Lemnos Remembered - Lemnos Creek, Lorne, Victoria

Another reminder in Australia of the impact of far away Lemnos on Australia - Lemnos Creek, outside Lorne, on the south-western coast of Victoria, Australia.
These images were produced by the Rose Stereograph Company, which operated between c1920 and 1954. They are a set of two postcards.

The Rose Stereograph Company - and WW1
The Rose Stereograph Company produced many such postcards of Melbourne, beaches, the Grampians.
As a teenager, George Rose worked in his father's shoe store in a Melbourne suburb while he studied photography. He started his photographic career around 1880 at the age of 19, producing three-dimensional images. He called his business 'The Rose Stereograph Company'. He toured the world with his 3-D camera, producing stereographs for the home and overseas markets. During his career, he is said to have taken about 9,000 stereographs in at least 38 countries as well as Australia.

German procession, Federation Celebrations, Melbourne Australia 1901. George Rose. Museum Victoria Image MM06889

Around 1912 he turned his attention to the production of postcards which had become very popular in Australia and overseas as they were a simple means of communication. They enabled short messages to be sent to family and friends, there was no room for complicated etiquette which inhibited letter writing amongst the ordinary folk.With attractive images on the front, people loved and saved these cards, keeping them in albums and shoe boxes.

Farewell of the AIF, Collins St Melbourne. Rose Stereograph Co.

During WW1 he produced 56 stereoviews showing World War I subjects; they bear image numbers 12,904-12,959. The views were probably marketed in boxed sets of 20-40, with composition changing as more images became available. The quality of the images and finished stereographs was good, but as was the case with most manufacturers, the images were tame and included no action shots. Half of the images were taken in Australia before the deployment of the Australian Expeditionary Force. Most of the rest showed scenes behind the lines and ruins on the Western Front. Rose used two sizes of mounts for his stereographs during the World War I period. Both were curved with rounded corners and made of good quality dark cardboard. The earlier mount was the standard size of 3½ x 7 inches. Later cards were 3⅞ x 7 inches. In the declining years of stereograph production, Rose returned to mounts of the standard size; they may be distinguished from the early mounts by their squared corners.
One thing that sets Rose stereographs apart from those of any other manufacturer is the integration of the captions with both halves of the stereo images. Placing captions on the negatives eliminated the need for a separate step in production. The captions tended to be lengthy since Rose did put any explanatory text on the reverse of the cards.
Besides the main office in Melbourne, Rose Great War stereo-views listed offices in Sydney, New South Wales; Wellington, New Zealand; and London. George's son Herbert, a noted artist in his own right, helped in the business until his untimely death at the age of 47 in 1936. As stereo-views declined in popularity, Rose switched to production of postcards and decorative cards. The company stopped manufacturing stereo-views in the 1920s, and George Rose died in 1942. Rose Stereograph Company kept the original name and remains in business today as a manufacturer of postcards and tourist memorabilia in Glen Waverly, a suburb of Melbourne.
This information has been sourced from the following websites - http://greatwarin3d.org/Rose.htm and http://www.ronblum.com.au/

Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee