Detail of Workers from Lammermoor Station, ca. 1880. Select to start slideshow.
Moving to Queensland
Select to view virtual book of the Nicholson family photograph album
Part two of the Nicholson family photograph album
Domestic bliss
I was enchanted to find this album and have requested it many times. As a British immigrant to Australia in the 1960s, I really connected with the photographs. They follow the family on board ship, in their first rented home in Spring Hill in 1864 and then to the tract of land where they settled and planted an orchard and built their first home. We see the plans for the house drawn in ink and the house under construction. Mary, the diarist, speaks about planting fruit trees and a vegetable patch and we see her husband digging in the garden.
Christine Martin, Heritage Collections
This is a wonderful example of the strength and optimism of early settlers coming to a strange new frontier. John Nicholson (30), Mary (26), Frances (1) and John’s brother William were early free settlers. Photographs on board the clipper "Essex" during the arduous 100-day voyage are a marvel as photographs were usually taken in studios and subjects had to remain absolutely still. After building Grovely Lodge they set aside land for the Grovely Church of England. The Governor, Sir George Bowen, laid the foundation stone and the bricks were made in their paddock, now the area containing Mitchelton Railway Station.
Patricia Parr, Heritage Collections
The miracle of these photographs taken with one of Queensland’s first privately owned cameras! There are glimpses of the old – Mary’s work basket and John’s shipboard stool – and the new – kangaroo and opossum skins, pineapples, a water melon, bananas, the towering bush and the wide verandas of their new home. The album ends enigmatically with two treasured keepsakes – a fragile fern leaf and a lock of hair.
Anna Haebich, Curator
Home is where the heart is
My favourite collection items are the ones that reveal fascinating personal stories. The story of Robert Christison and Lammermoor Station begins as a wonderful story of a young man determined to make his way in the world. A man who is intelligent and resourceful, and always remains optimistic no matter what the setback. It tells the story of a family, often separated by vast distances and many months and years, yet whose members remain completely devoted to each other.
Naomi Elliott, Heritage Collections
Robert Christison lived the migrant’s dilemma. His home and heart lay at opposite ends of the British Empire. He struggled to wrest a living from the inhospitable lands of North Queensland and to work amicably with its Aboriginal custodians, the Dallaburra people. His wife Mary returned to the cool climes of Scotland with their son and two daughters. Christison travelled between his far-flung homes. Crossing the Red Sea he recorded this moving tale of bush hospitality, of white and black working together, and of a mysterious stranger’s suicide for love. The telling is peppered with bushmen’s slang and Dallaburra words. Christison made his final journey home in 1910 aged 73.
Anna Haebich, Curator
Last updated: 23rd November 2011
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