Local Treasures: The Athel D’Ombrain Collection

Athel D'Ombrain

Day Shift – 15/11/2011 – 02:10 PM – forthcoming
Presenter: Carol Duncan
Interviewee: Gionni Di Gravio, Archivist, Newcastle University

University of Newcastle Archivist Gionni Di Gravio discusses the recent digitisation of the Athel D’Ombrain Collection comprising of over 2,500 negatives, and talks about his life and extraordinary contribution to the Hunter Region.

Broadcast Notes:

The Athel D’Ombrain Collection was deposited with the University of Newcastle Archives in 1982.

The following notes are from an 1981 article in the University News entitled “University Post” (Vol. 7 No. 12 July 1981 p.[3]) supplemented with further notes from a variety of websites. He left an incredible and varied legacy in the wider Regional community. These photographs are an outstanding document of his life’s work and contribution to the natural world,  history, architecture, science and art. They document many historical buildings throughout the Hunter Region, prior to restoration. They also document buildings and structures no longer extant.

The negatives were digitised by Sharon Mee and Michael Sherriff, and both should be congratulated for scanning the two and a half thousand odd negatives that are very challenging to handle. Sharon is currently uploading the negatives to our flickr site here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uon/sets/72157627892125061/

Here is a selection:

Athel D’Ombrain A.M. (1901-1985) was a photographer, optician, naturalist, author, cricketer, pioneer angler, game fisherman and historian.

He was born in Casterton in the Western District of Victoria in 1901. His father, a general practitioner, was one of the pioneer ornithologists of Australia, and had helped in the formation of the Royal Australian Ornithologists’ Union. It was through his father, and the excursions they shared together, that Athel learnt about the natural world. His interest was further developed by living on the north shore in Sydney at a time when the suburb was sparsly settled and a fine place in which to study birds and animals.

He attended Shore College, Sydney between 1913-18. After being educated at Shore, and realising that his interests were not academic,  he later studied agriculture at Hawkesbury Agricultural College, and worked on the land at Somersby, garnering much success as a citrus-grower. He was part winner of a Wembly Medal and winner of several prizes in local citrus shows.

Athel had also studied optometry and when his brother, Arthur, an opthalmic surgeon, said he should move to Maitland and work with him as a manufacturing optician he said he would. In 1929 he moved to Maitland to work as an optical dispenser at his brother’s practice, and for over 20 years was associated with his brother in Maitland, and later for some years in Newcastle.

Athel was a well respected cricketer with the Northern Suburbs Cricket Club. Known as ‘Dorn’ to his fellow cricketers, his first A Grade season (1929-1930) marked the beginning of an association with the Club that would last over fifty years.

Besides playing, he was also served as Secretary from 1930-36, and later conducted Coaching Classes. In recognition of his long playing and administrative services, he was made a Life Member of the Club in the early sixties and Patron from 1968.

In 1934 he, along with Wallace Fitness, approached the secretary of the Hunter River Agricultural and Horticultural Association Show Society, asking whether they could display some local photographs in the Fine Arts Pavilion at the 1934 annual Maitland Show. The request was accepted, and so was founded the Maitland Salon of Photography.  In 1946 Maitland Salon became an Australian Photographic Society approved Salon and then in 1958 became an International Salon with approval from the Photographic Society of America and finally in 1982 the federation International De L’ Art Photographique granted its patronage.

In February 1936, he married Esma Drew, of Clarencetown, by whom he had a son, Robin, who later became a Technical Officer in Chemical Engineering. Esma died in May 1980.

Around 1950 Athel retired from optometry and became a photographer for The Maitland Mercury. After the 1955 flood hit his home he left the newspaper and established a commercial photographic business in Maitland. Concurrent with these activities he was a “photo-finish operator” at the Maitland Showground and a stringer cameraman.

Through the efforts of Athel and Newman Silverthorne, the Newcastle and Port Stephens Game Fish Club was formed with Headquarters at Bundabah on the northern side of the Port. In 1935 the fishing enthusiasts built a clubhouse at Shoal Bay. “There was not one house at the bay at this time – nothing but bush”, he says. The Fish Club was taken over by the Army in the Second World War, following which it was incorporated into the Country Club Hotel. He was renown as a pioneer angler who adopted a scientific approach to the sport and who was very successful in the post war years. He is credited with devising the now widely accepted tag and release concept for big game fishes, commencing his first experiments in 1938.

Athel was an expert naturalist especially on Port Stephens and its flora and fauna. For example, he visited Cabbage Tree Island regularly for 44 years observing and banding the sea bird called Gould’s Petrel. The island is the only known nesting place of the species.

He also enjoyed looking at the birds in the wetlands at Hexham as he travelled between Maitland and Newcastle in the train. Previously he had contributed several articles to the Newcastle Morning Herald. In 1965 he wrote a piece about the birds at Hexham, which came under the notice of the Herald’s Editor at the time, Mr E.K. Lingard, who liked the story so much he asked Athel to write a weekly column. For some time he became a Saturday correspondent for The Herald. He also authored a number of published books, ‘Game Fishing Off the Australian Coast’ and ‘Fish Tales’, and an unpublished account of Gould’s Petrel, called ‘North East of Toomaree’, and an unpublished autobiography

His newspaper articles and books contributed a great deal to the unfolding of the wonders of nature. Moreover, he was continually identifying specimens found in the bush and backyards for individuals.

On the 9 June 1975, in recognition of his service to photography and the study of nature, he was awarded Member of the Order of Australia.

In 1981 he was invited to become a Convocation Visiting Scholar at the University of Newcastle, the third to hold the position since its inception in 1977.

As a result of his photographic work over many years, he amassed a monumental collection of photographs relating to the Hunter Valley. One of his roles as Convocation Visiting Scholar was to work in association with Denis Rowe (University Archivist) in the Archives in the Auchmuty Library, cataloguing his photographs and organising the articles about nature that he had written for the Newcastle Herald.

He continued to write his columns up until a few months prior to his death at age 83 in 1985. According to his son, Mr Robin D’Ombrain, he wrote a total of 995 articles for the Newcastle Herald.

He was a member of the Royal Australian Orthnologist’s Union, an Associate of the Australian Museum and a Member of the Order of Australia.

After the mould, meet our fungal friends

Lepiota haemorrhagica

An exhibition of photographs of the many diverse species of fungi on the bushland campus at Callaghan. The photographer, Gregg Heathcote of Cultural Collections, is a keen mycologist.

Everyone is welcome to view the exhibition in the display area just outside the Cultural Collections reading room in the Auchmuty Library.

Introduction

In 2010 the outbreak of mould in Auchmuty Library was a major problem for the University community. However, on the other hand it is wise to bear in mind the fact that without fungi there would not be a “bushland campus” at Callaghan at all!

Complex lifeforms and their ecosystems could not long survive without the critically important organic recycling services fungi provide. Our bushland vegetation furthermore deeply depends upon symbiotic mycorrhizal associations with fungi, fungal networks in poor Australian soils helping plant roots secure the moisture and vital nutrients they need. Fungal biodiversity in Australia is vast, and the struggle to understand it is ongoing.

It is a common mistake to equate fungi solely with their fascinating and frequently extraordinarily beautiful fruiting bodies, the visible structures from which spores are dispersed. Depicted in this exhibition is a select sampling of these tremendously various fruiting bodies in the environs of Callaghan campus. However the greater part of fungal organisms are their mycelia, largely invisible networks of cellular threads (ie hyphae). There can be kilometres of mycelia in a cubic centimetre of soil, or rotting wood, or whatever substratum it is in which the fungal hyphae grow and feed. These pervasive networks are wonders of nature, wondrous networks in which it is well we remember how our own lives are thoroughly intertwined.

A complete set of captioned images, from which these in the exhibition have been selected, is available in Gregg Heathcote’s Facebook album publicly accessible at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=196544&id=605247767&l=66f14a3dc9 .

Another, full-scale set of the images will in due course be uploaded to Cultural Collections’ photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/uon/sets/72157623900051704/ .

'Fantastic, fascinating fungi' Herald Feature 13 September 2010 p.60

Dedication

We wish to dedicate this exhibition to the cherished memory of Sam Willis, recently taken from us at the tender age of just 22. Sam was late a promising student of environmental science at the University of Newcastle. He loved the time he spent on campus, nurturing a profound affinity for the world of nature. This world of ours needs more like him.

We also wish to honour the work of past University staff members like Don Morris, Mim Woodland, Lance Hennessy, Kevin MacDonald and Phil Pollard. Their enthusiastically caring endeavours in support of a healthy bushland campus environment have been instrumental is securing an ecological balance in which all have space to thrive.

Mitchell 1828 Exhibition

Nature Illustration

Day Shift – 18/05/2010 – 02:10 PM
Presenter: Carol Duncan
Interviewee: Gionni Di Gravio, Archivist, Newcastle University

University of Newcastle Archivist Gionni Di Gravio discusses the new forthcoming exhibition of Natural History Illustration works, surveying reports and early Newcastle Panoramas on display at the University of Newcastle’s Cultural Collections in the Auchmuty Library. This is a rich physical and online display of the University’s engaged interdisciplinary research highlighting the historic natural beauty of the Novocastrian landscape.

Broadcast Notes:

Back in September 2008 a manuscript came to light in the State Library of New South Wales containing the first recorded mention of the Aboriginal name of Nobbys as  ‘Whibayganba’. In addition, the 1828 field book of Sir Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor General, contained three sketches of Newcastle drawn from the top of Fort Scratchley looking towards Nobbys, then looking towards Prospect Hill (Now Obelisk Hill), then another taken from the top of the Windmill (now Obelisk Hill) looking back towards Newcastle. These three important sketches are reproduced here:

http://coalriver.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/mitchells-1828-field-book/

The full Field book can be seen here:

1828. Mitchell, Sir Thomas Livingstone (1792-1855) Field Book – Port Jackson and Newcastle, 1828 (C 40) 55MB PDF (Courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales)

At the time, the Coal River Working Party immediately enlisted the assistance of  Emeritus Professor John Fryer in Surveying to ask whether he could examine the survey readings and compare them with those of Australian Agricultural Company surveyor John Armstrong Survey in 1830.

We believed that this Field book would also be of interest to art historians wanting to compare the actual perspective readings with the colonial art portrayals of the township. So we also asked Dr Anne Llewellyn whether her Natural History Illustration students would be interested in ‘colouring’ Mitchell’s sketches and bring them to life.

This was a perfect opportunity to spark an interdisciplinary ‘science meets the arts’ research approach to these important historical works.

Professor Fryer asked two final Surveying Students to examine Sir Thomas Mitchell’s sketches and survey readings in order to decipher them into lay person’s terms. After a year’s work those two final year students, Mr Chris Towers and Troy Sumner, prepared a report on their findings which they presented at two seminars held on Friday 6 November 2009 (to their Surveying Colleagues), (see the following three You Tube videos from the Presentation – unfortunately we did not capture the whole seminar):

and then at a meeting of the Coal River Working Party on the 7 December 2009. (This is an edited version with the second half of the Presentation and Questions):

Dr Anne Llewellyn’s 2nd Year Natural History Illustration students researched the content of Mitchell’s sketches and together with field observations, developed a ‘reconstruction’ of Mitchell’s drawings based on the ‘now known’ plants and animals of the region. Here is a video from their Presentation before the Coal River Working Party on the 7 December 2009, and a selection of their beautiful art works with some details.

The students whose work is on display are:

Angela Armstrong

Kimberley Swan

Karen McDonald

Susan Sparks

Helen Adamski

Teresa Purnell

Amy Hands

Katherine Pearce

Phoebe Ritchie

Morgan Laudine

To view all the student’s artworks please see our Flickr page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uon/sets/72157624027355103/ and slideshow here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uon/sets/72157624027355103/show/

The Work of Sir Thomas Mitchell examined and analysed by University of Newcastle Surveying Students Chris Towers and Troy Sumner

The Full Report and Summary prepared by Chris Towers and Troy Sumner of the University of Newcastle’ Discipline of Civil, Surveying & Environmental Engineering for the Coal River Working Party was placed on the Coal River blog here:

[Sir Thomas Mitchell 1828 Newcastle Survey Report - Full Report and Summary]
Towers, Chris and Sumner, Troy. Sir Thomas Mitchell’s Angular Observations and Field-Note Sketches of Newcastle. [12.6 MB PDF file] 
Towers, Chris. Summary of Report: Sir Thomas Mitchell’s Angular Observations and Field-Note Sketches of Newcastle [896KB PDF File]

THEN AND NOW

1828

Then; Newcastle in 1828 from Signal Hill (now Fort Scratchley) by Sir Thomas Mitchell

2009

Fort Scratchley Panorama by Chris Towers

1828

Then: Newcastle from the Windmill (now Obelisk Hill) (1828) by Sir Thomas Mitchell

2009

Obelisk Panorama by Chris Towers

NEWCASTLE’S BEAUTIFUL ARTISTIC LEGACY

To celebrate the achievements of this work, the  University of Newcastle’s Cultural Collections in the Auchmuty Library has prepared an exhibition of the student’s artworks, as well as a collection of reproductions of Newcastle painted panoramas from various stages in its history, including the Mitchell 1828 sketches, to be displayed. Some of the Panoramas below have never been seen before.

T.R. Browne (1812)

T.R. Browne (1812)

Browne, T.R. (1776 – 1824). Newcastle, in New South Wales, with a distant view of Point Stephen,1812 and
View of Hunters River, near Newcastle, New South Wales, 1812. Copper Engraving.
Photographer: Bruce Turnbull. Courtesy Newcastle Region Art Gallery.

Sophia Campbell/Edward Charles Close – Newcastle 1818

Sophia Campbell/Edward Charles Close (1818)

Campbell, Sophia, 1777-1833. Sophia Campbell Sketchbook 1818
Currently attributed to Edward Charles Close. Courtesy National Library of Australia.

Sophia Campbell / Edward Charles Close (1821)

Sophia Campbell/Edward Charles Close (1821)

Panorama of Newcastle 1821. Panorama of Newcastle : watercolour drawings by Edward Close – Sophia Campbell.
Courtesy State Library of New South Wales.

Sophia Campbell/Edward Charles Close (c1825)

Sophia Campbell/Edward Charles Close (c1825)

The Panorama above is constituted of the following paintings in Sketchbook of scenes of Sydney, Broken Bay, Newcastle and region, New South Wales, 1817-1840, (Courtesy of the National Library of Australia) once attributed to Sophia Campbell, now Edward Charles Close, 1790-1866 (Thanks to Mark Metrikas for identifying this find) The individual paintings that make up this Panorama from the Sketchbook are listed in order from left to right: (1) Commandant’s house from in front of the old gaol, Newcastle, New South Wales, ca. 1828 [picture] (2) Dwellings, fenced land and the windmill on the hill, Newcastle, New South Wales, ca. 1820 [picture] (3) Barracks with Christ Church in the distance, Newcastle, New South Wales, ca. 1820 [picture] (4) Dwellings and buildings in Newcastle, New South Wales, ca. 1820 (5) View over buildings towards the signal mast and Nobby Head, Newcastle, New South Wales, ca. 1820.

John Rae (1849)

John Rae (1849)

Rae, John, 1813-1900. Newcastle in 1849.
Courtesy State Library of New South Wales.

William Keene (1854)

William Keene (1854)

William Keene (Examiner of Coal Mines)
Copy of Stratigraphic sketch from Nobby’s Island Newcastle to Burwood, showing coal seams and their Order of Superposition. 31 May 1854.
Photographed by Bruce Turnbull. Archives Authority Map No. SZ325 (Courtesy State Archives of NSW)

John Rae – Photograph (c1880)

John Rae (c.1880)

Rae, John, 1813-1900. [Panoramic photograph of Newcastle, 1878-1882, possibly taken from Jesmond House] — 4 albumen photoprints
from Sketches in New South Wales in the olden time 1842 – 1859 by John Rae, M.A. / album of watercolour panoramas and photographs of watercolour sketches.
Courtesy State Library of New South Wales.

On behalf of the University’s Cultural Collections (Auchmuty Library) and the Coal River Working Party we congratulate Emeritus Professor John Fryer, Dr Anne Llewellyn and their students for their work, and the wonderful new insights it has brought to the study of our history and artistic legacy.

Gionni Di Gravio
May 2010