Item #122137 A vintage photograph of an early unidentified Australian Rules Football team, featuring an Indigenous player. Indigenous Australian Portraiture.
[Indigenous Australian Portraiture]

A vintage photograph of an early unidentified Australian Rules Football team, featuring an Indigenous player

[Strathalbyn, Unknown Photographer], 'About 1903-4'.

A gelatin silver photograph (116 × 160 mm), on the original plain mount (external dimensions 171 × 227 mm).

The photograph is slightly scuffed and marked, with tiny spots of loss to the surface, and loss of a small piece to the top left-hand corner (well clear of the image detail proper); overall, in very good condition.

Most of the players are identified in pencil in a later hand on the verso of the mount; the date 'About 1903-4' and one name are in ink in an earlier hand; alas, both scribes took it as read that the team itself needed no introduction. None of those in the back row are identified. As for the rest, they are (from left to right, top to bottom) A.J. Pool (trainer), Harry Prosser, unknown, Joe Gunter, Peter Marsh, Frank Hopkins (trainer); Tom Stirling, Syd Prosser, unknown, Herb Schedlich, Eric Stirling; Jack Caldwell, Roy Halliday, unnamed umpire, Stan Bruce, and unknown. Nancy Gemmell's 'Old Strathalbyn and its People, 1839-1939' contains an illustration of a 1910 cricket team (see page 128). Members of that team include Herb Schedlich and Harry Prosser, and the index contains numerous references to the Stirling family (our thanks to Rosemary Gall for supplying this information).

Item #122137

Price (AUD): $350.00