Souvenir of Isis Downs Blackall 1914.
- F3476
- Item
- 1914?
An album of 39 black and white photographs (8 x 14 cm and smaller) mounted on commercially produced grey boards; the brown board for the front cover has a design with a sail boat ; boards have three holes down the side, of which the top and bottom holes have been tied together with two pieces of string. Inscription inside front cover: "With much love and best wishes to Mr & Mrs 1 1/4 in memory of a very happy & cheery winter at Isis Downs from Aileen." All photographs are undated. Title for the album is taken from the caption above the first photograph the first page. Most photographs have handwritten captions.
Titles for photographs in square brackets supplied by processing archivist and additional/explanatory details are supplied for supplied captions in square brackets:
[1.] The house [Isis Downs Homestead];
[2.] The houseparty [Rupert Turner Havelock Clarke is in the back row, second from the right];
[3.] The drawing room furniture arrives;
[4.] Unloading at the store;
[5.] Mr 1 1/4 [Robert S. Whiting] & The Shed [Isis Downs Woolshed];
[6.] The trolley into the wool room;
[7.] Mr Fowler & The Bosses;
[8.] "Oh never see the loikes, so oi did";
[9.] The picnic at Bullock Creek;
[10.] Bullock Creek Backwater;
[11.] The huts;
[Photograph missing, caption: In the yards];
[12.] [Rupert Turner Havelock Clarke];
[13.] [Sheep yards];
[Two spaces for photographs, no captions]
[14.] Mr 1 1/4 [Robert S. Whiting] duck hunting on "Hope Tank";
[15.] "Hope tank";
[16.] Oranges at Avington";
[17.] The "outer Barcoo";
[18.] The new hoist;
[19.] Mr 1 1/4 & Sir Rupert;
[20.] Wool on the way;
[21.] [Two horse drawn carriages with wool bales, part of a shed on the left];
[22.] The Blackall coach;
[23.] The butcher's shop;
[24.] Sir Rupert flagging emus; and;
[25.] An emu family;
[26.] Mr Fraser meets his doom;
[27.] "Bloodstained Bertie", the Barcoo Bushranger;
[28.] The Tall & the short of it at Bullock Creek Bore;
[29.] Themselves;
[30.] Young Wace on Tango;
[31.] doing a "Tango Tangle";
[32.] Wace on the Grey mare;
[33.] [Tock Dean & Co-Trapers (I don't think)? Caption indecipherable];
[34.] The teamster's kitchen;
[Space for one photograph, no captions]
[35.] [Horse drawn carriages with wool bales in front of sheds];
[36.] [Wool bales on carriage and beside entrance to shed, sheds in foreground and background];
[37.] Four men in wool shed, stacked with bales;
[38.] Inside a woolshed with machinery and a man standing near a door;
[Three spaces for photographs, no captions]
[39.] [Woman and man between sundial and thatched roof open construction dwelling];
[Two spaces for photographs, no captions]
Flanking the Barcoo River at Isisford in the heart of Queensland's best central-west grazing country, Isis Downs is one of Australia's largest pastoral holdings. In its 1912 heyday under the ownership of Sir Rupert Clarke and Richard Whiting, Isis Downs ran 230,000 sheep and employed up to 150 staff during shearing, its area totalling more than 2,430 sq km. The Isis Downs shearing shed is the largest shearing shed in Australia. It consists of 52 shearing stands and is equipped with a rectangular sheep yard complex which, in its day, could hold 30,000 sheep at full capacity. It is a huge semi-circular shed which was fabricated in England, shipped to Australia and erected on site in July 1914 by the same company that built the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Only two sheds of this type and style were ever manufactured, with the other one being situated in Argentina.