Charles Bayliss

Charles Bayliss (1850-4 June 1897), photographer, was born in Hadleigh, Suffolk, England in 1850. He went to Australia with his parents and they arrived in Melbourne in 1854.

When about sixteen years old Bayliss met the travelling photographer, Beaufoy Merlin, who came to the Bayliss house in suburban Melbourne while photographing houses and families throughout Victoria, with a view to selling the photographs to people along the way. Merlin operated under the name of the American and Australasian Photographic Company (A & A Photographic Company). Bayliss became Merlin's assistant and the pair travelled extensively throughout Victoria and New South Wales.

At the goldfields around Hill End, New South Wales, Merlin and Bayliss met Bernhardt Otto Holtermann, who had become wealthy as the result of successful gold mining. Holtermann employed the A & A Photographic Company to produce a series of photographs of the settled areas of Victoria and New South Wales, which could be sent abroad to advertise the colony and encourage migrants. By September 1873 the major part of New South Wales had been completed. However Merlin died at this time.

Bayliss, then 23 years old, was contracted to continue the work on the project in both New South Wales and Victoria and, in 1874, Holtermann purchased a mammoth Plate camera for Bayliss and the first images taken with it were of Holtermann's recent purchase of the Post office Hotel in Sydney. Bayliss also completed a panorama of Ballarat using this camera.

In 1875 a panorama of Sydney was completed. This was taken from the tower attached to Holtermann's house in North Sydney, now part of Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore). Bayliss was the main photographer, with work also done by Holtermann together with another photographer, Henshaw Clarke.

Up to this time Bayliss was based in Melbourne. Then, in 1876, he and the family moved to Sydney and he established a studio in the city.

In 1951 approximately 3,500 glass plate photographic negatives were found in the possession of Bernhardt Holtermann's descendants. They were subsequently donated to the Mitchell Library (within the NSW State Library) in Sydney and form the basis of the "Holtermann Collection." In fact, Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss were the photographers.

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