Historical information

This postcard has a hand-coloured image of the Charman family's Brookdale Guest House in Emerald. The original photograph was black and white, and a copy of that version is in the State Library of Victoria. Brookdale Guest House was one of the first in Emerald, opening in 1901 between Charman and Brookdale Avenues as the railway opened the region for tourists. This postcard was created c. 1907, using the colourful view as advertising to draw more tourists to the region. The guesthouse remained open until 1920. V.S.M. (Victorian Stamp Market) produced a number of series of postcards in the early 1910s.

Significance

This hand-coloured postcard is a rare colourful view of a major site of 1900s-10s Emerald.

Physical description

This postcard holds a hand-coloured photograph taken from the top of a hill, looking at a homestead with a series of buildings and fields. The background recedes into a forest, with other trees in the foreground and around the centre of the homestead. There is a fence-enclosed field in the centre-right with a dead tree in the centre, and a field in the front-left with a grazing horse. There is a caption printed in the top-left, and the reverse is bisected by a vertical line and prepared for writing on but has no message or stamp. There is a brief handwritten annotation on the reverse, alongside an accession number.

Inscriptions & markings

Obverse, Caption: "Homestead, Emerald near Gembrook"
Reverse:
Annotation: "Charman's Brookdale Guest House + Farm"
Printed, Left: "Printed in Prussia"
Printed, Bottom: "V. S. M. Series, Melbourne"