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Magnificent 100 year old photos snapped by George Hunt on the banks of the river

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Researcher Jacqui Kennedy knows how to save photos and history.

She helped Coraki Museum, Ballina Library and Ballina Naval Museum digitise their photo collections.

For a person who loves restoring history a visit to Ray Hunt’s home at Tuckurimba two years ago led Jacqui to some astounding photos.

At Ray’s home, she told him how much she loved his father George Hunt’s photographs.

Could I see them? she asked.

“Sure love, they’re in the cupboard.

Help yourself,” Ray said.

What a find it was in that cupboard. There were 20 albums with sticky photo covers.  

Captain Tom Fenwick carrying new recruits from Lismore in 1915 heading off to WWI. Someone on the boat spotted George on the wharf with his camera and organised the young lads to stand to attention with their arms shouldered. Photo source indyNR.com

Jacqui spent three months with a scalpel and hairdryer cleaning the photos from the sticky albums. “I catalogued them. These were 100 year old pictures,” she said.

The photos were collated into a book – The Hunt Collection –  a glossy hardcover with dozens of beautifully restored photographs of riverboats on the Richmond River in the early part of the last century. 

George Hunt was a prolific photographer and took hundreds of photos from 1908 of all the boats that passed his Tuckurimba farm, Jacqui said.

His first camera was a half plate Thornton Pickard and with this camera George chronicled town, farm and river life for the next 40-odd years. 

He developed his photos in an old tin bathtub and the prints have survived for 100 years. 

The entire collection of more than 1000 photos is now preserved in archival albums and the digital prints are available to researchers, museums and historians.

Few districts in Australia have had their history recorded by a local photographer as comprehensively as the Northern Rivers, Jacqui said.

The book features small droghers (barges) and large steamers, paddle wheelers and picnic launches. Each has been researched and together with an overview of early pioneer shipbuilders, it is a comprehensive history of 100 years of shipping on the Richmond. 

Copies are available for $40 from the Ballina Naval and Maritime Museum and the Ballina District Museum at Pimlico.

This article appeared on indyNR.com on 30 October 2022.

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