kempsey

circa 1930 from the vehicles? Google street view - maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...

I have used this photo in my website on place based learning in the Macleay valley classroommacleay.weebly.com/history-bibliography.html

Vivian Harris Excellent! Thanks for letting us know.

A similar view in 1973. www.flickr.com/photos/grahamh_pix/3065738336/in/set-72157... www.ipernity.com/doc/grahamh/24210517/in/album/468989

Thanks for the link, very similar!

I hope that records.nsw has this captioned correctly. My memory is of something much smaller and less ornate. It could have been another to have space excised during its lifetime, but the whole station building wasn't large or grand. I had 'dinner' there once in the 1980s, towards the end of North Coast Mail: classic takeaway pie and coffee. Roderick B Smith Rail News Victoria Editor

If we can find a date for the removal of a big old power and telegraph pole outside the post office date could maybe be narrowed down a bit - the pole with many insulators is shown in a 1938 photo on the Nat. Archives website, also shows the P.O. fence to be timber not chain wire - say photo then is after 1938. Photos online at Nat. Archives show the Kempsey post office during and after the 1949 floods and in 1950 - no big cluttered power pole, chain wire fence in place. The cars and trucks - 1930s models, 2nd car in line could be 1940-41 or 1946-47. So photo I suggest photo taken between 1938 and 1949.

I agree. I cannot see any postwar cars, so I would be inclined to narrow that down to 1938-1946. I think it is summer, because not a single man in the photo is wearing any kind of coat, although several are wearing ties. There seem to be quite a lot of men walking around in the street relative to women. Normally if you look at a shopping street in the daytime, 2/3 of the people walking around are women. It's either noon or the clock is broken, so perhaps all those men have just stopped for lunch. Or it's saturday. The Wehrmacht officer standing next to the power pole on the left may be a clue. Above the bus is a sign which appears to be advertising "Briton Radio" which I have never heard of.

Briton Radios were made in Sydney. According to one website, the Briton brand was not used after 1940. Another one says the company was defunct by 1948. www.radiomuseum.org/dsp_hersteller_detail.cfm?company_id=...

The shadows are very short.