sketcher, amateur photographer, engineer, architect, scientist and explorer, was a son of Charles Babbage, professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, and Georgina née Whitmore. As a young man Benjamin studied and worked under the railway pioneer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. His interests included 'meterology [sic], oceanography, geophysics, geodetics, agronomy, botany, [and] photography’. Babbage married Laura Jones at Bristol on 10 September 1839 and they came to Adelaide in the Hydaspes with their children in 1851, Earl Grey having appointed Benjamin to make a geological and mineralogical survey of South Australia. From 1856 he led expeditions to explore various parts of the province, sometimes accompanied by his son Charles Whitmore Babbage .

A camera was included on the SA government expedition Babbage led to Lake Torrens in 1858, but no extant photographs are known. His pen-and-ink expedition sketches were shown in Adelaide at the 1859 South Australian Society of Arts exhibition (along with a view of Eton College by E. Babbage, presumably another son). The collection was shown again at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, for which Babbage was the South Australian representative. The Melbourne jurors commended only a single exhibit in the entire Fine Arts section from South Australia, 'a book of pen-and-ink sketches by Mr B.H. Babbage, executed during the Exploring Expedition of 1858’ (Mortlock Library). Babbage died on 20 October 1878.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011