HASLUCK LIBRARY

Book cover notes:
" 'Perth', Lady Hasluck reminds us in her introduction, 'was once the most isolated city in the world.' Thousands of miles of ocean separated it from South Africa to the west and the Malay Archipelago to the north, and a thousand miles of desert lay between it and the nearest Australian colony, South Australia. With no radio or telephone to communicate with the rest of the world, and dependant on sailing ships for news, Perth developed a character all of its own.

This is portrayed in the selection of pictures in this book, more than two hundred photographs ranging in time from the 1860s to the beginning of the First World war. They illustrate every aspect of the city and its inhabitants - the public buildings, parks and monuments; shops and hotels; places of worship and places of amusement; streets along with horse-drawn buses or early trams and motor cars convey ladies in charming Edwardian apparel and moustachio'd gentleman in wide-brimmed hats to open-air theatres or sporting fixtures or the Western Australian Exhibition of 1906 or the welcome to the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York in 1901; children at school and soldiers preparing to go to the Boer War; holiday excursions, picnics, and the Regatta on the Swan River - a comprehensive selection of photographs carefully chosen by Mollie Lukis, formerly Librarian of the Battye Library.

Alexandra Hasluck, well known for her books of history and biography on Western Australian subjects, has contributed an introduction which traces the development of Perth from the small, isolated outpost of the Empire to the thriving city of the Edwardian era, giving special emphasis to the changing appearance of the city and the changing life-styles pf the people of Perth over the years, and also detailed, factual commentaries on each of the photographs."