page_title: Henry Beaufoy Merlin
section_title: The Australian Eclipse Expedition 1871
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Beaufoy Merlin / The Australian Eclipse Expedition 1871
caption_attribution_description: English: Astronomers, Australian Eclipse Expedition, 1871 by Beaufoy Merli, State Library of New South Wales SPF 1332 English: Group Portrait, Eclipse Expedition, Australia, 1871, by Beaufoy Merli, State Library of New South Wales SPF 1332
context_page_description: Henry Beaufoy Merlin was an Australian photographer, showman, illusionist and illustrator. In the 1850s he worked as a theatrical showman and performer in Sydney, Newcastle and Maitland. In 1863 he was the first person to introduce Pepper's ghost to Australia. After this, he took up photography and between 1869 and 1872 turned the American Australasian Photographic Company into one of the most respected studios in Australia. Between 1872 and 1873 he worked extensively documenting the goldfields and mining towns of New South Wales. In 1873, as an employee of Bernhardt Holtermann, he photographed Sydney and many rural New South Wales towns. He died on 27 September 1873.
context_section_description: In October, Merlin left Sydney to take photographs of Wollongong and Kiama leaving Charles Bayliss in charge of the ‘supervision of the Landscape Department’ and attending to all orders, weather permitting. This arrangement may have been a way to shore up the company before Merlin's final adventure for 1871. On 27 November, Merlin left Sydney on the steamship Governor Blackall as a part of the Australian Solar Eclipse Expedition bound for North Queensland. Accompanying him on board were a ‘who's who’ of Australia's natural historians and scientists all of whom were travelling to Cape Sidmouth to view the solar eclipse on 12 December. Unfortunately, after they had set up their instruments on Eclipse Island the day proved too overcast and, even though he continued to expose the plates Merlin described their trip had been in vain. 
  On the return journey, Merlin experimented with taking a series of coastline views of the Whitsunday Passage and succeeded in recording a considerable portion of it. These he thought would prove useful to the mariner as they reproduced the ‘elevations, depressions, projections, &c, with an accuracy impossible in hand-drawings.’ Merlin arrived back in Sydney on Christmas Eve, ‘in time to hear the joyous Christmas bells ring out.’
caption: Astronomers, Australian Eclipse Expedition, 1871, attributed to Beaufoy Merlin
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