J. Booth, tentmaker, and tent dwelling, Home Rule

1872
Glass photonegative

In the early days of gold rushes, miners usually lived in tents. Here tentmaker J Booth has confidently set up his canvas shop in Home Rule. The burgeoning new field was described in the Sydney Morning Herald, 22 May 1872:

On Friday last there must have been fully fifteen hundred persons upon the ground, and tents and habitations of every description were springing, apparently Iike mushrooms, from the ground …