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15 June 1942 - "Coogee Beach looking South", Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (enhanced version)

IMAGE INFO

- This is an enhanced version of a B&W "high oblique" large format aerial photo, taken at 13,000 feet. The detail is startlingly good.

- The Coogee Pavilion in Dolphin St is the building in near foreground with a large dome. The building immediately to the right of the Pavilion (which is now called the Coogee Sands Hotel & Apartments) has a large open air swimming lido at the rear.

- Note the huge shark nets protecting the southern half of the beach & the massive wooden pylons erected in the bay to support the netting! Ironically, the steel mesh netting was very expensive to maintain. In the aftermath of a fierce storm during October 1940 that smashed the netting to pieces with 40' high waves, the Council decided to abandon the idea in the summer of 1942/43. The supporting pylons became dilapidated & were themselves destroyed in fierce storms during 1948.

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SOURCE INFO

- The original image was found in the Royal Australian Historical Society's (RAHS) Adastra Aerial Photograph Collection, freely available from their Flickr site www.flickr.com/photos/royalaustralianhistoricalsociety/12...

- The source web page infers the date of the image is "Circa 1936" - but no Adastra company records exist of any Sydney surveys at that time. However, a map at the Geoscience Australia website shows this exact shot #3 of Run 2 (just to the north of Coogee Beach on a southbound flight) was taken on 15 June 1942 for the survey series "Sydney & Environs" - www.ga.gov.au/flight-diagrams/photos/si56-5_map47.jpg

- Original captured by an Adastra Airways aircraft travelling southwards at a height of ~13,000 feet, using a large format Williamson F24 fixed oblique aerial photo camera with focal length of 5".

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CREDITS & COPYRIGHT STATUS

Credits go to:

- Adastra Airways for the original photograph.

- Royal Australian Historical Society for scanning & making the digitized version of the original freely available in their online digital collection.

- Copyright advice from RAHS:

"No known copyright restrictions" (Creative Commons)

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PROCESS INFO

- A full size copy was downloaded from the RAHS Flickr web page.

- Using Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 8.0, I sharpened the image, removed 1,000's of spot defects & applied duotone curves for improved tonal depth (the original image is very "flat" - as glass plate photos from that period often are).

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Uploaded on September 24, 2018
Taken on June 15, 1942