Carl Walter

Carl Walter (c. 1831 – 7 October 1907), also known as Charles Walter, was an Australian botanist and photographer. He was born in Mecklenburg, Germany in about 1831[1][2] and arrived in Victoria in the 1850s.[3]

For the American surgeon, inventor, and professor, see Carl W. Walter.

Botanical work
Prostanthera walteri

Walter discovered and collected a new species of mint bush on Mount Ellery which was named in his honour as Prostanthera walteri by Victorian Government Botanist Ferdinand von Mueller in 1870 .[3] It is thought that Walter accompanied the geodetic survey team headed by Government Astronomer Robert L. J. Ellery which surveyed East Gippsland and the border with New South Wales from 1869 to 1871.[3]

He collected plants on behalf of Anatole von Hügel and was accompanied by missionary George Brown in exploring the Bismarck Archipelago in 1875.[4]

In 1889, Walter collected the type specimen of Eucalyptus x brevirostris in the Upper Yarra region in 1889.[5]

During the 1890s, Walter collected plant specimens in the Australian Alps, accompanied by Charles French junior.

From the 1890s until his death in 1907, Walter was head of economic botany at the Technological Museum in Melbourne.[2][6][7]

In 1906, Walter described a new subspecies of the orchid Diuris punctata in The Victorian Naturalist, based on plant material collected at Mount Arapiles by St. Eloy D'Alton. He named it Diuris puncata var. d'Altoni, subsequently revised to daltoni.[8]

Photography

Walter set up a photographic studio at 45 Bell Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne, promoting himself as a "Country Photographic Artist" or "Landscape Photographic Artist" and many of his images were reproduced as woodcuts in contemporary journals.[9] As early as 1865 he submitted a report on the "Salmon Tanks in Badger Creek" to the Illustrated Australian News. For a twenty-year period starting from about 1862, he would periodically travel to eastern and alpine regions of Victoria with camera equipment and camping gear in a backpack;[10] "the whole weighing about fifty pounds.”[11]

Much of his early endeavors revolved around documenting portraits of indigenous people and capturing the mission stations of Ramahyuck (Lake Wellington), Coranderrk (Yarra Flats) where he made 106 photographs, and Lake Tyers. In 1867, he dispatched portraits of Victoria's aborigines to the Anthropological Society of London, where they were exhibited at the Intercolonial Exhibition of Australasia in Melbourne in 1866-67.[12]

Walter advertised in 1871 "an extensive collection of Stereoscopic Views depicting Aboriginal Life, Mining, Scenery, and other Australian Subjects." He predominantly employed a stereoscopic camera but also produced some half-plate and whole-plate negatives, most officially registered his photographs with the Victorian Copyright Office in 1870. The earliest surviving photograph by Walter bears the date 1862, and his work continued to be published until the early 1870s.[11]

References
  1. Desmond, Ray (1994). Dictionary Of British And Irish Botantists And Horticulturalists Including plant collectors, flower painters and garden designers. CRC Press. p. 715. ISBN 978-0-85066-843-8.
  2. "Charles Walter b. 1831 Germany". Design&Art Australia Online. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  3. "Walter, Carl (1831 - 1907)". Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  4. Marshall, Andrew J.; Beehler, Bruce M. (2007). Ecology of Indonesian Papua Part One. Tuttle Publishing. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-7946-0393-9.
  5. "Eucalyptus x brevirostris Blakely". Australian Plant Name Index (APNI), IBIS database. Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research, Australian Government. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  6. "Walter, Charles (1831-1907)". JSTOR Global Plants. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  7. "Walter, Charles (1831? - 1907)". Enycopedia of Australian Science. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  8. "Diuris punctata var. daltonii C.Walter". Australian Plant Name Index (APNI), IBIS database. Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research, Australian Government. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  9. Davies, Alan, and State Library of New South Wales. Eye for Photography : the Camera in Australia, Miegunyah Press, State Library of New South Wales, 2004. ISBN 0522851339.
  10. "Aborigines of Australia under Civilisation As seen in Colonial Illustrated Newspapers". The La Trobe Journal. State library of Victoria (61). Autumn 1998.
  11. Gaskins, Bill (16 December 2013). "Walter, Charles (Carl) (c. 1831–1907) Botanist, photographer, journalist". In Hannavy, John (ed.). Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Routledge. p. 1466. ISBN 978-0-203-94178-2.
  12. "1866, English, Photograph edition: Portraits of Aboriginal Natives Settled at Coranderrk, near Healesville; about 42 miles from Melbourne. Upper Yarra. Also Views of the Station & Lubras Basket-Making. [picture]". State Library of Victoria. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  13. International Plant Names Index.  C.Walter.
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