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SWEET'S NAVAL CAREER - PART 2
Whilst Sweet’s naval experience clearly manifested itself in his later photographic practice in a variety of ways, nautical subject matter does not seem to have been one of them. One might imagine that a Master Mariner would be drawn to photographing ships. Although Sweet later photographed many aspects of Port Adelaide and South Australian harbours and jetties, his interest lay in the economic and transportation developments of the colony, not in any nostalgia for the sea or its vessels. Sweet and his family migrated to Australia, arriving in 1864. This was not his first visit to the continent. He had sailed the Sarah Neumann from London to Sydney in 1862, arriving in Sydney Harbour on November 15th Whether it was this trip that inspired Sweet’s decision to move is uncertain, but by the end of 1863 Sweet and his entire family were aboard the Flying Cloud and heading for a new life in Australia. Sweet concentrated solely on his photographic career until 1868 when he again felt the itch for adventure. In 1868 he applied for the position of official photographer on the Goyder Northern Territory Expedition. Instead he was appointed as he was appointed Commander of the Government Schooner Gulnare, supporting the Goyder NT Survey Expedition and the construction of the Overland Telegraph Line from Darwin to Adelaide He was also commissioned to survey the Roper River. Sweet made five voyages between Adelaide and the Northern Territory from 1869 to 1872, taking photographs as well as tending to his main duties. Ironically, Brooks and Barlow, the official expedition photographers, were set to other tasks and Sweet’s images became the main record of the expedition and the construction of the overland telegraph. Two other photographers, Arthur Hamilton and Charles Hak, had visited the Northern Territory before him but Sweet’s images ‘far outstripped the quality of his predecessors'. He was the first photographer to successfully use wet plate collodion negatives in such extreme conditions. These negatives needed long exposure times and had to be processed quickly, before the emulsion dried. Sweet transported a mobile darkroom, fragile glass plates and dangerous chemicals by cart to the remote locations of each photograph. His ability to create sharp, well composed images on large whole wet plate glass negatives in the tropical humidity was a remarkable technical achievement. Sweet took some of the most exciting pictures of the expedition and jungle including the ceremonial planting of the first telegraph pole at Port Darwin. The official expedition photographers Brooks and Barlow were preoccupied with other duties and it is Sweet’s images, not theirs, which grace the pages of Margaret Goyder Kerr’s excellent account of the expedition. Ever the savvy businessman, Sweet engaged an agent to sell his views in Adelaide and between voyages gave lectures about his trips, his photographs being the highlight. Sweet lost his commission in 1872 after the Gulnare became stranded on a reef. Sweet then joined the Black Diamond Line captaining the Wallaroo which transported coal from Newcastle NSW to South Australia. In May 1875 Sweet lost the ‘Wallaroo’ in a gale, crashing into another ship. He was censured by a marine board enquiry on 26th July 1875 and was never to sail again (he lost his licence, so to speak). We are very much the beneficiaries of this end to his seafaring career. He returned to photography full time and worked prolifically throughout Adelaide and South Australia during the late 1870s and early 1880s, leaving us with exceptional images of the city during the most exciting years of its development.
State Records Authority of New South Wales, Shipping Master's Office, Passengers Arriving 1855 - 1922; NRS13278, [X107-108] reel 411. Transcribed by Walter Reynolds, 2004 South Australian Archives, GRG 35, SGO letters from the N.T. 32/1869 Gael Newton, Shades of Light: Photography in Australia 1839-1988, Australian National Gallery and Collins Australia, Canberra and Sydney, 1988 Jack Cato, The Story of the Camera in Australia, Georgian House, Melbourne, 1955 South Australian Register, 18 July 1872
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© Karen Magee 2008 - 2009 |
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