Photographed by Biggingee Sorabjee Poochee (Transcription)

Born in Bombay, the present-day city of Mumbai, India, Biggingee Sorabjee Poochee had already opened his first photographic studio before deciding to immigrate to Australia around 1860.

It is thought he first spent time in Sydney, as on the 19th of February 1861, Poochee is recorded in the newspaper as having married a Maryanne Williams at Paramatta.

He found his way to Ipswich towards the end of 1863 and established what was the first professional and permanent photographic studio in the ever-growing township.

The Queensland Times announced the opening of Poochie's new studio thus: "B.S. Poochee begs to inform the inhabitants of Ipswich that he will open his new and commodious photographic gallery, corner of Bell and Union Streets, on Monday September 14th. From the favorable position of his gallery, his own practical experience as a photographer, and the excellent chemicals he uses, B.S.P. is enabled to take portraits that will bear comparison with any yet exhibited in Queensland. Parents wishing to have their children's portraits were pleased to call from the hours of 10 am to 2 pm. B.S.P. carte de visite have been pronounced unrivaled.'

When advertising his moderately priced carte de visites, Poochie encouraged his female sitters to wear dark coloured dresses - to avoid pinks and light blues - in order to show the dresses, and the women, off to their best advantage. 

Poochee specialised in the carte de visite portrait, small photographs backed by card that were first used as illustrated visiting cards but soon proved popular for collecting the portraits of the celebrities of the day and for sharing the likeness of family and friends.  Photo albums, which derived their name from the auburn printing technique of using egg whites as a binding agent for the image, soon became a popular way to collect and display the carte de visite.  For the first time in history, capturing an accurate likeness and portrait had become affordable to the masses.  No longer was the portrait limited to the upper classes in aristocracy, who could afford to have their likeness captured on canvas.

The Australian colonies were ripe ground photographers looking to establish their studios.  Separated from family and friends still living in the old country, recent migrants and even currency lads and lasses could retain family connections, sending portraits of brides and grooms, children, and even their homes and property, to families separated by oceans and continents.

By January of 1864, Poochee had opened a second studio in the Bullock's Building, Queen Street, Brisbane.  After time spent in Sydney in 1867, Poochee returned to Ipswich, opening a new studio and gallery in Brisbane Street. 

This small, single-storey studio would eventually be taken over by the Frisco Photo Company, when Poochee left Ipswich at the end of the 1870s.  Frisco Photo Company would in turn be bought by one of its young and promising photographers: Francis Arnold Whitehead, then aged 19.  Whitehead's mother Caroline operated a stationary, newsagency, and bookstore on Bell Street and the Whitehead family lived in the attached dwelling.  The business was next door to Poochee's first studio, and this is where Whitehead would have been exposed to the photographic process.  It is thought that, as children, Whitehead and Poochie's son would likely have been friends: living next door to each other attending Ipswich Grammar School together and both taking an interest in photography, that would eventually become their careers.

Aside from his carte de visite portraits, Poochie gained a reputation for his photographs of buildings such as this one of Ipswich Grammar School, taken in February 1868, on the occasion of the visit of his royal highness Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, second son of Queen Victoria.

There is this image of the Congregational Church on Brisbane Street, taken in 1877, with the original timber church still visible in the background.  The side of the Congregational Church can be seen in this Poochee photograph, which also captured St Stephen's Presbyterian church with its new spire then the tallest structure in the colony of Queensland.  There's also the North Australian Club and the back of several buildings.

Poochee is perhaps best known for his panorama of Ipswich.  Photography had been found to be an ideal tool to provide accurate topographical information and the photographic panorama became popular in its printed form and as a guide for lithographers, providing illustrated content for books, which was particularly useful when the lithographer was unfamiliar with the place.

The first thing to note about Poochee's panorama is that it was a technical achievement.  Taking a photograph outside the controlled setting of the studio was not an easy task in the 1860s, let alone taking a panorama where all the panels had to line up exactly.  Poochee needed to select a high vantage point with Limestone Hill providing the perfect location.  He then had to select the correct tripod positions to capture each panel - five in all.  He would likely have set up a tent nearby to use as a dark room to process his glass plates and store the chemicals, trays, dishes, and water needed.  Before taking each image, the plates would need to be prepared in the tent.  Coated with their collodion solution, ensuring an even coverage free of dust and fingerprints, and then a dip into a tray of silver nitrate to sensitize the plate.  The glass plate had to remain wet to capture the image, so he would have had to work quickly to transfer the plate from dark room to camera without damaging the wet emulsion.  Once in the camera, the lens cap would have been removed for a precise number of seconds, before the plate was returned to the dark room for developing and the fixing of the image.  Next, the plate would be heated evenly in front of a fire with a varnish coating being added.  Then the plate could be safely boxed and returned to the studio, where it was finally placed against photographic paper and exposed to sunlight to transfer the image.

Present in the image are the beginnings of many of our institutions and buildings that continue to dominate their streetscapes and our historic consciousness.  To the left, high on the hill, is Gooloowan, the original two-storey Ipswich Hospital with its south-facing verandah.  There is the Old Courthouse on East Street, St Stephen's Presbyterian Church and the Tattersalls Hotel on the corner of East and South Streets.

On the southwest corner of Brisbane and Thorn Streets is Queensland's first Masonic Temple.  In the second panel, Claremont takes up the centre position.  Just to the left, we can see the Bank of New South Wales and the Palais Royal, both on the corners of Brisbane and East Streets. 

Further along Brisbane Street is the then recently built School of Arts, St Paul's Anglican Church and the Cribb & Foote Department Store building.  In the distance, on another hill, are the first buildings of Ipswich Grammar School.  On the right edge of this panel, the long roof structure is the first railway station in Ipswich.  In front of Claremont, the two-storey stone building was once John Panton's Store.

The third panel is dominated by the Bremer river and the newly erected iron rail bridge that links North Ipswich to the commercial and civic centre.  The first St Mary's is visible on the southern bank, just behind the railway line.  Shipping stores, wharfs, immigration depot, and the original railway workshops all feature here as a testimony to Ipswich's place as the head of navigation and the gateway to the fertile farming land of the Darling Downs.  As the Bremer River snakes around, heading towards the Basin, the first houses and business of North Ipswich is shown, behind the North Ipswich reserve and with Pine Mountain in the background.

Finally, the basin itself, where the paddle steamers that transported goods and people between Ipswich and Brisbane could turn.  In the centre of this image, elevated on the bank of the river, is Leslie Sawmills, along with the scattered dwellings that would become the suburbs of North Ipswich and Basin Pocket. 

It is thought that Poochee was commissioned to take this panorama of Ipswich, which was sent to England to be reprinted as a lithograph for reproduction in the book 'Short Sea Route to Australia'.  This guidebook to the Singapore route to Australia featured information and lithographs of several Queensland towns including Townsville, Gladstone, Maryborough, Brisbane and Ipswich.  But, what is most interesting about the lithograph version of Poochee's photographic panorama, is what the English lithographer did to it.

Poochee's panorama celebrates the industrialisation of Ipswich.  The 1865 railway bridge takes a prominent position in the centre of the image.  The new railway workshops are clearly visible in Poochee's vision.  The Poochee panorama depicts a modern industrial town, the "New Athens", leading the economic growth of the Colony of Queensland, that was then only six years past separation.

The lithograph, on the other hand, blends the iron railway bridge into its surrounds.  Industry is replaced with a pleasant rural landscape, where country squires ride their horses across open grasslands.  The landscape is softened, even the gum trees take on the resemblance of their English cousins.

It would be another 20 years before Ipswich could celebrate its industrial and agricultural achievements in photographic form to an English audience, through the work of Benjamin and Laura Taylor and their I.X.L. Studios, when they published 'The People, Places and Industry of West Moreton' in 1899.  But for the 1870s, new migrants and investors to Ipswich were being enticed by an idyllic English country scene untainted by the Industrial Revolution that was overwhelming the British landscape. 

Poochee left Ipswich by 1877.  He travelled around regional and remote Queensland, establishing studios for a short time in Dalby, Maryborough, Gayndah and Townsville, continuing until about 1882.  By 1893, he was back in Paramatta, working with his son Sorabjee, at his studio in Factory Street.  Later they would open Poochee & Son on Church Street.  It is thought that by 1904, Poochee returned home to India, where a few more studio portraits credited to him have been found.

Poochee's legacy to the city is great.  Despite the separation caused by distance, Poochee enabled his portrait sitters to connect and share momentous life events, like marriage and the birth of children, with family and friends back home.  The few carte de visite that have remained in Ipswich, 150 years after they were taken, represent only a small portion of the portraits Poochee would have photographed.  His greatest legacy to us, though, is his panorama.  When Poochee gifted a copy of his panorama to Mayor John Murphy in 1865, he not only gifted a framed photograph to the city of Ipswich, he also gave us a moment captured in time: the infancy of Ipswich's industrial dominance and the beginnings of our cultural and built heritage.