Community
24 January, 2025
CDHS gifted glass slide photos
THE Camperdown and District Historical Society has recently added some interesting items to its collection from a 1950s chartered surveyor.
The society has been sorting through a collection of glass slides donated by the family of Avis Quarrell, who was a long-time friend of English surveyor Thomas Andrew Wigginton and Cowley’s Creek resident Ada Chennell.
A large number of slides were gifted to the society, contained in two crafted boxes and a small case embossed with Mr Wigginton’s initials.
Mr Wigginton moved to Australia from England sometime in the early 1950s, marrying Mrs Chennell in 1960 and living in Leura Street, Camperdown until his death in 1970.
Society secretary Maree Belyea said the process of going through the individual glass slides showed images from a variety of places including Camperdown, England, Port Campbell, the Wimmera, Melbourne, the Grampians and Sherbrooke.
Slides of buildings and scenes in other areas will be offered to the historical societies of those areas.
“It’s just another era that you can look at and see what people are doing in a different time and seeing the craft of the photography,” Ms Belyea said.
“We’ve become so lazy with digital cameras – the skills it had taken to produce them in the first place, and the fact that they’ve been kept so lovingly well to be passed down and shared with so many more people.
“We didn’t know the man, and he wasn’t here for a long time, but his belongings ended up here.
“We’re just so pleased they have come to us, rather than being discarded.
“It was good fun and interesting sorting through what had been treasures to somebody else.”
The glass slides operate as negatives, meaning the images produced had the lightest areas appear the darkest.
Subjects included flowers, animals, architecture and locations such as Port Campbell’s London Bridge, prior to its collapse in 1990.
Ms Belyea said, while many were framed and labelled with their subject, there were several slides which still needed further research.
“We put them on the light box and we can make them out,” she said.
“We’ve got a process with the light box – we photograph them and then put them on computer and change them from a negative to a positive.”
A few are wrapped in Leeds Camera Club competition entry forms of 1953-54 and include the judges’ comments on the form.
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