A lo fi visual diary
With Agtet gone Ari is listless and lonely. The poodlewalks have lost their sparkle and their joie de vivre. He just walks behind me. Last week he walked me down to the West Terrace Cemetery and then just stood amongst the gravestones looking for Agtet.
Atget, Ari and myself had often gone to the West Terrace Cemetery together in the late afternoon for our poodlewalks. It was one of our favourite walking places. I could take photos and the poodles could hunt for rats.
My old MacBook died whilst I was in Queenstown, Tasmania working on the rephotography project around the 1912 Mt Lyell mine disaster. It’s either a corrupted file or the hard disc has died. I was unable to post.
I was also without a digital camera, and I was just shooting film–it was a discipline. The downside was that I wasn’t able to upload some of the pictures I was taking that day or the next.
The weather on this trip was quite different to the previous one in March. It rained everyday I was there with one exception. It was overcast and misty. Photos were taken between the passing rain squalls.
I went up to the Mt Lyell open cut mine this morning as part of the ‘Now and Then’ team. I was unable to do much photography along the lines of rephotographing the old photos. The vantage points the early 20th century photographers used have long gone, and I didn’t have a telephoto lens. So I’ve decided to work off site looking over at the mine site from the hills opposite the mine.
It was a day of sunshine and passing showers. In the afternoon I walked down to the mouth of the King River where it enters Macquarie Harbour. I wanted to start to explore this riverine landscape, which I’d only seen on google earth maps on an iPad.
Whilst Suzanne is in Barcelona revelling in the delights of a delightful international city Ari and I are at Victor Harbor this weekend.
I’ve come down to scan some of the medium format negatives from the Queenstown Tasmania shoot. There has been lots of rain at Victor since we were here last, and though the weather today was cool and overcast, it was very still. So went for a poodlewalk beyond Kings Head around to the inlet at the edge of the cliffs that form Newlands Head. There were lots of people around— cray fishermen and Heysen Trail walkers. There were no seals cruising the shoreline this time.
We returned to the area when we were down at Victor Harbor last My memories are of shots that I had taken back in late summer on one of those rare muggy overcast days in Victor Harbor. I’d shot in both colour and black and white then, and in looking at the scanned images now, I noted that the highlights were blown out and the shadows had no detail.
Today was the same approach–I exposed both colour and black and white whilst Ari stood guard. The cray fishermen had friends in camera clubs and talked about thenm doing a study of textures. Was I doing the same?
Unfortunately, this time, in returning to my base, I slipped on the seaweed and, though I managed to save the Rolleiflex SL66, light meter and film back from crashing into the rocks, I landed on my knees, scrapped my skin on the rocks, and twisted my left knee.
Ari and I returned to a familiar haunt on yesterday’s afternoon walk—the West Terrace Cemetery and the Wirranendi Park section of the of Adelaide’s parklands. The rain had eased, it was overcast, and the sunlight was soft.
We had initially gone to the western parklands to see if a transitory aboriginal camp was still standing. I’d taken some photos before going on the Tasmanian trip but, as the early morning light was now quite different, I wanted to see what had happened whilst we’d been away. I was thinking of re-shooting the camp with more of the scrub.
The camp had gone–been dismantled by the Adelaide City Council no doubt. None last long. So we walked through the West Terrace Cemetery looking for picture possibilities then through the Wirranendi section of the parklands.
Ari and I went on a photowalk early this morning along the Heysen Trail past Kings Head to an outcrop of rock just west of the Kings Beach Retreat. I’d photographed there around there earlier this year. With Agtet gone Ari is depressed and lacking in energy and motivation.
But he did pick up yesterday afternoon when we visited Kings Beach. Hence the decision to do a longer walk this morning; one that would take us closer to the eastern boundary of the Newland Head Conservation Park.
As it was overcast, I carried the medium format camera gear and tripod. My new digital camera–a Sony Nex-7— has yet to arrive in Adelaide. The conditions were hopeless for photography: strong south westerly winds, pounding seas, floating waves of sea spray drifting across the ricks and sea foam swirling through the air. The seals didn’t seem to mind the turbulent conditions though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.