A lo fi visual diary
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.
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.
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:
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?
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.
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.
The rains have come and gone in Queenstown. Today we are back to the bright sunshine with a bit of cloud cover. Yesterday was passing showers and misty conditions. The showers meant that I stayed close to the car when photographing so that I could sit them out.
In the morning I wandered around Gormanston. There are lots of ‘For Sale” signs–for blocks and houses— but there are few buyers. This is surprising, for Gormanston is just down the road from Lake Burbury. Why aren’t the fishermen buying the old houses for their fishing shacks?
Dreams die hard in this old mining village:
The brick walls were being built around the old tin wall. These were mostly completed and then everything stopped before the roof was put on. That’s what happens to old mining towns. They become ghosts towns.
Gormanston is an old mining town near Queenstown in Tasmania that has pretty much died. There are only a few people living there now. There are more abandoned and derelict houses than lived in ones.
The cemetery is on a side of a hill and is unmarked. There is just a low grade gravel road off the Lyell Highwav as you head towards Lake Burbury. What is fascinating about the cemetery is the way that it has become overgrown with the native flora. You need to dig around to even find some of the graves.
It was very muggy early this morning in Queenstown. A very gusty north west wind was blowing. The locals say that rain and thunderstorms are on the way. If so, then this brings to an end to the spell of hot weather on the south west coast of Tasmania.
The large format photoshoot this morning didn’t turn out as planned. I went to the location above the town that I’d scoped yesterday. Although I managed to set the Linhof up, the gusts of wind blew the gritty white dust into my eyes and ears as well as into the camera.
I had to bail out and wait for another day and walked along the Queen River looking for possible photographic subjects of the contaminated river. It was protected from the wind and the light was soft.
This is my second day in Queenstown, Tasmania. The first morning was very similar to what I’d encountered when I was here in April last year—very heavy fog in the valley until about 11am:
The early morning walk with the standard poodles was in the fog until we climbed above it on soem kind of fire break or electricity track. When the fog lifted around 11am the rest of the day was bright, still and very hot. The night was quite mild.
The three or four days that we spent in Tunbridge in the Tasmanian Midlands allowed me to do a little bit of large format photography. I was able to scope out some suitable subject matter, including this salt lake:
I basically ran out of time before I could come to grips with the arid landscape—its ever changing moods, cloud formations and light. This is the third time I’ve visited the Midlands and I’m becoming familiar with this landscape and its various representations.
We have been on the road to Tasmania for the last couple of days. We left Adelaide for Melbourne on Saturday (3rd March) travelled across Bass Strait on the day ferry to Devonport, then on down to Evandale, which is just south of Launceston.
We will spend a couple of days in Evanston exploring around Launceston, then several days in Tunbridge in the Tasmanian Midlands, before travelling over to Queenstown on the west coast.
I bought a little digital point and shoot camera before I left —an Olympus XZ-1. I will use it as a scoping camera for my large format work in Queenstown, then Suzanne will use it as a travel camera when she is in Europe next month.
I’m on the road for the next month —a phototrip to Tasmania. The trip is based around a 2 week residency at the Landscape Art Research Queenstown in Queenstown with a weeks holiday each side in the Midlands and Bruny Island.
This picture of the Prada shop window in Collins street is from an earlier trip to Melbourne before I turned towards topographics and began working on the documentary book.