Rapunzel’s grandmother

On the arm of the chair sits my friend Rapunzel’s grandmother, Anne. Rapunzel has very little knowledge of her as she died when her mother was 16; the latter did not talk about her much except to reminisce how much she adored her.

Anne gave birth to Rapunzel’s mother in the 1940s, when she was about 36, quite old for that era. Judging by the clothing of this trio of girls we guess this photograph was taken (in Wangaratta, as written on the reverse) in the 1910s.

Recalling a black and white photograph of Anne on her mother’s dressing table, she remembers how she gazed at in fascination.

As a child, Rapunzel thought Anne was the most enchanting woman: dressed in a long satin gown, fur bolero and a tiny little hat.

The most glamorous touch was the string of pearls around her neck. Rapunzel fondly imagined she was at a fancy party, but when she saw this photo more recently, she realised Anne was actually standing near a rusty corrugated iron fence. “How Aussie is that?” she laughed to me.

As for me, I was equally fascinated by this relic from Rapunzel’s family archive. A tiny little photograph – half the size of today’s standard – the card thickened with age, I brought it up close to peer at it in delight. The photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron immediately sprang to mind. Although they are from an earlier year (she photographed Alice Liddell, Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for Alice in Wonderland), they have the same soft, gentle quality; portals into a long-vanished world.

These three little Australian girls have a mischievous look in their eyes however, unlike Cameron’s models. Some of the latter adopt an impassive stare; others present their profiles as they gaze into the middle distance, forever lost in their own thoughts. A century later, we can only admire them.