Tom's big tree, Sassafras Creek Australia. Albumen photograph by JW Lindt 1880s

LINDT, John William (1845-1926). Tom's Big Tree near Sassafras Creek, Victoria.
 
Victoria, c.1880s.
 
Original albumen photographic print, 190 x 140 mm. Captioned and numbered within the negative at the lower edge: "176. Tom's Big Tree near Sassafras Creek. Lindt, Melb." Unmounted on thin photographic paper, with slight natural curl and minor handling. Later pencil identification to the reverse; very good.
 
A striking Victorian forest photograph by John William Lindt, showing a man and woman posed at the foot of an enormous eucalyptus near Sassafras Creek in the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne. Lindt was one of the leading photographers of nineteenth-century Australia. During the 1880s he produced extensive photographic studies of the forests around Melbourne, including the Black Spur and the Dandenong and Yarra ranges.