The famous Holtermann Panorama of Sydney Harbour was taken 150 years ago
Sydney Harbour is one of the most photographed places in the world – and not just since the dawn of Instagram. One of the greatest photographic feats in Australia took place on the North Shore 150 years ago.
In 1875, Charles Bayliss took a series of photographs from the tower of Bernard Otto Holtermann’s grand house above Lavender Bay. Together they made a 10-metre-wide image of Sydney Harbour in astonishing detail, showing the North Shore in the foreground.
Holtermann intended to promote immigration and investment into NSW and he toured his huge panorama around the USA and Europe between 1876 and 1878. You can see a life-sized reproduction of the 1875 panorama, together with a 2016 equivalent, at North Sydney Council’s customer service centre.
The original glass plates, the largest wet plate negatives in the world, are now held by the State Library of NSW.
German migrant Holtermann met Charles Bayliss and Beaufoy Merlin, two travelling photographers, in the gold-mining town of Hill End where he had been prospecting – without much success – since 1861. Their firm, the American and Australasian Photographic Company, took more than 3,500 images of individuals and street scenes in Hill End and Gulgong.
The wet plate photographic process was complex. Each glass plate had to be coated with a wet emulsion just before use and developed immediately afterwards. This meant taking a portable darkroom with them everywhere they travelled. Despite these technical difficulties, the photography firm created a comprehensive record of life on the goldfields.
It was in Hill End that Holtermann made his fortune with the discovery of a huge nugget in 1872. It is still the largest specimen of reef gold ever unearthed. It weighed approximately 153 kilograms and was worth about £12,000 at the time – approximately $6,000,000 today. That wealth allowed Holtermann to build his mansion above Lavender Bay and to finance the creation of the panorama of Sydney Harbour.
Holtermann also produced his own line of medicine called ‘Life Preserving Drops,’ which proved popular in the goldfields, with posters featuring himself standing next to his famous nugget. In the late 1870s, he lived for a time at St Leonards Lodge in Crows Nest, subsequently giving his name to a street in that suburb.
In 1882, Holtermann was elected to Parliament as the member for St Leonards, as North Sydney was then called. He was a forceful spokesperson for the ‘working masses’ of his electorate and offered to contribute £5,000 towards the construction of a harbour bridge.
Holtermann died in 1885 and was buried at St Thomas’ Cemetery in Crows Nest. You can visit St Thomas’ Rest Park during daylight hours for a self-guided interpretive trail, taking in his gravesite as well as those of many other notable North Shore residents. Holtermann’s Lavender Bay mansion was bought by the Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore). The school made the house available to photographers wanting to take himself standing next to his famous nugget. In the late 1870s, he lived for a time at St Leonards Lodge in Crows Nest, subsequently giving his name to a street in that suburb.
In 1882, Holtermann was elected to Parliament as the member for St Leonards, as North Sydney was then called. He was a forceful spokesperson for the ‘working masses’ of his electorate and offered to contribute £5,000 towards the construction of a harbour bridge.
Holtermann died in 1885 and was buried at St Thomas’ Cemetery in Crows Nest. You can visit St Thomas’ Rest Park during daylight hours for a self-guided interpretive trail, taking in his gravesite as well as those of many other notable North Shore residents. Holtermann’s Lavender Bay mansion was bought by the Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore). The school made the house available to photographers wanting to take panoramic images of the harbour through to the 1930s. The construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge was a popular subject. Holtermann’s house was demolished by the school shortly afterwards.
As the North Shore of Sydney Harbour is higher than the south, it was used as a vantage point for artists and photographers interested in depicting the growth of Sydney throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century.
Possibly the first photographic panorama of Sydney was created in 1858 by OW Blackwood, who used the height of Government House to photograph Circular Quay. The earliest photographic panorama from the North Shore was probably created in 1863. You can see that work, together with many other original panoramic prints, in a new temporary exhibition, The Big Picture: a small exhibition of North Sydney panoramas, on display now at the North Sydney Heritage Centre at Stanton Library.
Historical Services, North Sydney Council.