photographer, camera salesman and master mariner, is claimed to be the person who took the first photograph on Australian soil, at Sydney on 13 May 1841. The daguerreotype was described as 'an astonishingly minute and beautiful sketch … of Bridge-street and part of George-street, as it appeared from the Fountain in Macquarie-place’. Exactly a month earlier, the Australasian Chronicle had reported: 'By means of the Daguerreotype a correct view of any locality may be taken by any person in five minutes. Captain Lucas intends to dispose of the instrument at prime cost, and it may be seen at the office of Messrs. Joubert and Murphy, Macquarie Place. The purchaser will be fully instructed in the method of taking views’. From the first photography in New South Wales (in contrast to Tasmania) was allied with commerce rather than with science or the arts.
Confusingly, two Captain Lucases were in Sydney at this time. The one hitherto given as the photographer, master of the French barque Justine , arrived at Sydney on 15 February 1840, remained until 7 April, then sailed for New Zealand and on to Valparaiso to purchase horses. Landing the animals in New Zealand, the Justine under Captain Lucas returned to Sydney from the Bay of Islands on 29 March 1841. The camera-owning Captain Lucas, however, was reported in the April Chronicle as being the 'late commander of the Naval School expedition’. No French captain would have been in charge of a British training ship and the camera salesman was undoubtedly the English Captain Lucas, a passenger on the brig Star , reported as sailing from Sydney for Tahiti under Captain Hebrill on 1 June, two days before his namesake was reported as returning to France in the Justine with a general cargo. (One of them, presumably the Englishman, may have returned. By 1844, and possibly from 1842 when the ship was completed, one Captain Lucas was master of the locally built cutter Alfred owned by F.W. Reiss.)
Today the reporting of Australia’s first known photograph seems surprisingly low-keyed for such a revolutionary invention. On 15 May 1841, two days after the public demonstration of the apparatus, the Australian devoted a paragraph to it, revealing that 'At the stores of Messrs Joubert and Murphy, an interesting trial of the advantages of the Daguerreotype was made’ by some unnamed 'gentlemen who conducted the experiment’. The experimenters undoubtedly included the wine stores’ French proprietor Didier Numa Joubert , who either owned and operated the camera or then purchased it, and his partner Jeremiah Murphy. The reporter certainly implied the photographers were permanent residents of Sydney, not casual visitors, as the Australian concluded: 'It would be worth the attention of any curious reader to ascertain when the instrument will be next used, for the purpose of personally witnessing its apparently miraculous effects’.
Captain Lucas was a daguerreotype operator {there’s apparently an article on him} but his photograph has never been found; nor are daguerreotypes known by Joubert. Nevertheless, it is odd that the camera apparently languished in 'the office of Messrs. Joubert and Murphy’ for a month before the public demonstration was made unless some local was learning how to operate it.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
