Queensland (Eumundi, 31 August 1914)
On 31 August, Ashby joined a few botanists on a day trip to Eumundi, a logging and milling community on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. They were met there by the town's mayor, who was their guide for the day.
On this excursion, as on many others, Ashby's travel companions included Thomas Johnson, a professor of Botany at the Royal College of Science in Dublin. Their travel friendship in Australia has only recently come to light and it may explain a perponderance of botanical and topographical images throughout the series. For example, the photographs taken during his first visit to a sub-tropical rainforest, near Eumundi, include this Moreton Bay fig (image 1). This fig is a host tree for an epiphyte (the bird's nest fern clinging to its trunk) and a liana (woody vines). The second photo (image 2) depicts bullock trains ladened with old-growth trees waiting at the Eumundi timber mill. In the background, we can see 'ring barked' trees standing in a denuded landscape, where a rainforest once grew.
During the BAAS Congress, Johnson had been busy coordinating a scheme for delegates to exchange travel photographs. After the War upended his plans, images donated by the scientists were published in The Overseas Camera in Australia with proceeds being donated to the Red Cross. This book includes two photos from Ashby's Australian series (pages 31 and 44).
Photographs by Thomas Ashby, BSR Thomas Ashby Collection
Sub-tropical rainforest near Eumundi, TA-XLVII.011.
Bullock trains at Eumundi, TA-XLVII.014.
Book: T. Johnson & British Association for the Advancement of Science. (1915). The Overseas Camera in Australia, 1914. [Accessed online, February 7 2025, from the National Library of Australia.]