THE OLD BEAR
The trans-Tasman issue of controversial proposed roads through wilderness areas so interestingly noted by Billy MacTold (Tough roads ahead) struck a responsive note with me.
It stirred memory chords, for as well as the key matter of Tasmania’s Tarkine road concern and equally New Zealand’s projected Haast-Hollyford link in Fiordland, there’s also an associated connection through the camera.
On this side of the Tasman Sea is that fondly remembered great early recorder of the Tasmanian landscape, John Watt Beattie, of Hobart’s Beatties Photography Studios. He is regarded as probably having done more than anyone to shape the accepted visual image of our island.
Likewise in Kiwiland equally superb photographic compilations of that country’s natural beauty were done by others of the Beattie family, most notably by W. B. (Bill) Beattie, during 45 years as a press photographer for Auckland’s New Zealand Herald and its popular nationwide sister publication, the New Zealand Weekly News (now long gone but still fondly remembered by Kiwis of an earlier generation, so I’m told).
Bill Beattie’s father was also William, a Scot from Aberdeen. He had emigrated to Australia with brother James Watt Beattie. Both were photographers and they started the business in Hobart. Indeed, photography was in the genes, for back in Scotland their father was both a photographer and a master house painter.
It was in Hobart that brother William met a lass from London, Evelyn Isobel Green, and they became engaged. But it seems there wasn’t enough in the Hobart enterprise for both brothers so William decided to try prospects in New Zealand. Auckland suited him, he sent for Evelyn, they married, and son Bill arrived on the scene.
Both Williams had a long association with the Weekly News and in their extensive travels covered much of the country and its events through the camera lens. Their journeying took them to remote areas, with the Haast a particular attraction for the younger Bill.
It was into this rugged area that he made a remarkable trip on horseback in 1930. The result was a stunning photographic record, with a particularly striking image captured after a night’s snowfall at a hut in the Haast Valley.
The wild beauty of the southern mountains and coast were obviously a major magnet to him, drawing him back there again the following year and luring him once more in 1937.
