 |
Author, artist, publisher Glenville Pike at property near Mareeba.
|
The photographic collection of the late Glenville Pike in the Cairns Historical Society runs to some 582 images, covering the early days of North Australia. This blogger recently examined each and every one of the photographs.
By Peter Simon
Subjects covered in the valuable collection include early aviation, shipping , mining towns , Thursday Island , Cooktown , Palm Island , Mount Mulligan , tobacco farming , Aboriginal studies such as the "King of Cairns" and the "Queen of Port Douglas. "
Explorers include Norwegian scientist , anthropologist , ethnographer , Carl Lumholtz (1851-1922) who spent four years in Queensland from 1880 travelling and hunting with Aborigines , collecting mammals , some previously unknown...Lumholtz's Tree Kangaroo and the Herbert River Ringtail Possum ; in 1889, he wrote Among Cannibals An Account of Four Years' Travels in Australia and of Camps with the Aborigines of Queensland.
His travels took him to Mexico where , sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, he led expeditions and wrote Unknown Mexico , followed by Through Central Borneo and My Life Of Exploration .The Lumholtz National Park in the Herbert River area was named after him in 1994 , but was later changed to Girringun National Park to reflect its Indigenous origins .
Pike had long been interested in and wrote about the German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt who disappeared on an expedition in 1848. He rang me when an item in the South Australian Museum was found to have possibly come from the ill-fated expedition that backed up his theory about where the explorer was heading when the party vanished.
Some of the photographs in the collection were attributed to Alfred Atkinson who, if I remember correctly, had an early photographic business in Cairns and Pike , with limited funds, told me he used to buy from him old photos he had , including glass negatives , in boxes , from time to time .
A surprise inclusion in the collection is a shot taken at Cooktown of the seaplane piloted by the famous Italian aviator Francesco de Pinedo which touched down there as part of a 1925 Rome-Australia-Tokyo-Rome flight, described as the most extensive aerial tour on record, to demonstrate the feasibility of global air travel and the use of seaplanes . He was burnt alive in 1933 , near New York, at the start of an attempt to establish a nonstop record .
One of the early stores in Cooktown went under the name London Emporium.
There is a shot of the "first car " from Sydney to Cape York , a Baby Austin 7, driven by two New Zealanders , Hector MacQuarrie and Dick Mathews, in 1928.
His travels took him to Mexico where , sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, he led expeditions and wrote Unknown Mexico , followed by Through Central Borneo and My Life Of Exploration .The Lumholtz National Park in the Herbert River area was named after him in 1994 , but was later changed to Girringun National Park to reflect its Indigenous origins .
Pike had long been interested in and wrote about the German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt who disappeared on an expedition in 1848. He rang me when an item in the South Australian Museum was found to have possibly come from the ill-fated expedition that backed up his theory about where the explorer was heading when the party vanished.
Some of the photographs in the collection were attributed to Alfred Atkinson who, if I remember correctly, had an early photographic business in Cairns and Pike , with limited funds, told me he used to buy from him old photos he had , including glass negatives , in boxes , from time to time .
A surprise inclusion in the collection is a shot taken at Cooktown of the seaplane piloted by the famous Italian aviator Francesco de Pinedo which touched down there as part of a 1925 Rome-Australia-Tokyo-Rome flight, described as the most extensive aerial tour on record, to demonstrate the feasibility of global air travel and the use of seaplanes . He was burnt alive in 1933 , near New York, at the start of an attempt to establish a nonstop record .
One of the early stores in Cooktown went under the name London Emporium.
 |
Japanese flag flying in Darwin procession for local men going off to fight in the first world war, a rare Pike photograph.
|
