TasTrax – you're the winner of free entry to my next AV. It's Melva. And upon that, hangs a tale.
I asked my partner, Jenny, to ring Melva today, to ask if she would be willing to identify some of the people in Dave's photos. Responders on this website are the experts on location, but it's Chris, Fran and Melva who are "experts" on the people.
Melva said on the phone: "That particular bushwalk was my most memorable". She said it was a long trip from "Bronte Park" to Maydena, in either 1950 or 1952. I was a bit sus about the date, because on Dave's neg folder it says "Spires and Gell Valley, late 1950s". Amongst the negatives are photos of Lindsay Crawford. Now I knew for sure that Lindsay did a similar trip at Christmas 1952, because I have 150 of his Kodachrome's locked away in another room, for scanning next year as an AV. And each one is labelled "Xmas 1952". But I didn't recall seeing any of Melva or Dave. So who to believe? Were the "late 1950s" negatives by Dave of the same trip as the Kodachrome "Xmas 1952" by Lindsay. I had to have a look at the slides.
And there was Dave… and there was Melva. My goodness. Now there are Kodachrome's of the same trip.
Unfortunately for me, that connection now means I'll have to begin scanning Lindsay's slides to become part of the Pedder show. His slides are important enough to warrant a separate AV, but might I be able to connect them to
Journeys To Pedder? Now I have the connection -- through Lindsay, Dave and Melva. In the first half, Chris Binks will be introducing the South West in the early 1950s: trips to Mt Anne (Lindsay's slides), Frenchmans (Lindsay's slides), his first ascents of South Geryon and The Foresight (not really in the SW, but close enough), the POW trip (with Dave), Gordon Vale and Ernie Bond, Lake Pedder and Frankland Range (with Dave), Propsting Range, and now a magnificent trip with Melva from Butlers Gorge down past the Gell, over to the POW, back to The Spires, out the Vale of Rasselas, and ending up camped by a creek near Maydena (see this thread
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=30971).
If Melva is agreeable, I'll be scripting Chris to introduce her, and then she'll narrate her Xmas 1952 trip to the backdrop of Lindsay's slides and Dave's negatives.
Expect some more questions about locations from that trip. But I'll start a new thread to deal with those.
PHOTOSIt has been great to follow this discussion and I would love to see copies of the photos once they have been scanned and geo-located. Is there any chance that they could be put up on this site in sequence???
The bad news: very little chance of the photos ending up on this site. They are destined to become a part of
Journeys To Pedder, a Blu-ray, and at the same time they'll be reproduced in a large-format book:
The Black and White Negatives of Chris Binks and Dave Pinkard. Three copies only (unless you've got $600+), hand bound by yours truly (see
https://sites.google.com/site/tanksinke ... tanksinker).
The good news: the print file for the above book will be made freely available as a PDF, 200-300 pages, at full resolution, around 5-10 GB in size. And everyone who has contributed to location details, will be acknowledged.
THANKSThanks again for all the contributions. I appreciate your enthusiasm for solving location conundrums. It is quite important that I know as much as possible about each photo before I start scripting. Not much detail will appear in the Blu-ray, but every last bit of info about the photos will appear in the book.
If you'd like to be a location proofreader for the book, please gmail me at gdburns.