Karl travelled from Mackay to Bowen, arriving on Sunday, June 30. From there, he wrote a letter to his sister Mattie. At first glance, his route cycling inland to Charters Towers before heading to Townsville might seem like an odd detour. But in fact, it was a smart move: the North Coast railway connected Bowen to Charters Towers, making the journey more efficient for a cyclist able to follow the tracks.
Dear Mattie,
I do not know whether this is the thirtieth day of June or not, but it is Sunday and that is the only reason I am in Bowen. Such a dead town I never saw before and never will again, I hope! But in two days' time, I will be in the gay town of Australia’s Charters Towers.
I wrote a couple of letters already for this mail but forgot now to whom they were addressed. Yesterday afternoon at 2:30 I arrived here, and as there is no town nearer than 80 miles, I made up my mind to stop here over Sunday and fix up my bike a bit. So yesterday I put a new chain on my wheel and fixed one of the rims which I split on a rock a few days ago.
The boarders at this house are going to a picnic today* and they asked me to go with them, but I can’t be bothered and I am going to church.
I have another camera, just a small film one this time. Got it at Mackay and took a few shots with it since.
(1) A piece of Queensland road, grass over my head which I had to go through for 40 miles, could scarcely see where I was going at all.
(2) Young Australian blokes around my bike.
(3) Men having their noonday lunch on the roadside.
(4) An Australian fruit tree.
(5) Cane field.
(6) Mob of cattle.
(7) Australian bush, etc.
Will get them developed in Townsville.
*This “picnic,” as it turned out, was an outing with the local cycling club—and it made the local paper. When news of it reached the Truro News, Karl found himself publicly scolded by the editor:
“When our ‘Globe Trotter’ returns, we will settle with him for even ‘out in the bush’ in Australia so far ‘falling from grace’ and forgetting his St. Paul’s Sunday School training, as to ‘go for a run’ on the Lord’s day.”
Karl was being publicly reprimanded for not resting on Sunday! The irony, as confirmed in his letter to Mattie, Karl didn’t join the picnic, he actually went to church. I hope all was forgiven.
But let us now turn, dear reader, from scandal to the far more intriguing matter of photography.
Back in Chicago, Karl proudly wrote to the Truro News that after riding nearly 2,000 miles to get there, he hadn’t asked for charity once—except for a bicycle luggage rack and a camera:
“I am to use nothing but the Cyclone camera made by the Western Camera Mfg. Co. of Chicago after this.”
The Cyclone was a magazine-style box camera that could hold 12 plates, designed for hand-held use and weighing just under two pounds. Retailing at $5.00 (around $160 today), it was a gift to Karl another bit of kit strapped to his increasingly overloaded bicycle.
But what did he photograph with it?
That, dear reader, remains a mystery. I’ve yet to find any surviving prints or references to photos taken with the Cyclone. I wonder whether its bulk, despite being considered “lightweight,” proved too much to manage alongside Karl’s 52 pounds of gear and the physical demands of the journey. Perhaps, after carrying his bicycle through the Rockies, he gave up the Cyclone, maybe even leaving it with the Vancouver hotel proprietor, the same man who inherited Karl’s pet mountain cat?
And while Karl was sailing aboard the Ivy to Australia, photography itself was changing. Film was replacing glass plates. And George Eastman’s Kodak cameras, compact, inexpensive, and easy to use were rising in popularity.
One model stood out: the Kodak Brownie.
Released in 1900, the Brownie was a camera for everyone. It cost just $1.00 (less than $40 today), took 8 photos per roll, and was even marketed to children. It transformed photography from a specialist’s craft into a pastime for ordinary people.
So when Karl mentions his “small film camera” in Bowen, I suspect it was a Brownie. He says he bought it in Mackay and lists the photos he took—tall grass, cattle, boys, bush. A clear attempt to show Mattie what he was seeing.
As for what became of those photos? Only one clue remains: a letter from Karl’s mother. Written late one Friday night, it’s the only piece of correspondence I’ve found from her:
“I had letters from Karl today, along with a package of photos and papers from a man in Mackay. He sent me a postcard letting me know he’d sent them and asked me to hold onto them until the return of my son, ‘whom I am proud to have met.’ His name was Harwell, and his picture was among the photos. Karl also sent a photo of a large group of young men with bicycles. He’s probably in Japan now.”
That’s it. No further mention of the photos, the Brownie, or whether the prints survived. But I love this glimpse of Karl’s desire to share not just his stories, but his visual observations. He wanted his sister to see what he saw: the towering grasses of Queensland, the men on the roadside, the curious boys, the sugarcane and cattle.
In the short span of Karl’s journey, photography was being transformed from a cumbersome professional tool to an everyday companion. The Cyclone gave way to the Brownie. And Karl, whether he realized it or not, was riding the wave of a revolution that would change how we document our lives forever.
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