AUS:Nugget of an idea to attract early migrants

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Tim Barlass February 22, 2013 SMH.COM

THIS is the precursor to Google Street View, circa 1872.

Early images of the gold rush era and ”promotional” shots of Sydney and Melbourne were commissioned by German-born entrepreneur Bernhardt Holtermann who, as every school kid knows, was credited with the discovery of Australia’s largest gold nugget.

They were taken by photographer Beaufoy Merlin and assistant, Charles Bayliss, with a make-shift dark room on the back of a horse-drawn carriage. They would exhaustively photograph houses and premises along the way using cumbersome and fragile large glass plate negatives.

Now, 100 of the images from the collection of 3500 will go on show for the first time from Saturday at the State Library of NSW. It is remarkable that the entire collection survived – it was discovered in boxes in a garden shed in Chatswood in 1951…>>MORE(SMH.COM)>

SEE A GALLERY OF HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS at SMH.COM

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