Lost and found photographs give rare glimpse into working class pre-war Australia

Extract from ABC News

ABC Broken Hill

By Aimee Volkofsky

Posted about 3 hours ago

Photo: Families were generally large, and those with many children were often the poorest. (Supplied: BHCC, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery and the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum/James Wooler)

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A collection of striking and candid images of life in a remote mining town in the 1900s has survived time, heat and disappearing into obscurity in a dusty old shed.

The photos were taken by James Wooler, who migrated from Yorkshire, following his wife's family to Broken Hill.
He was in the town only three or four years, between 1908 and 1911, but in that time was a prolific photographer.
The photographs he took were distributed to universities and libraries around the country, and a selection was retained in the town's gallery and mining and minerals museum.
Senior museum officer John Fadden said the photographs were unique for their time.
"They show the working-class culture, whereas traditionally during this period the people who were photographed would have been dignitaries, mine managers," he said.
"What we're looking at here is a snapshot of life in the Hill."

Photo: Football was the most popular sport, and matches were enjoyed by women as well men. (Supplied: BHCC, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery and the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum/James Wooler)

Through the eyes of a self-made man

The photographs are a combination of candid snaps of daily life in a mining town and composed portraits of working class families, in the style associated with wealthier classes.
Mr Fadden said that perspective would have been helped by Mr Wooler's own working-class roots.
"He shows these people with a dignity," he said.
"The photographer himself comes from a working-class background. His parents were both factory workers.
"He's a self-driven person. He's educated himself. He was taught the basics of painting and composition, and this new medium of photography has grabbed him."

Early social media

Mr Wooler's talent as a photographer landed him many private commissions, and he also produced candid shots as postcards, an early form of social media, Mr Fadden said.
"The way people shared things then was through postcards," he said.

"The mines and the street parades were photographed and very shortly after turned into postcards and shared around; a very early social media."

The subject matter is much the same as you would find on any social media account these days — weddings, children, young people coyly holding drinks at a picnic.

Photo: Argent Street was notorious for its hard-drinking hotels, and before 1910's local option poll, the Barrier Temperance Alliance tried to persuade citizens to 'vote in the bottom square' to close them. (Supplied: BHCC, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery and the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum/James Wooler)

Six hundred photographs lost and found

Eventually Mr Wooler landed a job at the local newspaper, The Barrier Miner, where he became a pioneer of duotone image reproduction.
"This allowed The Barrier Miner to sell itself as one of the first pictorial newspapers in Australia," Mr Fadden said.
Mr Wooler worked at the newspaper for two years before contracting typhoid, after which he moved his family to the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, leaving all his photographs behind.
"Whether it was to do with his ill health, whether it was to do with copyright with the newspaper, he doesn't take any of his glass plates with him," Mr Fadden said.
"It was not until the mid-fifties 600 of his glass plates were discovered in a shed in Broken Hill.

"The dry heat of Broken Hill actually probably helped to conserve the images. The plates would have disintegrated anywhere else."

Photo: This rather serious group was photographed at the Silverton Tramway Company's Easter Monday picnic at Silverton. (Supplied: BHCC, Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery and the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum/James Wooler)

The images were split up at the time, given to various universities and libraries around the country.
Photographs from the era by Mr Wooler are still being unearthed in the town.
"Unfortunately, a local photographer, Douglass Banks, passed away quite recently. His wife when cleaning out his studio and came across 50 glass plates that were signed by Wooler.
"There are still more out there."