This wonderful old album of photos of the Tietkens expedition to Central Australia in 1889 caught my attention today. I was particularly intrigued at how wear and tear (literally) has resulted in images and text being overlaid to allow parts of different narratives to peek out from behind one another (see image above). In other places the photos have been extended beyond their frame as naive pencil drawings (see below top right).
Englishman William Harry Tietkens arrived in Adelaide in 1859 and worked as a station-hand and drover in Victoria and western New South Wales. He was involved in expeditions led by explorer Ernest Giles in 1865 and in 1873. In 1889 the Geographical Society of Victoria appointed him to lead an expedition to explore the region around Lake Amadeus, Mount Olga and Uluru (Ayers Rock). The party included 12 camels under the direction of Frederick Warman. The entire journey took around almost six months. This album full of home made and often poorly fixed photos documents the landscape and people they met along the way.
Collection of photographs concerning W. H. Tietkens, 1864-1930, PXB 31/vol.1 , PXB 31/vol.2, https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/9yM63b69/QJOaQo0eEL2Z
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