Top: 4th December 2009, Boat Harbour Beach

Middle: Stanley

Bottom: The Nut

Stanley is an interesting place. It reminds me of Wyndham on the Kimberly coast which is squeezed between the Bastion range and the sea. Stanley is the same, it is squeezed between the Nut and the sea.

The Nut protects Stanley from the Westerlies; the prevailing strong winds. Views from the top of the Nut are pretty good. There’s also a track around the top with look out points so that you can see the coast to the East and West and 180 degrees of sea when you look North.

There’s a steep concrete path up to the top and a chairlift; I took both.

In the middle of town is a seafood cafe with lots of interesting photos plastered around the walls. They look like snapshots from one family and their friends mostly from the 70’s and earlier. Snapshots of them working on fishing boats or in the Cafe. From them you get a great idea of life in Stanley and what it would be like to live there. In most of them the sky looks overcast and grey. You also get an understanding that people have to work at several occupations to make an income - like the inhabitants of Lord Howe Island.

Fishing is still a significant industry - for a little town there are a lot of fishing boats. You can still see some of the infrastructure left over from when they used Stanley as the port to ship out iron ore from the Savage River mine.

Popularity: 35% [?]

5th December 2009, Boat Harbour

This fellow lives in Boat Harbour. We saw him about often, doing the rounds. He was happy to spend time with any of the beach patrons for a while, then wander off to someone else. His owner would start walking home, and he’d immediately be at her side without a word from her.

Popularity: 32% [?]

29th May 2009

I forget the name of this place. It is somewhere between Lake St Clair and Strahan on the Lyell Highway. It was next to a river - it could have been the Franklin.

28th May 2009

The above was taken on a walk to Mt Rufus. We walked through patches of incredible and beautiful moss strewn forest. I wasn’t really able to capture how beautiful it is.

Popularity: 30% [?]

14th April 2009, Hamburg.

Wiebke took this shot on the outskirts of Hamburg. She was on her way to a tall girls shop, because she is a tall girl. She didn’t notice the rooster in it; something I saw straight away. Perhaps in her subconscious everything appeared normal When she did notice the rooster, she went into match making mode for Chook.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Approximately November 1983, on the road between Kalgoorlie and Agnew.
I haven’t been taking pictures, so I’m delving into some old ones. This is one of a few that I have on my laptop, scanned from the originals. It isn’t a good photo - I used to take photos without much thought.
I had flown into Perth airport the previous morning from Bali. It was the end of a six month stint of travel / living in Sumatra and Java mostly. I hadn’t seen any westerners for most of that time, until I got to Bali. From that point on I saw everything Australian as a foreigner for quite a while.
What I saw in Bali was mostly pretty ugly. I had heard of the generally bad behaviour of Australians in Bali as I got closer to Bali.
The saddest thing about Bali, was the Balinese. Most of the people making money in Bali were from Java (Jakarta), or Australia. The Balinese way of life had changed dramatically in a short time. Their endemic religion was being driven out by the spread of Islam; if you wanted to be succussful or get somewhere, it paid to conform. This had the most effect on Balinese women, who found their freedom suddenly very limited. The Balinese language was being replaced by Indonesian. The older people were lost, not being able to speak Indonesian they had to rely on their children to interpret. The children were taught Indonesian at school, but not their own language. Beautiful jungles and coconut plantations were being replaced by huge hotels, shops and bars. The traditional residents were forced to move and live in different places or to work for their new landlords as third rate citizens and for very low wages.
I hitchhiked from Perth to Kalgoorlie; got into Kalgoorlie during the night. It was a chaotic scene, everywhere people were drunk and swearing and fighting and falling over - it was worse than Bali. I could hear the intermittent smash of bottles. I was told it was pension day. After living in a well mannered and considerate Indonesian society for so long it was a huge culture shock.
I couldn’t find anywhere to stay, so spent the night in a school shelter shed in my sleeping bag.
The following morning I started hitching North, to a little town named Agnew on the edge of The Great Sandy Desert. There was a nickel mine there (I think it was nickel), and I’d heard it had just opened up again because the price of nickel was good. I was broke and hoped to get work at the mine.
It was midday before I got a lift. Only three vehicles passed, but they all stopped. Two were going in the opposite direction, but stopped to see if I was OK, ask where I was headed to and if I knew anybody there, and just friendly talk. I felt that I was now in the fold of a very small but caring community. I was on their road that led only to their communities (Leinster and Agnew).
My lift was arranged via cb radio with this road train.
Everywhere was in flood, and this was one of the many stops we made to check the level of the water across the road, and whether the road underneath was still there or not.
The truckie at one point was talking to another truckie on the cb radio. They were discussing the flood crossings, when the other truckie mentioned something like “look out for the long legged ladies”; this was truckie lingo for emus. It was great to hear language like this again.
(c) Andrew Calder

Popularity: 15% [?]