General News
18 August, 2022
Glass plate images a rare find for historical society
Glass plate negatives that capture Carisbrook’s buildings and streetscapes from more than 150 years ago have been donated to the Carisbrook Historical Society, painting a picture of the town’s past. Taken in 1866, the glass plates were entered...
Glass plate negatives that capture Carisbrook’s buildings and streetscapes from more than 150 years ago have been donated to the Carisbrook Historical Society, painting a picture of the town’s past.
Taken in 1866, the glass plates were entered by the Borough of Carisbrook into an intercolonial exhibition, where towns would showcase their buildings, key features and what they had to offer as a sort of competition.
Around 20 of those original glass plates have survived and are now in the care of the historical society and capture buildings including the Carisbrook Town Hall, common school, Carisbrook Brewery, Crook’s Butcher, Smith’s Store and the streetscape of Bucknall Street.
What happened to the plates after they were taken is largely unknown but what is known is they resurfaced in the 1990s at the Carisbrook tip.
“I don’t know when, but clearly the set of glass plates got into private hands,” historical society member Alex Stoneman said.
“These glass plates were actually found at the Carisbrook tip and they ended up with Noel Tunks who was a teacher.
“He and the art teacher, Ron Livingston, they used the school equipment and produced sets of photographs from those glass plates in the 1990s.”
From there, the rare plates again fell off the radar until Mr Stoneman made a recent chance visit to the Avoca Historical Society.
“One of my recent projects has been indexing old maps and directing piles of those maps to the relevant historical societies,” he said.
“Among those was Avoca who I contacted and told I had these old maps and they were very excited to see them. When we were on the phone they actually said they had something I might be interested in.
“I took the maps out to the historical society and they had a great pile of things donated by Noel Tunks’ family after his death in 2008.
“Out of that pile, the historical society gave me a bunch of old photographs which have since gone to Maryborough and also the old glass plates.
“When I saw them I had to sit down, we never thought we’d see those again — the plates had come full circle.”
Mr Stoneman said the glass plate negatives had significant historic value and gave insight into the community’s view of Carisbrook in the 1800s.
“Looking at what was photographed shows what they thought was important at the time and what projection they wanted to make of what Carisbrook was like,” he said.
“It was obviously a very significant selection of photographs and had a lot of importance.
“This set is the créme de la créme of photographs — it meant a lot back then and it means a lot now because this is heritage, you can’t lose it.”
The historical society is now working to establish proper storage for the items, which Mr Stoneman said are irreplaceable.
“Because of their fragility and condition, we will get a wooden box made up with lining and re-house each of the plates in archive conditions to ensure they’re protected,” he said.
“The plates themselves will never be displayed because they are just irreplaceable, but we will make photographs from them and display those.”
