Trouble with palm trees

Posted on by
Image courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales

So, I have spent a ridiculous amount of time today trying to find out when the palm trees in Bridge Street were removed. I’ve been through blogs, endless google searches, at least an hour at the City of Sydney Archives, eBay, Alamy you name it. It sounds trivial but I need to know the date so that I can place a flash I have written, chronologically, in my collection. For the moment their loss features in my just written flash but now I’m obsessed with the when.

I had heart failure earlier in the day when I found a postcard featuring the palms dated 1958, a date that completely rules out the flash from being included in my collection. But I’ve since found the photo below dated by the Sydney Archives as 1954 with no palm trees. So hopefully the trees were removed sometime in the early 1950s. It’s strange but there are not very many photos of the street in the 1940s. Because of the war perhaps?

You will see that the distinctive Burns Philp building features in both photos. I have also “asked a librarian” at the State Library the question so I will keep you posted on the outcome. In the meantime I’ll probably still be searching in my sleep.

Image courtesy of the City of Sydney Archives

Update: I heard from Kate, a librarian at the State Library, on the 22nd December and she confirmed through various newspaper articles that she found in Trove that the palm trees were chopped down in August, 1946. I’m not sure what I did wrong when searching Trove but I had no luck even though I tried “Any of these words” and “All of these words” for palm trees Bridge Street. Here is a small newspaper article:

Image courtesy of Daily Telegraph 26/8/46

And time marches on and over the intervening years so many more trees have been cut down in the name of progress.

10 thoughts on “Trouble with palm trees”

      • I don’t know much about Trove, because it’s not really a resource I need to use. I have done some editing of newspaper articles and clippings that relate to my music teacher Valda Johnstone, (and I need to do more of it) but from that, I suspect that the problem might be that not many people are going to tag ‘palm trees’ when they come across a mention of them at Trove.
        (Whereas if you search VJ, you’ll find all the ones that I’ve tagged, for a start.)

        Have you tried doing a Google image search? You upload your image, and then get it search for similar images. You’ll probably get lots of images of Hawaiian palm trees, but you never know your luck…

        Liked by 1 person

      • Actually I’m rather glad I didn’t find them in Trove as I kept on with my google search and also posted on Lost Sydney and interacted with a few people about the cars in the wrongly dated 1958 postcard which I didn’t put on my blog because I didn’t know whose image it was. The whole thing was fascinating and rewarding. You are probably right about tagging. I would just like to know how the librarian found the details. Hope you had a good Christmas, Lisa.

        Like

      • We had a very nice Christmas. Not too big, just close friends and family, just how I like it.
        I hope yours were lovely too. All the best for the new year.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. I love the “obsession” with finding the true date of when the palm trees were removed in Sydney for your writing!! The purity of your dedication to accuracy and possibly a clue into context is lovely!

    Cheers,

    Karen

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • Oh thank you. The date is very important it will determine where the flash will go in my collection of short stories about my angel Zach who drives a cab in Sydney between 1920 and 1940. 1958 was too late for the inclusion but not 1946!

      Like

      Reply ↓

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.