Magnificent 100 year old photos snapped by George Hunt on the banks of the river

ABOVE: Gladys was a motor launch owned by Mr FW Gulley from the Commercial Hotel Coraki. On Sundays the young lads and lasses took the boats up Bungawalbin Creek for picnics.

Susanna Freymark

Researcher Jacqui Kennedy knows how to save photos and history.

She helped Coraki Museum, Ballina Library and Ballina Naval Museum digitise their photos collections.

For a person who loves restoring history a visit to Ray Hunt’s home at Tuckurimba two years ago led Jacqui to some astounding photos.

At Ray’s home, she told him how much she loved his father George Hunt’s photographs.

Captain Tom Fenwick sank when rounding a bend near Ruthven. She was refloated by diver John Kennedy.

Could I see them? she asked.

“Sure love, they’re in the cupboard. Help yourself,” Ray said.

What a find it was in that cupboard. There were 20 albums with sticky photo covers.  

Jacqui spent three months with a scalpel and hairdryer cleaning the photos from the sticky albums.

“I catalogued them. These were 100 year old pictures,” she said.

Captain Tom Fenwick carrying new recruits from Lismore in 1915 heading off to WWI. Someone on the boat spotted George on the wharf with his camera and organised the young lads to stand to attention with their arms shouldered.

The photos were collated into a book – The Hunt Collection –  a glossy hardcover with dozens of beautifully restored photographs of riverboats on the Richmond River in the early part of the last century. 

George Hunt was a prolific photographer and took hundreds of photos from 1908 of all the boats that passed his Tuckurimba farm, Jacqui said.

His first camera was a half plate Thornton Pickard and with this camera George chronicled town, farm and river life for the next 40-odd years. 

Photographer George Hunt.

He developed his photos in an old tin bathtub and the prints have survived for 100 years. 

The entire collection of more than 1000 photos is now preserved in archival albums and the digital prints are available to researchers, museums and historians.

Few districts in Australia have had their history recorded by a local photographer as comprehensively as the Northern Rivers, Jacqui said.

Young lads on Coraki wharf.

The book features small droghers (barges) and large steamers, paddle wheelers and picnic launches. Each has been researched and together with an overview of early pioneer shipbuilders, it is a comprehensive history of 100 years of shipping on the Richmond. 

Copies are available for $40 from the Ballina Naval and Maritime Museum and the Ballina District Museum at Pimlico.

Buy it online here and have it sent anywhere in Australia.

The young women liked to get dressed up and have their photo taken.

George’s young brothers in Mark Yabsley’s Renault.

Scroll to Top
Like an alert when we add a story? Yes please No thanks

Welcome to Richmond Valley and Kyogle news

Install
×