Historical information
The Age: Christmas 1933 weather pictorial
Three photographs from the McKenzie Collection appear in this Age Boxing Day pictorial, documenting the weather conditions in Melbourne on Christmas Day, 1933.
In the morning, swimmers flocked to the St Kilda foreshore to cool off during a heatwave. By five o’clock, thunder and a hailstorm were breaking over the city, leaving the streets flooded.
Also featured on this page: Important visitors at the Children’s Hospital and The Nurses’ Christmas. Large scale prints of all three images feature below.
Discovering this page via the digitised newspapers on Trove was a crucial step in unlocking the provenance of the slides.
Published: The Age 26 December 1933, page 9
(1933, December 26). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), p. 9. Retrieved October 10, 2025, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page19054271
Copy obtained via National Library of Australia
Digital file courtesy Louise McKenzie
Featured in "Newsworthy : Melbourne in photographs 1933-1936" exhibition held at East Melbourne Library from October to December 2023.
The Newsworthy exhibition developed out of a local history digitisation project. Fifty images from a collection of 240 glass plate negatives were selected and printed at large scale for public display at East Melbourne Library. The exhibition was very well-received.
The McKenzie Collection of glass plate negatives unlocks glimpses of our city not seen for almost 100 years.
In the 1990s, renowned architectural photographer Ian McKenzie (1939-2014) picked up 240 glass plate negatives at a local market. Believed to be from a Victorian news archive, they dated back to the 1930s. The slides lay dormant in a dusty garage until 2020 when Ian’s wife Louise decided it was time to bring them back into the light.
Louise McKenzie, and two other history-lovers, Ernie Ward and Fiona Collyer, signed up as City of Melbourne volunteers and joined forces with City of Melbourne Libraries Community Heritage Team Leader, Linda Longley and Local History Librarian, Fiona Campbell.
Together, the project team has devoted more than three years to unlocking the mysteries of the collection. What began as a simple digitization exercise swiftly morphed into a wild journey of discovery and kismet.
Intensive detective sessions and discussions with fellow historical networks ensued, gradually unearthing our photojournalistic history and technologies, the merits of volunteer work, and astonishing stories from 1930s Victoria.
From the domestic to the dramatic, the celebratory to the solemn, these fascinating images capture a fleeting yet significant period in Interwar, Depression-era Melbourne.
Above all, the McKenzie Collection project has brought about a powerful and sustained sense of engagement, connection and celebration between people across decades and places.
Physical description
Digital file
