Lesley Chandler

Leslie Gordon (Les) Chandler (1888-1980), was an Australian ornithologist, writer and photographer.

Early life

Lesley Chandler (always know as Les) was born in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern, fourth child of English-born parents Robert Charles Chandler and Ellen, née Mead(e)s, moving with his family to The Basin in the Dandenong Ranges where he attended the local school. Later attending Bayswater State School, his love of nature was inspired as he walked nearly 5km each day to school through the towering forests of the Dandenong Ranges on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Ornithology and photography

Chandler was apprenticed at 15 to a city jeweller and following his greatest interest began to give nature studies presentations in schools at age eighteen. By 1907 he had taken up bird photography, joining the Bird Observers’ Club that year, the Royal Australasian Ornithologists’ Union in 1910 and the Field Naturalists’ Club of Victoria in 1914. His experience as an apprentice jeweler enabled his invention of a harmless banding system to to track birds in 1912.

Writer on natural history

Periodicals including The Emu, Walkabout, Riverlander, Wild Life, Wildlife in Australia, Victorian Naturalist, Australasian Photo-Review and Victorian School-paper published Chandler's copious writings and pictures, as did newspapers The Age, Australasian, Argus, Leader, and as ‘Oriole’ he was nature correspondent for the Sunraysia Daily.

WW1 service

Chandler signed up with the Australian Imperial Force on 8 July 1915, taking his camera with him to the Western Front, despite photography there being banned. Bayonet training at Seymour Army Camp persuaded him that “he couldn’t kill anybody, just couldn’t face that,” remembered his daughter Mary. He volunteered instead as a stretcher-bearer in the 15th Field Ambulance, in which he served on the Western Front. Despite photography being an activity forbidden to Australian soldiers, Chandler recorded lighter moments, the French people and what was left of the natural landscape and used a bulb release to include himself in the picture.

Gassed at Villers-Bretonneux, France, in April 1918, he was invalided to the United Kingdom where he managed to photograph views of the English countryside. Arriving in Melbourne in January 1919 he was discharged medically unfit on 25 July, too ill to resume his trade as a jeweler. While convalescing he founded and led excursions of the Nature Photographers’ Club of Australia in 1919 which contributed and shared their work via a portfolio circulated by mail.

Soldier-settler in the Mallee

To continue his recovery, Chandler went ‘on holiday’ in the Mallee, recording his impressions in his diary, from which he quotes in a 1947 Walkabout article on the settlement of Red Cliffs, near Mildura;

The writer arrived at Red Cliffs in February, 1921, to take up work with a clearing gang and to gain initial knowledge in the surrounding, older settlements of vineyard work, before applying for a block. It was a scorching day of 115 degrees in the shade, with red dust flying, and on the previous day the heat had reached 119 degrees [48ºC].

As a soldier-settler under the Victorian Government’s “Act to make provision for the Settlement of Discharged Soldiers on the Land and for other purposes” of 22nd October, 1917, Chandler was granted an allotment of Crown Land of Mallee scrub which he cleared and fenced to create a vineyard and orchard. A government loan of £500 (worth about $35,000.00 in 2021) on which interest was to be paid, provided the initial capital for returned servicemen, though the land they farmed was what was left over in a largely settled Victoria, so was marginal. On repayment of the initial investment, a further £500 could be granted provided the farming was successful, especially tough in the Mallee where success came only where there was irrigation.

In addition to working to establishing his vineyard and a rudimentary canvas-roofed dwelling, Chandler wrote and photographed for Bush Charms, and Jacky the Butcher-Bird, both published 1922 and very early examples of children’s books illustrated with photographs. The latter was reviewed in Table Talk, and The Queenslander notes that “Messrs. Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd. have published a really choice selection of Australian nature story readers, including…”Jacky, the Butcher Bird," by L. G. Chandler…all thoroughly tested Australian stories, as Australian as the gum tree, and the cheap, well-printed re print brings them within the reach of everybody.”

In addition to photographing many of his activities, often making self-portraits with a bulb release, Chandler kept a life-long diary. There, and in articles he wrote, he expresses sympathy for the plight of indigenous peoples of the region in which he settled; "In those early days before the white man came, the blacks little thought that their hunting-grounds that stretched away from the river into the forests of pine, belar, mallee-gums, sugar-wood and other vegetation, would be taken from them and one day cleared…". He photographed one of the survivors, Mary Woorlong (1879-1942) a Latji Latji or Muthi Muthi woman and daughter of King Wyrlong, a Muthi Muthi from the Euston area, descendants of Mungo Man who worked as a domestic servant.

Conservationist

In 1949 Chandler helped to form the Sunraysia Field Naturalists’ Club, was also a foundation member of the Mildura Historical Society, and with other naturalists, he worked tirelessly to have the Hattah-Kulkyne area declared a National Park, with success coming in 1960.

Personal life

Chandler married Ivy Henshall at St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Mordialloc, Victoria, 10 September 1931 and their daughter Mary was born in 1937. Mary Chandler, who died 2020, was an historian and writer whose publications include her edited volume of her father’s letters Dear homefolks : letters written by L.G. Chandler during the First World War and of chronicles of their home town, Against the odds : the story of the Red Cliffs settlement, and of environmental history in Tribal lands to national park, with pictures by her father, on the Hattah/Kulkyne National Park.

Awards

• 1950 Australian Photo-Review Recognition Medal

Publications

• Chandler, L.G. (1965). Eileen Ramsay’s story – four years after. Riverlander November 1965, 8–9.
• Chandler, L.G. (1959) "A National Park in the Balance”, Walkabout, October 1959
• L.G. Chandler (1910-10-01), "Cuckoo notes", Emu, 10 (2), CSIRO PUBLISHING: 134–134, ISSN 1448-5540
• Chandler, L. G. (Les G.). Jacky : the butcher bird. Whitcombe & Tombs, Melbourne
• Chandler, L.G. “The Stone-Curlew”, Walkabout Vol. 16 No. 2, 1 February 1950
  

Exhibitions

• 2021 Soldier Settler, Magnet Galleries, Melbourne
• 2021 Mildura Arts Centre joint show with work of Eileen Ramsay, to 25 April (Anzac Day).
• 2016 Grief and Glory inclusion, Magnet Galleries, Melbourne
• 1932 Bolton Camera Club Annual International Exhibition of Pictorial and Scientific April 2 - April 9,
• 1931 Seventy-sixth Annual Exhibition September 12 - October 10,
• 1930 Seventy-fifth Annual Exhibition of The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain September 13 - October 11,
• 1929 Pacific International Salon of Photographic Art September 18 - 28,
• 1929 Pacific International Salon of Photographic Art October 5 - 15,
• 1929 Seventy-fourth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain September 14 - October 12,
• 1929 Second International Invitation Salon of the Camera Club of New York May 1-15, June 6-30, May 16 - June 5, 1929
• 1928 Seventy-third Annual Exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain September 17 - October 13,