Willoughby Falls, Sydney
1858 Robert Hunt
Albumen print, Macleay Museum, 811060002 

Yet this passion for the harbour was not all that kept Robert Hunt in Australia. Robert's mother had died before he arrived in Sydney but his father died around 1856 and this forced Hunt to bring his two sisters out from England to live with him in Australia. In 1857 he booked passage for them both and by August the 20th he was waiting on their arrival on the ship the Dunbar. Tragically the ship was wrecked when the captain mistakenly steered the ship into the Gap at South Head rather than the harbour entrance. All of the passengers were killed except for a man found alive in a hollow in cliff face some two days later. In the days following the disaster pieces of the wreckage floated into Sydney harbour along with the bodies of the passengers. Hunt wandered around the beaches and bays looking for traces of his sisters but only located a pillow with the letters "S.H." embroidered on it, which he kept thinking it may have been his sister Sarah's. Soon after Hunt took a photograph of the wreckage of the Dunbar in Sydney Harbour. But it was not until much later that he produced this photograph of the Gap, where the Dunbar was wrecked.

With his family dead, Hunt, unlike some of his contemporaries, didn't feel as tied to England. Instead he set his roots down in Sydney and in 1860 he married a local woman Mary Paul. Hunt seemed to have a very real appreciation of the lifestyle offered by Sydney and his photographs reflect this. He appears to have been a devoted husband and father, instilling his passion for photography in at least one of his children, William. Many of his photographs show him at ease with his family and friends picnicing at popular spots such as Lane Cove or Middle Harbour. Other excursions included a trip to Captain Cook's landing place in Botany Bay, visits to the Nepean River and Mount Tomah and the Blue Mountains.

Throughout the 1850s and 60s many of his early images are taken around North Sydney and Sydney town. While Hunt photographed Australian trees and houses he also tried to imitate the artistic conventions, such as picturesque views, which were popular in England. While successful in producing works in this style, the clear crisp atmosphere of Sydney and the lack of pollution gave a clarity and level of detail missing in some British views. By the 1880s this was no longer the case as commercially produced dry gelatin glass plates became popular in both Britain and Australia. These plates produced highly detailed photographs with lower exposure times and this led to the popularising of larger prints with stereo and carte de visite formats becoming less popular.

Hunt however continued to take stereo photographs well into the 1880s and even some of his non-stereoscopic photographs appear to have been taken using a camera with a stereo back. This could hold a stereo sized glass plate but with the divider removed this created a panoramic format. The viewing of this format was catered for by the stereographoscope which became popular in the mid 1870s. These enabled viewers to look at stereo images through twin lenses or an elongated mono view through a single magnifying lens.

In the early years Hunts passion for stereo photography was shared by his fellow amateurs and the collection contains stereo photographs by his co-workers at the Sydney Mint William Stanley Jevons, and E. W. Ward, as well as works by his friends Matthew Fortesque Moresby and John Smith and John Rae. Alan Davies and Peter Stanbury in their book The Mechanical Eye in Australia, speculate that some of these may in fact be the same stereo photographs which Hunt exhibited at the photographic exhibition held by the Philosophical Society of New South Wales in December 1859.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, whose photographs after the mid-1860s have not been located, Hunt work has survived and continues into the 1880s giving a unique photographic view of Sydney and environs from the 1850s to the 1880s. There are few works in the collection from the 1870s but this could be because in 1870 Hunt left Sydney to work at the Melbourne Branch of the Royal Mint. Hunt returned to Sydney in 1878 to take up the position of Deputy Master of the Sydney Mint and the albumen prints from the 1880s make up the bulk of material in the collection.

Throughout the 1880s Hunts interest in the landscape and environs of Sydney was aided by the development of roads and communities around Sydney. During this period Hunt took photographs from many outlying areas of Sydney including Pittwater and Barrenjoey, Manly, The Spit, Thirlemere, Mount Victoria, Katoomba, Lawson, and Castle Hill. He also took many photographs in the lower North Shore near his house Summer and those of his friends, such as 'Honda' in Shellcove harbour.

Typical of many Victorian gentlemen Hunt's interests ranged from the artistic to the scientific. Hunt used his camera in a more documentary manner as well. On the 3rd of October 1887 he photographed the Eight Hour March which workers undertook to highlight their demands for an eight hour working day.

Public work schemes also captured his attention and the collection contains images from the development of the Sydney water supply at Prospect, images of the construction of the Knapsack Viaduct, the Zig Zag railway, work on Northbridge, roads such as the Victoria Pass, Sydney Dry Docks, the Botanical Gardens, and various railway stations. Private development of houses and hotels were also recorded by Hunt including; The Newport Hotel, 'Waratah' house, the Great Western Hotel in Katoomba, the Clarendon Hotel in Manly, the Newport Hotel, Sherwood Grange, the Goodlet's Home, Cedarmore, 'Honda' in Shellcove, Cobbity Church, the Free Public Library, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and the Conservatorium of Music.

If all this were not enough it is obvious from Hunt's photographs that he had one other abiding passion and that was sailing. Perhaps this was one of the reasons Hunt was so attached to Sydney for scattered through his albums of photographs are ships and sailing boats on Sydney Harbour.

The earliest surviving photograph by Hunt is a stereo photograph of St. James Parsonage in Macquaire St. (on the right) taken in 1855 from the Mint buidling. This photograph remains one of the earliest surviving outdoor stereo photographs of New South Wales. Hunt's commitment to photography continued unabated up until his death and thirty three years after he took this early photograph he returned to take photograph the machinery at the Sydney branch of the Royal Mint.

In 1859 Hunt, W S Jevons and E. W. Ward, took their first successful interiors of the machinery at the Sydney Mint and in 1892 Hunt returned to the task. Over the course of four weeks he photographed the Mint's machinery. This was no small enterprise for the exposure times for these photographs varied between 1 minute to 45 minutes depending on the amount of light available. These photographs have proved to be a unique record for historians and architects. In 2001 they were a valuable resource for the re-development of the Sydney Mint by the Historic Houses Trust.

Hunts work as a photographer provides us with a unique look back in time. In a career longer than many professional photographers Hunt was free of commercial constraints. This allowed him create a truly individual view of Sydney as it grew into a city before his camera lens. This exhibition provides, for the first time, an opportunity to see the scope of Robert Hunt's vision and its importance to the cultural heritage of Australia.