Weekly Vintage Image: 6

There she is, my great grandmother, in all her Queen-Mothery Sunday best. If someone had no knowledge of the culture of Tasmanians in the 1960s, they could be forgiven for thinking that all important photographs should happen underneath the clothes-line.

Those with an intimate knowledge of Burnie will notice an empty patch in the background off to the right where the roads intersect: the current site of Burnie's municipal pool.

Weekly VIntage Image: 5

The image might be a bit blurry, but the scene is familiar to me from my youth - this is the view from my great gradnparent's garden, a few doors down was where my uncle lived, and a couple of streets to the left is where my grandparents lived. So I spent a bit of time around this area as a wee tacker when our family made visits from where-ever it was we were living at the time.

Not sure about the anonymous sunbather, though...

Weekly Vintage Image: 2

This would be my grandparents & one of their 4 kids. Dad? One of his brothers? I can't tell, unfortunately.

If anyone can identify the location, please do. I am assuming it's probably Sisters Beach (about 40 minutes drive west from Burnie) as I know one of my pop's brothers had a shack there, but the quality of the scanner combined with the age of the slides means it can be a bit hit & miss picking the spot!

Old slides

On the day of my wedding (February 2009), my dad gave me a shopping bag full of slides. Originally I had asked him to bring down some boxes of slides he bought in Hong Kong in 1984, which I used to enjoy looking at as a wee tyke - I thought it'd be fun to have a look, but mostly I wanted the tiny plastic projector he bought with them. However, somewhere along the line he also dug up another, much larger, and far more important box of slides.

You see, the slides were taken by my great grandfather, and feature images of my dad & his family in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Unfortunately I lack a projector to view them large (dad forgot to bring this down), and my flatbed scanner just doesn't cut it. The above images were attempts to scan with a flatbed - not totally flash, but a start.

These are probably some of the few images in existence of my dad as a child. Photography wasn't a huge part of nan & pop's lives when their kids were growing up.

It's nice to have a photographic link to the past. Dad says his nan & pop (ie. my great grandparents) used to go for a Sunday drive with their grandkids quite regularly. In fact the first slide I looked at I instantly recognised as a view of the Great Western Tiers from the Bracknell area. I hope to find a few more gems when I get them scanned (whether I buy a cheap neg scanner & do this myself, or have them done by the local photo chain, I haven't decided).