Some views around Australia from the 1950s

I’ve found it a bit difficult keeping the blogs I run up to date over the last few months because life has rather got in the way. As well as a large garden landscaping project which seems to have grown during the implementation, we are also having work done in the house in preparation for a new Kitchen, which has kept me rather busy.

Even so, I still keep an eye on the various eBay searches I have set up, and about a week ago I spotted an interesting set of 35mm slides that featured views around Australia which I picked up for a few pounds.

When they arrived, I found two slide boxes containing about 150 slides in thick cardboard mounts. My initial assessment from the eBay viewers images was correct because the majority of the images are of views around the major cities of Australia taken in what seems to have been about 1959.

The photographer seems to have been very accomplished, because the vast majority of the shots are well composed and exposed but, unfortunately, time has not been kind to the emulsion, and a lot of the images have lost their original colours. To compensate for the lack of colours in the original slide, I had to reduce the red component of the picture during scanning to the point of almost completely removing it and although that improved some images it didn’t work on all the pictures.

I don’t know if all the pictures were taken during one trip, or if this is the work of several trips, but the range of locations is pretty high, covering the East of the continent in Sydney and Canberra, the West in Perth and the south in Melbourne.

The photographer had a liking for long exposure images of cities at night because several of the images feature that type of shot. Unfortunately, these pictures are some of the most affected by the colour loss, although the image of the Sydney skyline at night which I’ve used as the featured image in this post, retains much of the impact it would have had when first viewed around 60 years ago.

Views around Australia c1959

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