Lady and camel

Samuel Sweet photographed this remarkable image while visiting Beltana Station in the Northern Flinders Ranges during a trip north on the recently opened Great Northern Railway, which ran from Port Augusta to Farina. At the time Beltana Station was owned by the successful pastoralist and benefactor Thomas Elder and was the centre for cattle breeding and supply for outback transport in South Australia. Elder’s camels, from Karachi in Pakistan, were the first to be imported into the state. The sitter in this photograph is Zillah Phillipson, who had married the manager of Beltana Station in 1880. Mrs Phillipson’s husband developed a close relationship with the Afghan cameleers, and Zillah became an accomplished camel rider.

 When Captain Sweet first arrived in Adelaide in 1866, he maintained his alternative careers as a photographer and ship’s captain, but by 1875 he was devoting himself to his photographic pursuits full-time. He became South Australia’s most significant nineteenth-century photographer, best known for his landscape ‘views’, although some of his most engaging photographs are his innovative portraits.

Alice Clanachan, Assistant Curator, Prints, Drawings & Photographs