Summary

Two pages (pp. 195-196) from The Australian Sketcher, published Saturday 14 August 1880 by Wilson & McKinnon, Melbourne. On the second page are two engravings illustrating the receipt and unpacking of exhibits for the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition.

From early July 1880, a staff of approximately forty men was employed to receive goods arriving in connection with the International Exhibition. Commentators, perhaps unaware of the scale of the forthcoming exhibition, observed that 'it is evident that the commissioners anticipate some enormously heavy exhibits. In Nicholson and Rathdowne-streets, an immense gallows-like framework, clumsy in appearance and expensive in style, as been erected, to the disfigurement of those thoroughfares during the whole period that the Exhibition will remain open' (Argus, Saturday, 10 July 1880, p. 7). The 'gallows-like framework' is illustrated in the top of the two illustrations.

Physical Description

Page 195 is covered in three columns of newsprint with a small article in column two describing the delivery and unpacking of items for the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition at the Exhibition Building. Page 196 contains two half-page black & white woodblock engravings. The first shows crates being received at the Drummond Street entrance to the Exhibition Building and being unloaded and moved via a tramway and pulley system with workers and supervisors also pictured. The second illustration shows crates being moved through the machinery department via a tramway, with workmen in the background unpacking items from crates.

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