Albert Street, Gumeracha looking south-west, with the District Hotel at left.

This image is from an album of 50 photographs of Adelaide and country subjects.

Gumeracha is one of South Australia's oldest settled areas. In 1839, the South Australia Company took up a parcel of land, on which the settlements of Gumeracha, Kenton Valley and Forreston were developed. The Company established a district headquarters and opened up the area for sheep grazing.

Samuel Sweet is well known as a photographer but he was also a ship's captain and surveyor. Born at Portsea, England in 1825, Sweet joined the navy when he was approximately 19 years old and travelled extensively to China and India. He was commander of the Pizarro (ship) and later the Sarah Neumann (ship). He arrived in Adelaide in 1867 and began work as a photographer.

He returned to sea again in 1869 and was in command of various vessels until 1875 when his ship, the Wallaroo, was involved in an accident. Following an enquiry which found Captain Sweet responsible, he retired from the sea and set up a photographic studio in Rundle Street. From here he also ran a traveling photographic service. Sweet concentrated mainly on landscapes and street scenes and soon became the colony's foremost documentary photographer. He was also an innovator who became one of the first to use the new photographic dry-plate process in Australia in the 1880s.

Sweet, Samuel White (1825 - 1886)

Pike, Philip WCaptain Sweet's Adelaide Adelaide: Longwood Media, 1983

Robinson, J A century in focus: South Australian photography, 1840s-1940s Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2007

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

Gumeracha

Gumeracha Wikipedia

Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Editionsee Sweet, Samuel White (1825 - 1886)