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The ghost of Gulgong Christmas past

The Holtermann Collection Digitisation Team will be taking a short break until January 6th and would like to take this opportunity to thank you for you interest in and comments on our blog. It's a fantastic project to work on and it has been wonderful to be able to share the digitisation process and the history of the negatives.

Until our return we will leave you in the spirit of Gold Rush Gulgong taken from advertisements in the Gulgong Guardian 25 December 1872.

 The week following Christmas was full of attractions and spectacles such as the Prince of Wales Opera House's Comic Christmas Pantomime of Lalla Rookh otherwise known as Harlequin Prince Feramorz and the Princess, the Peri and the Troubadour (see left).

If this was not to your taste, Homer's and Rouse's Paddocks were hosting a "Monster Picnic" and Christmas Sports day respectively. The Monster Picnic boasted a brass band, dance hall, boat swings for the ladies and even some sporting activities of it's own - the most interesting being a blindfolded wheelbarrow race (£1 prize for winning) and "a race for a pig with a greasy tail" (prize for winning, the pig!).

Other coming town attractions included the Masonic Ball on the 31st with dancing beginning "promptly" at 9pm and the main event - the Gulgong New Year's Races, a two day horse racing event on the 2nd and 3rd of January.

Holtermann negative 18242Herbert Street, west side looking north from Mayne Street, Gulgong

Happy holidays from the Holtermann Digitisation Project Team!