Unidentified Aboriginal dwelling with Aboriginal men sitting outside and their spears nearby. Believed to be in South Australia, possibly on the Coorong (part of the supporting covering is a fishing net).

Ngarrindjeri is an Aboriginal nation of 18 language groups who occupied, and still inhabit, the Lower Murray, Coorong and Lakes area of South Australia. Their lands and waters extended 30km up the Murray from Lake Alexandrina, the length of the Coorong and the coastal area to Encounter Bay. Today this Aboriginal group is still very strong, with a large community of people based in the Lower Murray and Coorong area. This image is from an album of 50 photographs of Adelaide and country subjects by Samuel Sweet.

Samuel Sweet is well known as a photographer but he 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.

Aboriginal Australians

Sweet, Samuel White, 1825-1886

Wurleys

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

Jenkin, Graham,Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri, Point McLeay, Raukkan Publishers, 1995, 2^nd ed.

Kerr, M The surveyors : the story of the founding of Darwin Adelaide: Rigby, 1971

Pike, Philip W Captain Sweet's Adelaide Adelaide: Longwood Media, 1983

Register (Adelaide), 29 Nov 1871, 13, 17 May, 12 Aug; 1875

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

National Library of Australia. Pictures catalogue

State Library of South Australia, Fact Sheets, Aboriginal Australia