A collection of century-old photographs will be archived and placed under safekeeping after the elaborately adorned album was anonymously donated to the Berwick Opportunity Shop.
In August, president of the op shop, Margaret Ruse stumbled upon the album amongst the latest donations.
The decorative cover was too striking to ignore and the contents inside revealed an even more intriguing donation.
Dozens of photos were inside, capturing a range of people from approximately the late 1800s to the turn of the century.
It was a shock to see something seemingly so precious donated to an op shop, Ms Ruse never thought to put a price on it and swiftly put it aside while making a public appeal to hopefully return it to the family.
Several weeks later, a man from the Geelong area named Ormes Sawyer called the op shop and said he recognised family members from the photos shared; in fact, he already possessed copies of some of the images.
He is an amateur historian of his family, one such member he recognised was his great-aunt three generations back.
This side of his family would eventually settle in Berwick, according to the account he has made of his family tree.
The family member in the album would bear the surname of Everett, which he has found also spelled as ‘Everitt’ at times through his research; this prompted a moment of pause in his interview with Star News, but there is no known connection to the reporter of this article.
Even though it has a host of different people within, Mr Sawyer believes the album was still likely a very personal use.
He posits that this could be a collection of ‘carte de visite’ portraits, a 19th-century type of photograph used as visiting cards which is credited as one of the first forms of social media.
“This sort of stuff wasn’t unusual, that people would share photos amongst themselves, a bit like we share Facebook today with our friends,” he said.
“But in the old days, if you went to visit somebody and they weren’t at home, you would leave one of these.”
Ms Ruse granted the album to Mr Sawyer and a friend recently picked it up. Once united with the album, Mr Sawyer will investigate more of his family’s connection to the album and hopefully provide more detail about the history.
Other photos unrelated to Mr Sawyer’s family will be donated to the State Library of Victoria where they can be catalogued and archived.
Most of all, everyone involved is happy that such historic photos will be preserved.
“From there they can digitise them and they’ll be available to everybody, not just Australia-wide, but worldwide, and preserved forevermore,” Mr Sawyer said.
