In 1951, a hoard of 3,500 glass plate negatives from the nineteenth century was discovered in a garden shed in Chatswood.

In time, the find proved to be the most important photographic documentation of goldfields life in Australia and was included on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World register in May 2013.

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In 1951, Keast Burke, editor of Australasian Photo Review, wrote to Mitchell Librarian Phyllis Mander Jones, enquiring about Bernhardt Holtermann, a name associated with several nineteenth century panoramas he’d seen in the Library. She replied that his daughter-in-law, Mary Holtermann, lived in Chatswood and might have his photographic plates. 

As it turned out, the garden shed was stacked with a cache of 3500 glass plate negatives in cedar boxes and smaller ones in lacquered tins, all wonderfully undisturbed for nearly 80 years.

The negatives were donated to the Mitchell Library in 1952 by Bernhardt Holtermann’s grandson, Bernhard, and became known as the Holtermann Collection.

The glass plates were unidentified, but it didn’t take Keast Burke long to deduce that the smaller quarterplate negatives related to Hill End, about 60 km north of Bathurst, where German immigrant Holtermann had made his fortune.

Burke would spend the next 20 years trying to work out what these photographs were about. A mix of miners, shopfronts, portraits, family homes and landscapes, the collection was a rare glimpse back to the towns and people of the past. 

The Australian gold rushes transformed former convict colonies into modern cities, with hundreds of thousands of hopeful diggers arriving in pursuit of riches.

Yet many would find the myth of the gold rush more appealing than the reality. This selection of photographs from Hill End and Gulgong shows that life in the diggings was as much about hard labour, flies, mud, sly grog and dysentery, as it was about gold.

Within the Holtermann Collection, there are a number of distinctive photographs capturing owners outside their shops in Hill End and Gulgong. From pharmaceuticals to a Paris Hairdressing Salon, everything was available on the goldfields for the right price. Taken in the Hill End studio of the American and Australasian Photographic Company, these portraits highlight the diverse range of residents found on the goldfields.

One of the major advantages of the wet plate photographic process was that unlimited paper copies could be created from a single negative for minimal cost. This was important, as most portraits were commissioned to send home to family and friends.

Whilst every digger dreamed of striking it lucky, shopkeepers were often considered the real winners on the goldfields. Wet weather, the poor state of the roads and a swelling population meant that demand for supplies was high, and diggers dependent on the stores could be charged exorbitant prices.
 

Burke discovered that the photographs weren’t taken by Holtermann, but by Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss of the American and Australasian Photographic Company (A. and A. P. Co).

Merlin had begun his photographic career in Victoria in 1864. Within a few years he had developed a unique style of visual documentation, systematically attempting to record every building in the towns he visited. His photographs were distinctive, in that they captured groups of people casually standing outside their shops and residences. Some were owners or employees; others were just passers-by.

By 1869, Merlin was operating with his young assistant, Charles Bayliss, as the grandiosely named American and Australasian Photographic Company.

Attracted by reports of Hill End’s auriferous (ie.gold) wealth, they moved there in March 1872 and opened a studio on Tambaroora Street.

Throughout 1872 the A. and A. P. Co extensively documented Hill End and its residents. One of the residents photographed during this venture was the wealthy German immigrant Bernhardt Holtermann.

When the world’s largest specimen of reef gold, weighing 286 kg, was unearthed from Holtermann’s Star of Hope mine on 19 October 1872, Merlin and Bayliss were able to record it above ground, before it was crushed.

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In November 1872, a meeting between Holtermann and Merlin in Hill End resulted in an ambitious project. Holtermann, in true entrepreneurial spirit and proud of his own success as a migrant, wanted to use his wealth to encourage immigration to Australia.

They announced their plans for Holtermann’s great International Travelling Exposition. Merlin was to travel through the country creating a photographic gallery that would bring the colonies of Australia to world attention.

Tragically, Merlin fell ill and died from pneumonia in September 1873, leaving to his assistant the task of documenting towns for Holtermann’s Exposition. Bayliss toured Victoria the following year, but returned to Sydney in 1875 and began making giant panoramas of the city from the tower of Holtermann’s mansion in St Leonards, Sydney. 

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Bayliss, having transformed Holtermann’s tower windows into a giant camera lens, was able to create glass plates capturing the whole of Sydney Harbour. The venture was to cost Holtermann over £4000, but resulted in the production of several incredible panoramas and the largest wet plate negatives anywhere in the world.

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In the end, Holtermann’s Exposition never took place. However, we know what he had intended to show, through detailed reports in newspapers and the photographs which were commissioned from Merlin and Bayliss.

Whilst Holtermann’s great International Travelling Exposition never took place, his large panoramas impressed audiences overseas, receiving the Bronze award at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and a Silver Medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle Internationale in 1878. The selected photographs show a range of other locations in New South Wales and Victoria that Merlin and Bayliss were able to capture under Holterman’s extraordinary patronage.

In 1851 the Englishman Frederick Scott Archer invented the wet plate photographic process. It allowed photographers to produce a glass negative and print an unlimited number of detailed copies on paper.

These features were key improvements over the previous two photographic processes available at the time, the daguerreotype and the calotype, and became the method used by Merlin and Bayliss in the 1870s.

<h2 class = "whiteTitle">Step 1: Coating the plate</h2>

The first step in producing a wet plate negative was coating a clean glass sheet with an even film of collodion over one side. 

Collodion, a syrupy solution made by dissolving guncotton in alcohol and ether, was used by nineteenth century doctors for covering incised wounds. 

<h2 class = "whiteTitle">Step 2: Sensitising the plate</h2>

The next step was carried out in darkness. The emulsion on the glass plate was sensitised with silver nitrate, often in a portable darkroom.

Unfortunately, wet plate negatives lost their light sensitivity when dry, so it was necessary for photographers to coat the plate, sensitise it, then expose and develop it while still wet. This meant that outdoor photographers had to carry about 25 kg of chemicals and glass plates with them and have a portable darkroom nearby.  

<h2 class = "whiteTitle">Step 3: Exposing the plate</h2>

From the darkroom, the plate had to be immediately placed in a camera and exposed.

Even in sunlight, wet plate photographers needed a second or two to capture a scene, so people had to remain motionless during the exposure to avoid being recorded as a blur. The see-through figures to the right of miners loitering in Herbert Street Gulgong are the result of people moving as the photographer was at work.

Indoor studio portraiture required even longer exposures and subjects were held stock-still with an iron headrest, usually carefully concealed behind them. Restless children were a particular problem and most nineteenth century photographers charged double for infants and toddlers.

<h2 class = "whiteTitle">Step 4: Developing the plate</h2>

The final step was to develop, wash and fix the plate back in the darkroom. Plates were often dried over an open flame and then varnished to protect the delicate image.

It was a difficult and tedious business making, exposing and developing each negative, one at a time. An ordinary wet plate photographer might only make 20 outdoor images a day, but Merlin and Bayliss were capable of 70 or more.

From today’s perspective, what the wet plate process lost in lengthy exposures is more than compensated for by its wealth of detail. Unlike twentieth century film negatives, wet plate negatives have no grain and are capable of extreme enlargement, the only limit being the resolution of the original camera lens. 

When the Library received the Holtermann Collection of negatives in 1952, print enlargements and copy negatives were made from them.

Whilst the wet plate negatives captured exceptional detail, the copies made in the twentieth century failed to reveal the wealth of information hidden within.

In 2008, plans were made to digitally scan the Holtermann Collection at a very high resolution. The smaller plates were scanned at 10,000 pixels on the longer side and the larger plates were captured using a medium-format camera with a 50-megapixel sensor, producing a sequence of images which were stitched together by computer.

Scanning took two years and the last negative was digitised in September 2011. 

For the first time in 140 years, it is possible to see what Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss photographed, with astonishing clarity and fidelity. It is now feasible to read nineteenth century posters on a distant wall, the labels on bottles in a pharmacy window, and to identify individuals in the crowd.

The Holtermann Collection is the most important visual record of goldfields life in Australia. It is a remarkable testament to both the skill of photographers Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss and the foresight of benefactor Bernhardt Holtermann.