Holtermann Collection

The Holtermann Collection is the name given to a collection of about 3,500 glass-plate negatives which mainly depicts life in the New South Wales goldfields towns of Hill End, Gulgong, Home Rule and Canadian Lead. Photographs of people and prominent landmarks are also included. The photographs were taken in the second half of the nineteenth century. The collection is held by the State Library of New South Wales.

The 3500 wet-plate glass negatives in the Holtermann collection capture life in goldfields towns in regional Australia between 1872 and 1876, including the towns of Hill End and Gulgong, as well as Melbourne and Sydney in the 1870s. The photographs were commissioned by Bernhardt Otto Holtermann and taken by Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss. Producing the glass-plates was slow work. Long exposures were required and only one photograph at a time could be processed. Furthermore, the wet plate negatives captured exceptional detail, but photographs made after the discovery of the plates failed to reveal the wealth of information hidden within.

In 1951 the negatives were discovered in a garden shed in Chatswood, New South Wales. In response to an inquiry made by Keast Burke, then associate editor of the Australasian Photo-Review, to the Mitchell Library in Sydney, Burke was advised by the Mitchell Librarian that she had 'recently heard that the plates of photographs taken by old Mr. Holtermann' may be in the possession of the widow of Holtermann's youngest son. In the event, the collection of glass-plate negatives were in the garden room which had remained locked for many years. Thus the room disclosed its long-hidden treasures. The fortuitous timing of the advice to the library and Mr. Burke's inquiry, together Mr. Burke's ability to recognise the treasure and the chance safe-keeping of the plates for over seventy-five years, conspired to enable the conservation of this remarkable collection. In time, the find proved to be the most important photographic documentation of goldfields life in Australia.

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