Panoramic view of Trial Bay, New South Wales, late 1870s.

A$1,100 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Albumen print photograph, 220 x 355 mm, laid down on split card (section of original album page), titled Trial Bay in manuscript in negative bottom right; a superb print with rich tonal range and great clarity, in fine condition (very short edge tear bottom left). Rare early view of the settlement at Trial Bay on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, probably dating to around 1877 when work on the breakwater was commenced by prisoners from the purpose-built Trial Bay Gaol. The photographer of this unusually wide large format view was almost cerainly commissioned by the New South Wales Department of Works; indeed, he could have been the New South Wales Government Photographer himself, John Sharkie. According to the SLNSW, the Government Printing Office original negative archive is held at State Archives Records Authority of New South Wales as NRS 21689 Images [Government Printing Office] NRS 4481 Glass Negatives. State Library NSW holds a low resolution copy image only. Trove locates only one example of an albumen print of this significant image. That particular print forms part of an album held in the collection of the Blue Mountains Library, whose cataloguing notes are salient: Trial Bay had been recognised as a safe shipping refuge from southerlies ever since its naming after the wreck of the Brig Trial in 1817. Between 1863 and 1866 some 90 ships and 243 lives were lost, forcing the NSW Colonial government to act. In 1870 Parliament voted £10,000 towards the construction

• Binding: Hardcover

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