professional photographer, twin of Isabella and younger son of Walter William Thwaites and Jane n é e McLean, was born on 14 May 1842 at his parents’ residence in New South Head Road, Sydney. Hector grew up in Sydney and Hobart Town, learning photography from his father and working with him in South Australia in 1865-66. For a few months in 1867 he was in Western Australia, arriving at Fremantle on 19 January with his father and elder brother William ( Walter William McLean Thwaites ) and departing for Adelaide with his brother on 23 March on board the Eliza Corry . Calling himself 'Professor Thwaites’, Hector then set up his own studio in South Australia; a carte-de-visite survives from Stockport. He was manager of the Australian Photographic Company of 29 King William Street, Adelaide from 1869 until 1872 (when E.G. Tims took over the studio), leased property in Kent Town (Adelaide) in the early 1870s near the school run by his younger sister Sophia Jane Thwaites , and at some stage managed the Kapunda Photographic Company in that South Australian copper-mining town. The photographer Thwaites who advertised on 11 September 1885 that he had opened a studio next door to Gilbert’s Hotel in the Victorian mining town of Walhalla was presumably Hector too.
- Writers:
- Kerr, Joan
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
