Picture postcards have suffered the same fate as handwritten letters in our age of instant digital communications, replaced by selfies and posts in a range of social media as a way of saying ‘Wish you were here’.

Sending postcards became a craze in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their popularity in Australia was boosted in 1905 when the Postmaster General allowed postcards with the familiar divided back — with the message on one side and the address and stamp on the other — to be sent through the post without an envelope, thus allowing the picture, usually a photograph, to cover the whole front.

Many printers took up the opportunity afforded by this new form of communication. One, the Donald Taylor Collotype Company, of Adelaide, produced postcards depicting places and scenes around Australia. A series of at least five postcards provides views of Newington College in the decade before the First World War. These comprise a view north from the Tower, a Sports Day scene, a cricket match, boys in the swimming bath, and, of course, the classic angled view of the College building (now the Founders Building). The back of each card has an ornate printed design using an early version of the Australian coat of arms.

We don’t know if these cards were commissioned or what, otherwise, motivated this Adelaide printer to produce them. The cards in the College Archives have not been used, as the backs have no message or address, although some have contemporary or later annotations.

Mr David Roberts
College Archivist