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Biggingee Sorabjee Poochee
Panorama of Ipswich c.1865 (detail)
Albumen photograph, printed in
sepia
59 x 163.7 cm
City of Ipswich Collection.
Gift of the Mayor of Ipswich, 1865
Biggingee Sorabjee Poochee immigrated to Australia from
India in the early 1860s. In 1863 he settled in Ipswich and
established a studio on the corner of Bell and Union
Streets specialising in studio portraits.
Poochee’s business was well patronised by Ipswich,
however his panoramic portrait of the rapidly growing
town was commissioned by an English printing firm. It was
to be copied as a lithograph and reproduced in a book
titled Short Sea Route to Australia. This print of Panorama
of Ipswich was presented by the photographer to the
Mayor of Ipswich in 1865.
Many of Ipswich’s well-known heritage landmarks are
clearly visible in Poochee’s panorama, including from
left to right:
Goolawan, the imposing mid-Victorian Cribb family
residence on Denmark Hill, Limestone Hill covered in
scattered tailings from the limestone kiln of the convict
era, St Stephens’s Presbyterian Church, Claremont, a late
Georgian homestead by the river, School of Arts building,
(today the Ipswich Art Gallery), the original iron railway
bridge built in 1865 to carry Queensland’s first railway
across the Bremer River and link Ipswich with Grandchester.
Panorama of Ipswich c1865