Thomas Dick and his camera
Between 1910 and 1923 Thomas Dick took hundreds of photographs documenting traditional Birpai life …
When talent and inspiration collide
Thomas was not a professional photographer, yet in the space of Just 13 years (1910 – 1923) he produced no less than 500 photographs of such excellent clarity that those prints existing today are spoken of as works of art which have never been excelled, despite technological advances since they were taken.
A life of opportunities for free settlers
Thomas Dick was born in 1877 at Walcha, NSW. His grandfather migrated to Australia from England and was one the earliest settlers in the colony of Port Macquarie in 1841.
Portrait of Thomas Dick
Image courtesy of Port Macquarie Historical Society
Born into a family of entrepreneurs
Thomas Dick’s grandfather built a highly successful tannery business in the early Port Macquarie colony, and while his father was involved, he soon began his own oyster farming enterprise. Thomas followed in his father’s footsteps and built a successful business cultivating oysters and marketing them. While this kept him away from his home in Waugh Street for much of the daylight hours, he still managed to find time for community affairs. For some years, he was secretary to the Port Macquarie Show Society, secretary of the Regatta Club, secretary of the Church of England Parochial Council, an alderman on the Port Macquarie Council and was also a part-time boat builder. Astonishingly, he also found time to pursue his favourite pastime - photography.
A man of many talents
Thomas quickly developed enough proficiency with the camera to produce images of a very high quality. Driven by a concern that Indigenous culture was at risk of being lost before any record of it officially made, Thomas got to work. He achieved a remarkable result from his efforts to visually document the cultural practices that comprised the daily lives of the Birpai people.
Paid to pose
Natives living around Port Macquarie at the time were always willing to pose for him, and even more willing when he offered them a fee.
They were wearing European dress at the time, so it meant getting into costume to be in the act. Thomas would often hire several cars to transport his equipment and subjects to the chosen sight, which was generally around the base of Mount Seaview, streams in the Upper
Hastings or Bonny Hills.He was very knowledgable in this field and it gave him access to the scientists of the Australian Museum and State Fisheries in Sydney. His interests in natural history, in local history, and in the culture of the region's Aboriginals were intense and all-embracing.
A magnificent visual record
Dick's photographic record survives only in fragmented form. Several museums and libraries hold print collections, two have sets of surviving glass negatives, while some negatives and prints were still with members of the family in the 1980s. In the 1940s the Australian Museum aquired a substantial number of his negatives portraying Aboriginals. Photography provided a medium for illustrating his ideas; and he left a magnificant visual record of Aboriginal life in the Hastings district.
There are 280 known surviving photographic prints or negatives.
After cutting the outer bark into a canoe shape, Charlie Murray uses a wooden rod to prise the bark from the trunk without ringbarking the tree.
Photos by Thomas Dick; Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
In the words of Thomas Dick
In 1923 Dick said of his work:
"I set out years ago to collect and write the history of these Aborigines, and get together, not only a fine collection of photos, but also a fine collection of implements etc., and not the least was a remarkable amount of information.
I went into the mountains with them, gained their confidence and their secrets connected with their laws, and in some instances the information was only given with the understanding that it would not be published until after death.
I was fortunate for some of the old men were most intelligent and they recognised that their race was run, as it were, so they gave me under the conditions named, the history of their race.
Now by these means I secured all of the marks on the sacred trees, and their meaning, all of the rules of the ‘Waipara’ or man making ceremony.
In all their doings these primitive people followed nature, and when the whole is written a very interesting record will be made available to those interested. I do not know when I will bring out the work for I am now too much handicapped . .. "
(Letter to Longman, Director, Queensland Museum, April 1923)