The early Adelaide Railway Station building which was demolished for the new building erected 1926-1928.

This image is from an album of 50 photographs of Adelaide and country subjects taken by Samuel Sweet who is well known as a photographer but was also a ship's captain and a surveyor. Born in Portsea, England in 1825, Sweet joined the navy at around 19 years of age and traveled extensively to China and India. He was commander of the Pizarro (ship) and then the Sarah Neumann (ship) for N. J. Myers Son & Co. of Liverpool. He arrived in Adelaide in 1867 and worked as a photographer.

Captain Sweet went back to sea in 1869 and was in command of various vessels until 1875 when his ship was involved in an accident for which he was blamed. He then retired from the sea and set up a photographic studio in Rundle Street, Adelaide.  He ran a traveling photographic service from there, mainly concentrating on landscapes. Sweet became South Australia's foremost documentary photographer of the 1870s.

See all of the Library's digitised holding's of Captain Sweet's photographs.

Cato, J The Story of the Camera in Australia Melbourne: Georgian House, 1955

State Library of South Australia, Archival collection Papers of S.W. Sweet (PRG 742)

Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition, search Sweet, Samuel White

SA Memory Samuel White Sweet photography