Menu
Melanie Rush - Picture Ipswich Digital Archivist & Historian
A difficult task to only select six items from the Picture Ipswich collection, I had thought of "cheating" a little and naming my six favorite collections (with I.X.L. Studio and the photographs of Benjamin and Laura Taylor at the top). Instead I selected six times I unexpectedly found my family in the collection.
Paint Department, believed to be in Cribb & Foote store, Ipswich, c.1950
Before becoming the Picture Ipswich Digital Archivist, I volunteered with the collection for five years, whilst I finished a couple of university degrees. The first collection I was privileged to work with was from Whitehead Studios. I think it might have been my second day volunteering when I came across this image of the Cribb & Foote paint department. To the left of the Kerosene tins are some non-branded items made out of tin. My great-grandfather Wilhelm August Walter, was a tinsmith, at one time teaching his craft at the Technical College before opening his own business, making tined items under his house and selling to Ipswich stores like Mining & Hardware, Makenzie & Jackson, Big Whites, and Cribb & Foote. He made hipspars (baths), rubbish bins, buckets, watering cans, and the best cake tins (which continue to be used by the family). I cannot be certain that the tined items on the shelf in this photo are ones that he made, but I like to think that they could be and it got me curious as to what else I might find of my family in Picture Ipswich.
The next family discovery came a week or two later when I discovered references to David and Rachel Nunn, my great-great-great grandparents. They were neighbours of James Ivory at Dinmore and I got the impression from Ivory's diary that if Rachel had popped over the fence to borrow a cup of sugar, Ivory would have claimed to have been out. Ivory wrote his diaries between 1863 and 1885. His entries described his days simply and recount visits to town, farming, politics, and issues with his neighbours:
Thursday 11th October 1877
Very cloudy all day with sundry small showers. Letter from James. Arakoon accounts. Mare bogged, but pulled out & then foaled. I see Frank is pitching into them in the House, I wonder the opposition don't get up a vote of want of Confidence in the Government they have a fair chance now. The grass ought to spring a little now. It seems that Nunn (my neighbour) is making use of one of my paddocks without leave, they are a grasping unprincipled set. Orange trees laden with flowers. Read. Bed.
Unfortunately, the references to the family do not improve.
Class from St Mary's Catholic School, Ipswich, 1938-1939
When working on a collection of images from St Mary's school, I noticed my grandmother Joan Nunn (nee Harkins) in the second row, 5th from left. We had not seen the class photo before, although we had another that must have been taken around the same time to help with identification. Grandma's sister Nellie also appears in the photo, in the third row, 1st on the left. With this image, we now have three photos of my grandmother as a child.
Portrait of Jonathan and Jane Sheilds (nee Late), c.1910
This portrait remained unnamed in the Whitehead collection, until I recognised them as my great-great grandparents on my father's side.
Wedding of Shirley Louise Kuhn and Winston George Henry Turner, Raceview, 1961
This is a truly unique item in our collection: a recording of a wedding held at Raceview Congregational Church and officiated by Pastor Roy Edwards, with the reception held at the La Pallette at Booval. The commentary of the guests arriving is well worth the listen. For my family, though, it is at the 60-minute mark, in the middle of the entertainment at the reception, where the recording becomes of greater interest. My great grandfather, Eric Nunn, played football in his youth and was selected to play in two of the first Socceroo teams in 1923 and 1924. He worked at the Railway Workshops (his "foreigner" specialty was fishing reels) and he had a flair for wood turning. His other claim to fame was his ability to get the sweetest sounding notes from a lemon leaf. Until that day, when the donor of this recording came into the History Room and said they had an unusual item that we might be interested in, not realising the connection I would have with it, the family never had a recording of Pop playing the lemon leaf.
Julieanne Rush, Redbank Rifle Range, Redbank, February 1978
We knew this photo existed of my mother, and that it had appeared in the Queensland Times in 1978. The reason it has made this list is because I pulled it out of a box containing hundreds, if not thousands, of negatives from the Queensland Times. A totally random selection, which I made without looking at the tag first, as I was about to demonstrate the scanning process to a new Picture Ipswich volunteer.
As you have no doubt realised by now, one of the reasons I love my job so much is those unexpected momemnts when I find my family and make yet another connection with Ipswich's past.