank; slight loss of contrast in the upper part of each image, otherwise the prints are in very good condition; the mount has a couple of inconsequential scratches at one edge.

German-born, Melbourne-based travelling photographer and botanist Charles (Carl) Walter (1831-1907) is perhaps best known for his series of carte de visite portraits of Aborigines taken at Coranderrk Reserve, near Healesville, in the mid 1860s, but between 1865 and 1870 he also produced topographical stereoviews of locations throughout regional Victoria. In the latter part of 1870, Walter crossed the border from East Gippsland and with his camera documented the whaling industry and township of Eden on the south coast of New South Wales. In 1875 he accompanied Methodist missionary Rev. George Brown on a voyage in the John Wesley from Sydney to Samoa, Fiji and New Ireland. Walter was keenly interested in the natural sciences, and he carried out work for the Technological Museum at the Public Library of Victoria and for the Victorian Department of Agriculture, as well as collecting botanical specimens for von Mueller.

Another example of this stereoscopic photograph of a whaling scene at Twofold Bay, Eden is held in the State Library of Victoria (PCLTAF 980). It bears the photographer’s manuscript caption: ‘Whaling in Twofold Bay. Cutting up the whale. 166 / Photo. by C. Walter, November 10 1870’.