During the recent week of rain and wind we mostly walked around the Victor Harbor township in the morning and along back country roads in the afternoon. I’d badly damaged my back when walking around Wellington and I had great difficulty in walking, due to the pain.
I needed easy walking terrain whilst my back was slowly beginning to heal. So no stairs or steps and no climbing over rocks on the foreshore.
I couldn’t walk for that long so I just explored the afternoon light on the roadside vegetation. Maybe I could use my limited mobility to uncover some photographic possibilities amongst a landscape of pasture and scrubland left after the clearing during the white settlement.Maybe I could reconnect with this body of work.
That clearing made this land the white man’s and what is forgotten is the terrible violence meted out to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at – and after – white settlement. What is noticeable about this landscape is the contemporary absence of Australian Aboriginal culture within the Australian landscape and the impact of European colonisation.
The ‘clearing’ of the landscape by the first European settlers forced Indigenous people off their traditional lands and into small Christian missions and government reserves.