In 1910 the Victorian Government Astronomer, Pietro Baracchi, led an eclipse expedition of Australian astronomers to Bruny Island, Tasmania. Included in this elite group were G.F. Dodwell, and W R Browne from Adelaide Observatory as well as the respected amateurs C. J. Merfield and A. W. Dobbie.

The line of total eclipse for the event occurring on 10th May, 1910, touched no land except the Antarctic and Tasmania. This limited line ensured that Baracchi's expedition to Bruny Island was not the only group of observers to visit Tasmania in 1910. Another, led by F. K. Mclean of the Royal Astronomical Society, made its way to Port Davey. Included amongst this group was Sydney Observatory's photographer James Short.

Unfortunately May was a wet time of the year in Tasmania and there was little hope of getting a clear day. It was for this reason that only Australia funded an official observing party. A wise decision on the part of other observatories as the 10th of May proved to be too cloudy for good observations. The observations were not helped by the fact that the only view of the eclipse turned out to be from Queenstown, near Macquarie harbour, well north of the initial projections of the line of the eclipse.

Given the immense cost in time and equipment it seems strange to note that the best images of the eclipse ended up being taken with a Thornton Pickard half-plate camera. These were taken in Queenstown and acquired from the Reverend L. S. Macdougall and Mr J. Burton. In an even stranger move F. K. McClean, published an entire book on the Port Davey expedition, one that by his own admission was "… on an eclipse that was not observed."

However the book does, as McClean intended, give us some insight into the organisation of these eclipse expeditions and particularly one which, because of its lack of success, is not well documented. It also by inference gives us an insight into the photographs taken on both expeditions as it clearly states the Bruny Island expedition was equally disappointing.
These photographs are the main pictorial legacy from of Bruny Island expedition.

In them we can see the arrangement of the camp and its instruments and even more importantly get a feel for the day to day lives of those involved in the expeditions. In some ways the lack of success of this expedition increases the rarity of these photographs as they tend to have been less reproduced than the more successful events, such as the 1908 Flint Island or the 1922 Goondiwindi expeditions.

Geoff Barker, Curatorial, September 2008

References
Vallance, T. G. 'William Rowan Browne 1884-1975' memoir was originally published in Records of the Australian Academy of Science, vol.4, no.1, 1978., from Australian Academy of Science, http://www.science.org.au/academy/memoirs/browne.htm, March 2008
Mclean, F. K., Report of the Eclipse Expedition to Port Davey, Tasmania, May, 1910, Richard Clay and Sons, Bread Street Hill, E.C. and Bungay, Suffolk, England, date unknown
Maunder, E. Walter, 'Total Eclipse of the Sun, 1901, May 18. Preliminary Account of the Observations Made at the Royal Alfred Observatory, Pamplemousses, Mauritius', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, volume 69, 1901 - 1902, The Royal Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/116304, accessed: 17/06/2008 23:03

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