Back to the Show and Tell page for various items of eclectic interest such as old postcards and photographs, a 1913 colour photo of a demure young lady and eucalypt forest and rainforest in South Gippsland.
Back to the First Principles page for many other items of potential interest.
Robin Whittle 1 October 2000 rw@firstpr.com.au
In 1999 I purchased some slides from a second-hand dealer at Camberwell Market - a Sunday flea-market which I attend religiously. They were very early 35 slides, from the late 1940s or early 1950s - judging by the motor cars and dress-styles. The film was hand-mounted in two pieces of glass stuck together with tape, so I guess this was before plastic or cardboard mounts were common.
Many of the slides were of individuals and homes, but several were of a beach event - evidently the Sun Beachgirl Quest. I have scanned two of these images (after removing the film from the glass slide and cleaning most of the mould from the film) and have provided them here for your interest.
The first one is a marvellous photo showing resplendent young women in the days before Lycra, bikinis and many of the complications we now take for granted. An announcer is at the microphone and perhaps the chap to his left is the DJ changing the needle on the 78 RPM turntable. A Digger is in a slouch hat and uniform and an elderly gentleman is
wearing a hat.
The second image is presumably at the same event. While it doesn't show the Quest itself, it illustrates women in vibrant summer dresses - and some pretty bold sunglasses!
The dealer told me that he purchased these slides and many other photographs from an elderly woman whose husband had died some years ago. Clearly he was a keen photographer.
I hope you enjoy these gay glimpses of life about fifty years ago - probably about five years before I was born. If you can shed any light on the exact year they may have been taken, I would really appreciate it.
The above is the approximate text of a letter I sent to accompany prints of the images to the Chelsea Longbeach Surf Lifesaving Club and the Herald-Sun. (In those days, the Sun was a morning tabloid and the Herald was the afternoon broadsheet.) I didn't hear anything back from them.
Here are the photos at 770 pixels wide. Below each image are two links to larger files: 1000 pixels across and super-large 2709 or 2660 pixels across. These large images are much bigger than anyone's computer screen. They will take a while to load, but then you can scroll around and look into a moment from the past in great detail.
