Category: phototrip

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Queenstown: rephotography

I’ve just returned to Queenstown, Tasmania, to take part in a ‘then and now’ rephotography project about the North Lyell Mine disaster.

42 West Coast miners died from a fire in the underground timber pump station/house.The fire damaged the shafts, and the smoke ad poisonous fumes mean that the miners at the lower levels were trapped. It was the largest mining tragedy in Australia’s history. It is now being remembered

The rephotography project is being run by the Queenstown Library. It is centred around community involvement in a Now + Then style project that has been structured along the lines of the one run by the ABC.

How the ‘Now and Then’ is done is open to interpretation. Some possibilities mentioned are: there could be two images side by side; one old n picture superimposed on the other; or an old photograph held in the hand and photographed in the landscape of today.

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under the Monash Freeway

Whilst we were in Melbourne waiting to see if Atget would recover from his operation I spent an afternoon on a photowalk with Stuart Murdoch along Gardiners Creek near, and under, the Monash Freeway.

Gardiners Creek, East Hawthorne.

We walked along a small section of Gardners Creek and the first stop was this old Toorak Rd bridge where the creek became more or less a drain, rather than a creek. It was what is called heavily urbanised. The creek has been degraded in much the same way as many of the other Melbourne eastern suburban waterways.

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on the Nepean Highway

The last poodlewalk in Melbourne was done by car. On my previous visits to Melbourne I’d seen some architecture on the Nepean Highway that caught my eye, whilst I travelling on the Frankston train to the CBD. So we–Suzanne, Ari and myself— cruised the Nepean Highway from Frankston to Mordiallic looking for “Custom Framing” and a big bold blue building.

Nepean Highway, Melbourne

It was the day that we had Agtet, our grey standard poodle, put down. We were to drive back to Adelaide early the next morning, and we had heavy hearts and time on our hands. A phototrip in the car was my way of filling in the afternoon. Suzanne drove the car whilst I looked out for the building.

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at Evandale, Tasmania

The last poodlewalk I did with both Agtet and Ari was at Evandale in the northern Midlands. The walk was along the banks of the South Esk River the night before we left Tasmania.

We were to drive to Devonport early the following morning to catch the ferry across Bass Strait to Melbourne, stay overnight in Geelong, then drive to Adelaide the next day.

near the South Esk River

It was a lovely walk in the late afternoon sun. It was very peaceful and gentle. The river flowed gently, people were fishing, others, like me, were walking their dogs. A farmer was cutting down the willows along the river bank and the occasional plane flew overhead bound for Melbourne.

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Agtet: in memoriam

Our poodlewalks will probably be very different from now on, given what has happened to Agtet at the very end of our Tasmanian trip.

Agtet had a serious accident arising from stomach bloat and he will propably not recover. He has been recovering from the surgery but, as he also suffered from cardiac arrest just after the surgery, his neurological functionality was impaired. Unfortunately, the neurological improvement has been extremely slow.

This picture was taken on location in Zeehan, an old mining town on the west coast of Tasmania:

Agtet’s stomach had twisted 360 degrees after we arrived in Geelong from Tasmania on the ferry last Monday–the 2nd of April. He has been at the Vet hospital in Werribee since then, and his recovery during that week has been small step by painful step. We have been staying with my sister at Safety Beach on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula during that time.

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on Bruny Island

After the residency finished at LARQ in Queenstown we travelled across to Tunbridge in the Midlands for the night with Barb and Mal. I had a little time in the late afternoon to briefly scope for a 5×4 afternoon picture of the salt lake.

saltlake, Tunbridge

Then we travelled to Bruny Island for a couple of days holiday. Whilst the others did some bush walking in the South Bruny Island National Park I explored the sandstone cliffs at the edge of Adventure Bay.

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Queenstown re-photography project

The Queenstown Library has initiated a ‘then and now’ photographic project in relation to the 1912 Mt Lyell Mining disaster. It emphasizes both community involvement and re-photographing some of the photos of the open cut mine taken by the early twentieth century photographers.

Queenstown, Tasmania

I had a go at finding the sites used by Frank Hurley for his photographs of the Queenstown landscape and Mt Lyell mine out of interest. But I was way out. I just don’t know the area. Only a local with a keen topographical eye and a knowledge of the access roads could find the old sites now in order to show some continuity between the old and new images.

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at the Mt Lyell mine

Yesterday was overcast and windy, and as the weather was going to be consistent rain squalls for the next few days, I decided go to the old Mt Lyell open cut copper mine in Queenstown. The only way to do it was to take the morning trip with John Halton’s Enviro mine tour. It was the right decision as it rained all of today.

Mt Lyell open cut mine
Tasmania, Queenstown, Mt_Lyell, open_cut_mine, digital, Olympus, phototrip

Little did I know that John Watt Beattie, Stephen Spurling 111, Frank Hurley and Martin Walch had all extensively photographed the region, town and the mine.

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a foggy morning

It was a foggy morning in Queenstown yesterday, so I wandered the town taking photos whilst Suzanne took the standard poodles for an early morning walk around the Queen River where it flowed beside near the Queenstown golf course. This was a space away from other dogs and they could be off the lead. So they could roam freely.

The early morning light in the town was soft, due to the fog:

Empire Hotel, Queenstown

I was looking/scoping for possible subjects for using the 5×4 Linhof in foggy conditions. What would the buildings or street views look like? How would they photograph? Would the fog transform the mundane into something interesting? Would the something interesting be meaningfully significant?

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at Zeehan

On Saturday it was overcast with passing rain squalls so we went for a drive to Zeehan in the afternoon. I wanted to to photograph the ruins of the old smelter using the 5×4 Linhof. I’d scoped this on my last visit to Queenstown a year ago.

coal slag heap, Zeehan

I stuck closely to what I’d scoped last year as time was short—the squalls returned just as I was finishing the planned pictures of ‘ruins as history’. After looking at the digital images I took whilst on location this time, I can see that I need to return to the site to take more. There was more here than I’d realized.

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