Australia: please DO NOT tear any photographs out . . . [A pair of noteworthy land promotion photo albums with nearly 200 annotated photographs enthusiastically presenting Australian cities, ports, countryside, business & agricultural possibilities, and even distinctive native wildlife in the depths of the Great Depression].

[Sydney, NSW; Hobart, Tasmania & New York: Beatties Studio; Photographers Photo Service, ca. 1927-1934]. Two vols. Thick oblong folio. 13.5 x 10.25 x 2 in. [200; 170 pp (unpaginated).], on thick black paper stock. With 197 silver gelatin photographs all tipped-in, nearly all w/ typescript mimeograph captions mounted below, or alongside, sized from 5 x 7 in. up to 8 x 10 in. (most sized 8 x 10 in.), all printed on glossy photo stock, some on thicker heavier weight, most w/ pencil annotations, typescript, or imprints on verso, a few w/ photographer’s imprint w/in negative at lower fore-edge, others w/ embossed armorial photo studio stamp of kangaroo on shield. Uniformly bound in contemporary black pebbled flexible shagreen, nested steel backed post-binders, black brass screw-posts at gutter margin (chipping, edgewear to covers, some scuffing, spine leather covering perished, occasional closed tears & chipping to some leaves, light faint previous mounting offsetting, occasional soiling or slight dampstaining to a few leaves), still a VG- set of albums, with nearly all of the photographs in excellent condition, and with strong bright contrast. These substantial land promotion albums appear to have been designed to tout the advantages for potential homesteaders, investors, and visitors to Australia from the end of the Roaring 20’s into the Great Depression. Nearly 200 photos depicting bustling cities & shipping ports, mines, manufacturing, burgeoning housing, sports, flora & fauna, and some of the indigenous Australian Aborigine peoples, extol the possibilities in Oceania’s economic engine. Following World War I, Australia had seen massive changes in population, and increasing economic and social changes following the devastation of World War I and the worldwide influenza pandemic with over 215,000 killed and wounded between both catastrophes. With the onset of the Great Depression, economic activity slowed, and unemployment soared to nearly 20%. These albums include several photos of the newly constructed Canberra Provisional Parliament House completed in 1927, with bare land, and little infrastructure nearby, except for the Hotel Canberra. Designed originally to hold politicians and visitors when the parliament was in session, the Hotel was built by contractor John Howie, and designed by John Smith Murdoch. Several photos of Sydney, Australia, the streets, a flapper driving her sporty 1927 Chevrolet Capitol AA Roadster, and the famed beaches of Sydney. Several photos depict the Australian Lifesaving Clubs which began in 1907 as surf life saving, with the Bondi Surf Bathers’ Life Saving Club, but which denied full membership to women until 1980. One particular photo depicts a young comely Australian woman surfer leaning against her wooden longboard, only about 15 years after Isabel Letham’s famed ride with Duke Kahanamoku in 1915. Many of the Sydney images reveal a capitol city in transition including horse-drawn cars alongside 1920’s automobiles, and electric trolleys and trams. Also featured are photographs of the New Castle Steel works, the Lithgow Steel Works whose blast furnace site closed in 1928, and the Mt. Boppy gold mining process mill depicting the cyanid vats to extract the ore. Still others show the Burrinjack Dam construction which had begun before World War I, but not finished until 1928; horse-drawn silver ore mining wagons in the Barrgorang Valley, from the Yerranderle Mines along roads to Camden, NSW; orchards long the McDonald River, and raising rabbits for the New South Wales Wool & Fur Co., Ltd. at Castle HIll near Parramatta. Also featured are many aerial and street photos of Queensland, Brisbane Docks, Victoria Bridge, Queen Street with streetcars, horse breaking in outback stations, grape & cotton harvesting, children attending “Bush Schools,” and more. Still more reveal the bustling wharves at the Freemantle, sheep sheering, railway yards, boaters on Henley-on-Yarra, Flinders Street Station, wheat harvest and farming, and even the one of the famed wheat windjammers, “The Carnandale.” Several of the photos depict the indigenous Australian Aborigines, with one of the captions noting that 60,000 “Full-Blood, and 19,000 half-caste Aborigines, with 40,000 still nomadic, and others working sheep and cattle stations.” Another photo is included of two young Maori girls as well.The second album also contains views of a traveling salesman, or traveling “Bust Hawker” featuring a horse-drawn wagon with sides hinged up, and shoppers, as well as aerial photos of gardens, banana plantations, date farms, logging Kerri Trees in Western Australia, and an entire section devoted to photos of Australian fauna. These depict Wombats, Kangaroos, pink & white Cockatoos, Cassowary birds, Wallabys, Barn Owls, Koala Bears, Black Swans, Opossums, a Platypus, Lyre-birds, Kokaburra birds, Australian penguins, and others. Identified photographs by John Beattie, Jr., from Beatties Studio, Hobart, Tasmania, include Mt. Rugby from Balmoral Beach, Big Ben Gum Tree on the estate of W.L. Clennett Saw Mill, Proprietor Port Esperance whose height was nearly 250 feet, as well as Dobson’s Basin, Geeveston, depicting a remarkable group of fen tree bowers. Originally founded in the 1840’s by the Anson Brothers, John Beattie (d. 1930), son of a Scottish-Australian emigre photographer, worked for them in the 1880’s, and then purchased the business, renaming it Beatties Studio. He operated the studio for decades, was the photographer who first developed all of Amundsen’s original photos of his South Pole Expedition in a single day, and was an active proponent of the indigenous Aborigine population, often defying popular opinion and authority over their historical mistreatment. Sadly a 1933 fire destroyed the studio and most of the negatives, but it was reconstituted, and many negatives and images rediscovered afterwards. See: Elizabeth Heffernan, Exciting New World: Australia in the 1920s, Royal Australian Historical Society (2022); Georgie Burgess, Photography Pioneer John Beattie Shared Tasmania’s Wild Places with the World, ABC Radio Hobart (March 9, 2019).