Pall Mall, Sandhurst (Bendigo)
1874
Glass photonegative
After the death of Beaufoy Merlin in 1873, Bernhardt Holtermann engaged Merlin’s assistant, 24-year-old Charles Bayliss, to continue taking photographs for his planned exposition. This view of Pall Mall, from Hadley’s City Family Hotel, was taken by Bayliss in April 1874, using a mammoth camera which took glass plates measuring 18 x 22 inches [46 x 56 cm]. Three months before this photograph, the entire stock of Hadley’s City Family Hotel was sold, including De Venoge, Moet, Roederer, Krug and Wachter champagnes.
From Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers, 6 November 1871
Having taken our ease at our inn, we venture from its protecting portals into the tide of fortune-seekers which ebbs and flows in Pall Mall from noon to midnight. Pall Mall is an irregularly built street, containing some fine buildings, and many shanties. It is of considerable width, and perhaps its best description is that it is as much unlike its London prototype as it is possible to conceive. It is the business, mining, and recreation centre of the town. Here merchant, housewife, speculator, and dandy elbow one another in the pursuit of their various avocations. It is at once Cheapside, the Strand, Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and Hyde Park, with the slightest possible flavour of brimstone. [Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers, 6 November 1871, p206]
Back to list