The city of Adelaide was settled by free people, as opposed to being a convict settlement as the other Australian colonies had been. The colony had welcomed religious refugees from Prussia in the 1840s and by around 1850 had rapidly increased in population to about 15,000.

The city had benefited from money from mining and other ventures and then around the 18702 and 1880s came a boom in wheat.

With the rise in wealth and public amenity, Adelaide developed its own upper class. These were people who had arrived with connections to society back in England and also included those who had been financially successful in the businesses within the colonies.

It was a time when, as result of money being generated and that was being spent within the colony, the city had a flush of new public and private buildings.

And where there was money, such as in the goldfields of the colonies of Victoria, New south Wales and Queensland and over in California, the photographers soon set up.