Shared Stories: Accepting that we may never know what happened

What is happening in this photograph?

The caption underneath tells us that we are looking at Alf Jenkins and a Jubjub bird. The Jubjub bird appears in Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poems Jabberwocky and The Hunting of the Snark. It is a dangerous animal with a frightening call.

If you look closely at the photo, can you see a bird?

The man in the photograph is wearing a brimless round hat. He has blackened his face and seems to be riding a pretend camel.

A search of newspapers for Alf Jenkins found a 1916 Boolaroo Soldiers’ Reception Committee fancy dress fundraiser. We think that this picture shows Alf Jenkins at this 1916 event. He seems to be dressed as a member of the Imperial Camel Corps, formed in 1916.

But we can never be sure.

We think that Jenkins would have respected the Imperial Camel Corps and their work during the First World War in the Sinai Desert and Palestine. But we will never know what he was thinking. We no longer feel that dressing up like this is acceptable.

The caption has been written onto the photograph much later in modern biro. Can we even be sure that Alf Jenkins is in this picture?

It can be hard as a researcher to accept that we may never know the answers to these questions. Writing accurate history means working with what we do know about the past.

Unknown title Front of photograph Back of photograph
Unknown maker
Unknown date
Lake Macquarie City Council Local Studies Collection
Unknown donor

This work by Lake Macquarie City Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License