Lyall R. Ford

Review:http://www.cairnsconnect.com.au/taipanpress/colonial-queensland.html
Extract:'...
“Photographic images have become so much part of our lives that we barely notice them. They stare out at us from newspapers and magazines, books and street posters. We all have our own personal collections of family snaps, memorabilia of our lives, ...

Mills and his partners took thousands of photographs. Lyall Ford, one of John Henry Mills’ descendants, has already produced two important books on his family, Below These Mountains: the Adventures of John Henry Mills (2001) and Poorhouse to Paradise: The Adventures of a Pioneering Family in a North Queensland Country Town (2001), which have included some of the John Mills photos. Few are duplicated in the selection for this new book, which surveys colonial Queensland, sorted by geographic regions and largely from the 1870s when the colony was still expanding north and westwards. The images allow us a window into Queensland’s past and are accompanied by short descriptions to provide context. They show Brisbane as a rudimentary town with a few grand buildings such as Parliament House, and a bush community scattered around the colony, living in quite rough conditions. Who today would swap lives with Dr Handt on the Mount Britton goldfield in the early 1880s, or Hyland, an early settler at Stanthorpe in the 1870s, in his even smaller humpy. Another picture shows sugar planter John Spiller, a Mackay pioneer, living in a substantial but grass-thatched roofed house. Rural towns were full of wooden structures lining dirt roads, with hotels the only buildings of substance.

These are images of a Queensland now largely forgotten, except by individuals who possess collections of old family photos, and by historians. They deserve to be seen by more people and to be preserved on the public record. Lyall Ford has given us access to a world that has passed, for which we owe him thanks.”

Clive Moore — Associate Professor
School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics — University of Queensland… (meer)