I came here for a year
In July 1998, I packed up my 1979 Land Cruiser with all my important possessions and travelled across to Adelaide with a couple of friends to spend a weekend partying. It was an odd time, tinged with sadness. We got tattoos to cheer ourselves up. On the Sunday afternoon I dropped them at the bus depot for the journey back to Melbourne, and I checked in to a cheap motel in Kent Town where I cried because I didn’t want to go to Western Australia…but I’d finished a geology degree at the end of ’97 and figured it was the best place to go to get a job...[Read more]
I've recently marked the 25th anniversary of my arrival in Kalgoorlie. I planned to spend a year in Kalgoorlie, and then move on to something else. A quarter of a century, and half my life, later I'm still here. It’s been a common thread in a lot of conversations. People coming here for a short time and ending up staying for much longer than anticipated. As someone who’s had a love/hate relationship with this place, I acknowledge that those reasons are varied and not always a case of falling for the joint. But I wanted to mark the occasion in a way that’s meaningful and invite people with similar stories to take part in a photography project and also talk about their experience. I have no idea what the final product will look like, but you will get some nice portraits out of it. I’m thinking of using a couple of beautiful old medium format cameras, too. If you’re keen, send me a message via the form below and I’ll work out a schedule. This will be long form, documentary type work, so there’s no rush. With love and gratitude, Mel x