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Circa 1908 - "COOGEE NEAR SYDNEY", New South Wales, Australia (restored version)

IMAGE INFO

- Viewpoint is looking south from an elevated vantage point on the historic Coogee Palace Aquarium building (now Coogee Pavilion) on the south side of Dolphin Street.

- I have narrowed the estimated date for the image to Circa 1908, since

(a) electric trams were not introduced to the Coogee loop until 1902,

(b) Wylie's Baths (for mixed bathing - a short distance south of the Coogee Ladies' Baths) has not yet been constructed & opened (first opens in December 1909).

(c) there are no clearly visible automobiles - only horse drawn (since very few Australians owned a motor car in 1908 & the hills around Coogee would be somewhat problematic for such early models!).

(d) the people are clearly wearing early Edwardian fashions &

(e) fewer houses are visible on the left side of the hill than in later photos I have seen of around c.1910 vintage. This all points to the date of this image being closer to the 1902 introduction of electric trams than later (say 1912-15).

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SOURCE INFO

- Photographer is Star Photo Co.

- The original was digitized by the State Library of New South Wales

- The digitized original is available from the SLNSW online collection "Star Photo Co." here:

digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps...

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CREDITS

- Star Photo Co. (photographer)

- State Library of New South Wales for their valuable work in digitizing, archiving & making available online this rare historical content.

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COPYRIGHT STATUS

- Per SLNSW advice:

Out of copyright: created before 1955

- Regarding my own work in creating this unique cropped, restored & sepia duo-tone version from a downloaded copy of the digitized original, I have applied a Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives" Copyright.

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PROCESS INFO

- I downloaded a copy of the digitized original (small file size & very faded).

- Using Adobe Photoshop CS Windows, I enlarged the image ~50%, then repaired/restored the image with better contrast, sharpness & finally applied a sepia duo-tone curve for much improved dynamic range.

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Uploaded on October 3, 2017
Taken circa 1908