A Reconsideration of a Familiar Photograph

Re-evaluating an old image of the pier

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Every so often, a photograph that has sat comfortably in a collection for years begins to shift when placed under closer scrutiny. A caption that once seemed certain starts to feel less secure, and what we thought we knew about an image becomes open to question. That is the situation we now find ourselves in with one of the photographs in the Costa Collection; long believed to show Geelong’s Railway Pier, later known as Cunningham Pier.

The prompt for this re examination came from Geoff Winkler and Ross Jepson, who have been exploring the history of Victoria’s railway piers. In the course of their work, they noticed that the image we had attributed to Geelong’s Cunningham Pier bore more than a striking resemblance to several early photographs of the Williamstown Breakwater Pier. What began as a passing observation has grown into a substantial body of evidence that deserves careful consideration.

The following two images sourced from the State Library of Victoria and PROV show images of the same pier, and indeed in the second case a more tightly cropped view of the same image. They are both also labelled as Williamstown Pier.

The first clue lay in a series of images held by PROV, the State Library of Victoria, and the Williamstown Historical Society. Although taken at different times, they share a set of distinctive features: the shape of the breakwater, the arrangement of the pier, and, most tellingly, the presence of the Williamstown tidal gauge. This gauge appears in multiple authenticated Williamstown photographs and is not associated with Geelong’s waterfront. Its appearance in the Costa image is difficult to explain if the photograph were taken in Geelong.

Another piece of the puzzle comes from the way the Williamstown pier changed over time. The PROV image shows the structure after modifications carried out in the early 1880s, while the Costa photograph appears to capture an earlier configuration. The Williamstown Historical Society’s 1866 image aligns closely with this earlier form, suggesting that the differences between the images are a matter of date rather than location.

Ross also drew attention to a locomotive visible in one of the SLV photographs. Its design places it firmly in the 1860s, a period when Williamstown’s rail pier operations were well established. This detail supports the Williamstown identification and sits less comfortably with what we know of Geelong’s photographic record from the same era.

Perhaps the most unexpected discovery was a published book whose cover uses the same photograph found in the Costa Collection, presented there as Williamstown Breakwater Pier. The image has been embellished for artistic effect, but the underlying structure is unmistakable. It is a rare thing to find an external attribution that aligns so neatly with a developing line of inquiry.

All of this leads to a simple but important point: the Costa slide in question carries no location label. Many of the surrounding images are clearly marked as Geelong scenes, but this one is not. Joseph Costa collected widely, copying photographs from many sources, and it is entirely plausible that this image entered the sequence without its original attribution. Over time, its proximity to other Geelong waterfront images may have encouraged an assumption that it belonged with them.

Taken together, the evidence presented by Geoff and Ross forms a coherent and persuasive case that the photograph is not of Cunningham Pier at all, but of Williamstown Breakwater Pier in its earlier form. The Society has now examined the original slide, reviewed the catalogue notes, and updated the attribution.

This kind of collaborative work, careful, generous, and grounded in evidence, strengthens our understanding of the region’s history and helps ensure that our collections remain as accurate as they are valuable. We are grateful to Geoff and Ross for bringing this to our attention and for sharing their research so openly.