professional photographer, advertised the opening of his Gallery of Photographic Art at South Brisbane, Queensland, in November 1856. His advertisement appealed to 'Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers, Lovers and friends—to all —secure to yourselves while yet you may, a faultless likeness of those who are near and dear to you’. Although he was still in Brisbane the following year, the business seems to have collapsed; Goodes’s studio was now occupied by W.T. Bennett. Subsequent movements are unknown until 1861-62 when Henry Goodes was working at 328 George Street, Sydney, in partnership with Olaf William Blackwood . In 1863-65 Goodes was sole proprietor. Despite the fact that the Sydney Morning Herald of 13 June 1863 referred to the studio as that of Messrs Wagner & Goodes, Conrad Wagner was almost certainly only the employee who painted the decorations mentioned in the article and the firm’s 'negative operator’ (Goodes was advertising for a competent one in September 1864, at about the time Wagner left him).

In December 1865 Goodes advertised in the News and Southern Goldfields General Advertiser as a 'photographist’ staying at Johnson’s London Tavern, Redbank, Araluen, New South Wales. Offering 'Cartes de Visite, Views of Houses, Claims &c., for transmission to Europe on reasonable terms’, he was obviously travelling around the district. He seems to have remained in country towns for the rest of his life, primarily at Mudgee, New South Wales, where his studio was in Lewis Street. There, on 31 May 1885, 'Mr Goode [sic], photographer, of Mudgee … committed suicide by hanging himself’.

Henry R. Goodes, listed by Davies and Stanbury as working at Wagga Wagga in 1875 and at Mudgee in 1884-85, was possiblly the eldest son who had begun his working life taking photographs at Rockhampton, Queensland, in 1867, afterwards presumably working in other parts of the country or with his father. After his father’s death Henry R. Goodes returned to the Mudgee studio and was taking photographs there until 1899.

However, if the age given on Henry Goodes’s death certificate in 1885, 45 years old, is correct, it was most likely the son who suicided and the elder Goodes who took over the studio.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

1989