Sepia Saturday: The catch

The catch

This photo fascinates me. I look at the hat sitting on the fencepost, I look at how far apart the couple are standing, I look at how thin people used to be, I look at the string of pearls around the lady's neck, I wonder about the circumstances of the photo.
I don't know who took the photo or who the subjects are because it is in an album that was donated to the Genealogical Society of Victoria. I think I can safely say that it is Australian, probably Victoria and probably in the 1920s.

We don't have many fish or fishing photos in our family albums even though it's an activity that a number of relatives enjoy. None of our recent ancestors were professional fishermen. There are one or two photos of fish being held aloft like the photo above but the one I'll publish here is of brothers Neil and Doug Phelan with their children at Port Fairy where Doug was a teacher. The fish were caught in the Moyne River from a small wooden boat with an outboard motor. Doug was, and still is, an avid fisherman. A fishing expedition on the coast was a grand adventure for a lad from inland Victoria - my husband doesn't remember this particular day but he does remember that he enjoyed Uncle Doug's boat and boating.

Fish caught at Port Fairy about 1956.

Port Fairy is a delightful small town on the south coast of Victoria, a very popular spot. The residents are proud of its history and run several world-class music festivals each year. And it's still a great spot to catch a fish or watch others trying to catch a fish. Or grab a feed of fish and chips to eat beside the river.

Moyne river, Port Fairy c2013.

This post is in response to the Sepia Saturday's theme photo of a fish drawing in the Smithsonian Museum. 

Sepia Saturday: Warrington's pub

Warrington's Inverleigh Hotel

The bluestone hotel at Inverleigh was built about the 1860s where the road from Geelong, the Hamilton Highway, crosses the Leigh River. It's still there, still standing sturdily. I photographed it in the 1980s and again last year after it had been purchased by several locals and refurbished. It is now a funky country pub.

Inverleigh Hotel c1980

Inverleigh Hotel 2015

The above photos are all in my family album because it was owned for about twenty years by my husband's great-aunt Hannah Warrington and her husband John. I presume John and Hannah are in the first photo but we have no way of proving it.

Hannah ANDREW and John WARRINGTON were married in Huntingdon, England in 1851 and migrated to Geelong, Victoria in January 1853 on the 'Six Sisters'. They lived in Geelong and Mugheboluc near Geelong before moving further west to Ondit. I think they were farming but there is also a record of John working as a mail contractor so he was probably finding work where he could. Hannah's parents and siblings also migrated in the 1850s and by 1856 they were all living in the Inverleigh area. 

Colac Herald 28 October 1878

In 1878 Hannah and John sold up at Ondit and moved to Inverleigh when they took up the licence of the Inverleigh Hotel. The publican's licence was in Hannah's name. 

The Warringtons are mentioned several times in the local newspapers over the next twenty years. The first is when their stables were deliberately destroyed, but they are also mentioned in several newspaper reports because they were caught serving alcohol after hours

Colac Herald 21 Feb 1882 

Colac Herald, 6 May 1887

Camperdown Chronicle 1 October 1887

Hannah and John had 14 children but only four daughters survived. And only two of those daughters had families of their own but their descendants live in the area today.

Hannah died in 1900 and  John in 1901 and the hotel was sold.

This post is in response to the Sepia Saturday theme photo of Chittenden Hotel in Ohio.

Sepia Saturday: Tunnels

It looks as though it has been constructed and excavated by man but in fact it's a natural feature. The Undara tunnels are huge lava tubes in northern Queensland, created when a river of molten lava keeps moving under the solidified crust of lava. The area is now a National Park.

Undara lava tube, Queensland

Another lava tube but this time it has a floor of ice. The long tunnel acts like a refrigerator so the ice stays frozen even when it's hot outside. This is the Shoshone ice cave in Idaho that we visited several years ago.

Shoshone ice cave

Another holiday, this time in Europe in 2010. On one memorable weekend our son drove us from Zurich to Innsbruck through stunning scenery and the road kept disappearing into tunnels that just seemed to go on and on through the mountains. We don't really do tunnels in Australia so we were very impressed.

So there you have it. Some non-sepia photos for Sepia Saturday's theme this week. If you want to see some older photos I suggest you visit to see those that other bloggers have contributed.

Sepia Saturday: Entertainment

The theme photo for Sepia Saturday is of a chess game in progress but I can't match that. I don't know why we don't have any photos of game-playing because we spent a lot of time over school holidays playing Monopoly, Scrabble, Squatter and card games. Maybe our parents were so pleased to see us 'occupied' they were themselves occupied elsewhere.

But I do have several from the next generation. Here's our son Glenn with his friend David setting up patterns in a game called Domino express.

Glenn and David's Domino Express setup

And on one of our numerous family holidays beside Lake Charm near Kerang someone must have dug out an old cribbage board. This one is a triangle so three people must have been able to play. I wonder who knew the rules?

A cribbage game at the lake.

So, back to the theme photo. The chess player is a musician so in a very obscure link to that I'm including this photo of my mother-in-law, Shirley, holding my husband as a baby late in 1948. 

Shirley Phelan with son Philip, 1948.

Now, look at the background. There's a poster advertising a film night on 16 December. The family lived in the small town of Mitiamo and there wasn't a theatre so they must have used a church hall. 

The two films are The Dark Tower, a British thriller starring Herbert Lom, Anne Crawford, David Farrar and Ben Lyon. It's about a hypnotist who worked in a circus and held a trapeze artist in his spell. The other film is The Time, the Place and the Girl, an American musical starring Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson. Judging by this review in the New York Times at the time it was forgettable so I wonder if the citizens of Mitiamo enjoyed their night at the pictures (as we used to call it).

MOVIE REVIEW

The Time the Place and the Girl (1946)

THE SCREEN

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: December 27, 1946, New York Times

That same old backstage story which the movies have been using for years about the romantic but impoverished young fellow trying to put on a musical show has been dusted off by the Warners, given an Arthur Schwartz-Leo Robin score, dressed up in Technicolor and called "The Time, the Place and the Girl." But even with those expensive trimmings this new picture, which came to the Strand yesterday, is but middling entertainment for the kids who stomp to swing.

Again it's the fault of the story, a hackneyed and mirthless affair in which a handful of farceurs and musicians clattered about for an hour and two-thirds. There are noisy and gawking Jack Carson, Dennis Morgan and Janis Paige representing that element of show people who have a lot of brass but no coin. There are Martha Vickers and S. Z. Sakall playing a concert artiste and her nice grandpa who get mixed up with these bunco-steerers. And there are others who drift in now and then.

Some of Mr. Carson's humors, while not particularly inspired, have a certain low-brow vigor in them. And a couple of the songs—notably "Oh, But I Do" and "A Gal in Calico"—are pleasant and passing well done. Miss Vickers, though not a Judy Garland, behaves in a lady-like way, and Mr. Sakall still manages to draw laughs by simply shaking his jowls and rolling his eyes. But the combined and elaborate efforts of everybody, including LeRoy Prinz, who arranged the fancy stuff, have resulted in one of those pictures that you forget even while you're watching it.

The stage show at the Strand includes Vaughn Monroe and his orchestra, Ziggy Talent, Frank Fontaine, Betty Norton, the Moonmaids and Johnny Mack.

I suggest you entertain yourself by visiting Sepia Saturday to see what others have made of the theme photo.