Sepia Saturday 221: 29 March 2014

Alan from Sepia Saturday says:

When I previewed this Sepia theme image a few weeks ago I suggested "floods, water, weather, floating cars and sepia skies" as possible interpretations. Looking back at this list now, I have to say that I, for one, am heartily sick of the first four on the list and I suspect the last suggestion is somewhat inaccurate. Those aren't sepia skies they are a kind of faded pink skies. But here at Sepia Saturday there is no such thing as a mistake, merely a new potential interpretation. So you can add to the list strange tints and colours in old photographs. I chose this particular photograph for a theme because it comes from a new contributor to Flickr Commons - the Provincial Archives of Alberta, Canada. Lovers of old photographs everywhere should celebrate every time museums, archives and galleries add their digitised image collection to Flickr for the free enjoyment of everyone rather that burying them within a barbed-wire corset of copyright laws. The photograph shows a barge moving cars to dry land during the waterways floods of 1936. Whatever your interpretation of the image all you have to do is to post a post on or around Saturday  29 March 2014.


Brisbane is famous for floods.  When I started work at the ABC many years ago one of the first things that was pointed out to me as a newbie was the flood-line marked on the wall downstairs near the film library from the January 1974 flood.  It was marked in gaffer or duct tape and seemed amazing but unreal to a naive 21 year old.  The studios then were on the banks of the Brisbane river at Toowong.  I was to witness our next big flood in Brisbane along with many others only three years ago in 2011.  I understand the flood in 1893 was worse than 1974 or 2011.  In preparation for today's post, I looked at photos from the Picture Queensland site. I'm not sure that the site is working properly today because I seemed to have trouble locating copyright information so I decided not to use any of the 1500 images that you can discover there.

Instead I thought I would give you some images from my husband's family archives.  Not very many but they took me on an interesting trip down our nation's memory lane.

Slide 12

  
I wish I could tell you where this was taken.  I suspect somewhere in Victoria.  I know that Robert's parents went on a trip to Melbourne in about 1956.  

Slide 14

This slide seems to have the same kinds of clouds doesn't it?  So maybe someone recognises that dam and can tell me where it is.  I'm thinking it's the Hume Weir near Albury looking at other photos on the web like this one.  Or these on Trove.


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Anyway, when I googled flooding Victoria 1956 I found this website which has some great footage and oral histories of the flooding of the Murray and Darling Rivers in 1956.

This next slide is part of the same collection and I suspect taken at about the same time.  It's not really to do with flooding but it does have a barge.

I don't know what Robert's father was doing at this particular time but it seemed to involve going to Fraser Island I think and helping on a job there.  This was how they got there.  I think those shorts look very WW2 army surplus don't they?  Here's another one from the time when 4 wheel drives were driven in 4 wheel drive country and not the burbs...

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So not many photos today but plenty of food for thought and further enquiry.  For more images of flooding et al....head over here.

POSTSCRIPT

I've taken some photos of the slides from which the first photos were taken in an attempt to date them.

These websites here and here indicate that they date from 1950-1955 but I'm happy to stand corrected if someone has better information.

This is what they look like through the slide viewer....

In the process of sorting them and trying to work out the sequence of them, I found one of a lighthouse.  I'm not sure if it will help or not but here is the image of the slide for you.  Do you recognise this lighthouse?

Slide 13

Well at least I think it's a lighthouse.  What do you think it is?  It may help us place the first slide showing a flood somewhere.

Another slide in the set is this one:

Slide 11

The Fraser Island slides probably date from 1955 - 59 as they have "Processed by Kodak" written on the mounts as well.  Time to ring Aunt Alice now and ask her for more information.