On Our Collection
Robert McFarlane
A country couple on the top deck of a bus about to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge 1964
Gael Newton 27 April 2024
Let me tell you about another Robert McFarlane hanging on my bedroom wall. This was the second McFarlane photograph I purchased for my collection - the first being 'Crowd lining the street on Anzac Day at Martin Place, Sydney, 1964' . (see link below)
This fabulous photograph is titled ‘A country couple on the top deck of a bus about to cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge 1964’. Perhaps Robert knew they were a country couple but he was only 22 and new to Sydney himself from Adelaide at the outset of his career as a freelance photojournalist, so maybe they just looked a bit old fashioned to him as by the 1960s fewer men wore hats.
My best reading of the image is that the bus is on the northern approach heading into the CBD. It also looks like it could be evening given the lights and traffic coming out of the city. Are they going into the city for entertainment - maybe the movies?
I wonder what was Robert doing on the bus. Was he returning home to his lodgings in the inner city? Had he been visiting someone (maybe David Moore) or on a job? I wish I had asked for the background to this image when doing a retrospective for Robert years back.
The following year he made what is now an iconic image of Charles Perkins on the bus home after Tranby, Glebe. (link below)
But what is wonderful is that being a small format photographer, Robert always had his camera with him and made the kind of images that just don’t exist in any depth in painting or graphic arts. This style of photographic art was called 'reportage' and is made using small format easy to carry cameras that were available from the early 20th century. Because of the advances then in camera technology, photographers recorded moments in daily life in ways that had never previously been possible. But it still required that 'eye' and 'imagination' to see the image and to react quickly to capture it on film.
One could do a show on the images made through the windows of cars and buses. Max Dupain did a great one in 1935 called Silos through his windscreen. It is a really complex fascinating and unexpected image.
Wesley Stacey’s The Road series in the 1970s is an epitome of the driving experience. (link below)
When Robert's 'couple on the bus' image was posted on the Lost Sydney site there were quite a few responses from the public full of nostalgia for the old Leyland Atlantean cream and green post war buses. These stopped running from Wynyard to Avalon in May 1986 and weren’t replaced with modern versions until 2012. There are a number of vintage double decker buses in the Sydney Bus Museum that are brought out on special occasions including most recently for the 2024 Sydney Biennale.
I used to cross the bridge regularly in the 1970s on the Wynyard-Avalon express buses. This was my route back and forth in my earlier life. I loved lucking out and getting the top deck front seat during a time living at the far north Sydney beach of Palm Beach.
I would often get the last bus so had the best seat all to myself but it stopped at Newport (about 8km short) – so it was rather tricky to get home.
As you can see in the photograph, it was a unique experience being so far forward. It felt like being in a cockpit. The window could slide down for a little air and the shiny chrome seat backs were always cold but welcome hand grips as you tried to get on or off the still moving bus.
The bus lurched too much to read and back then we did not have head phones, so one just had to pause life - think and take in the scenery for an hour or so. That sort of transport experience is now gone with so many having their heads is down looking at their phones.
Thanks Robert for your way of seeing!
Links
Wesley Stacey - The Road
More on Max Dupain
more of Gael Newton's Essays and Articles
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