Gone Fishing

In 1964, in my first year of teaching, I got posted to Halls Creek, a God-forsaken outpost 3500 kilometres north of Perth.  Isolated, dust-storms with no air-conditioning, no TV and no telephones.

You made your own fun  ... or you had none. The major social event each week was the outdoor picture show using a Bell & Howell 16mm projector on a 3x3 metre metal screen. The 'gold class' seating was plastic chairs on powdery red dirt. No-one could sack me as I was the only projectionist in town.

The handful of white girls who arrived in Halls Creek voluntarily were there for just one reason - this was their last-ditched chance to snare a husband. And it wasn't just the 40 degree temperatures that made them perspire. The geologists from PMI and the sinewy, saddle-smooth stockmen from nearby Moola Bulla and Koonji Park cattle stations kept the girls running slim.

The next year, 1965, the Catholic Pallotine order opened new  buildings at  Balgo Mission 300 kilometres south of Halls Creek on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. Compared to Balgo, Halls Creek was a five-star tropical oasis. Balgo was home to the most remote school in the world, a stark desert landscape and the harshest environment for human existence.

On the day of the official opening a DC3 arrived with the Bishop, the Minister for Education and six hundred rounds of sandwiches. The priests and brothers had  shaved, the St John of God nuns found flowers for the alter. Women donned hats and heels as if they were going to the Melbourne Cup; the headmaster Bill Lee and myself wore white shirts and ties.

I took just one shot on Kodachrome on my Canon FP of Billy. I'm sure he would rather have been fishing somewhere else.

Tour to Budapest, Croatia and the Dalmatian Coast with Dale in 2015.

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Taxi Driver's Daughter

Taxi Driver's Daughter

'No way! I won't do it! You don't arrange dates for me'
My father insisted.  I dug my heels in and would not budge.
 'No!!'
I was busy studying; I didn't know the girl and it too far to travel. But my main reason for railing was that my father had told me. Seventeen year olds don't do what their father's want. I didn't want Dad arranging my dates, especially blind dates!
I would not go.
I refused point blank.

My Cabbie Dad came home one evening and announced he had arranged for me to accompany the daughter of another taxi driver to a tennis club dance in  Nollamara, about 12 miles away.
I was upset my father had taken that liberty without even asking me.
I was 17 - a teenager in revolt.

Dad produced his trump card.   I would not be allowed to drive the family car any more. He called my bluff. I gave in. Reluctantly I surrendered.  I agreed. I sulked and refused to speak to my father.

A week later I drove the family '37 Chevy to pick up the taxi driver's daughter at number 8, Berrigan Drive, Nollamara. I was dreading the evening ahead.

The moment I caught a glimpse of Marilyn in the family kitchen I changed my mind .  She didn't walk. She glided.  She didn't talk. She sang. And she ignored me.  Suddenly the distance I had just travelled evaoprated.

 We spent that summer visiting each other, swimming at Scarborough and taking photographs. We were just two' teenage kids - boty offspring of taxi drivers.

Marilyn December 1961

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I never saw Marilyn again .... until ....

Forty years went by ........

A chance telephone conversation

Her voice had changed. The little Aussie 'strine' had been replaced by a posh voice with elegant tones

Marilyn - Mundaring Weir Hotel 2002

Marilyn was now 56 and I was 57.  She was married to a Captain in the Australian navy and I was married and saturated in professional photography.

Marilyn had worked as an air hostess for Ansett, lived in the USA for a few years and started a successful gourmet picnic business 'Posh Picnics. She  loved  cooking, music and Latin-American dancing.

For my part, I'd taught in primary schools for eight years before joining TAFE and lecturing in Photography. I helped set up a small TVstation in TAFE. At age fifty-two I was made redundant and started my own photography business - teaching photography and shooting portraits and weddings.

''$5 Dress' - Silver Award  2002 APPA Melbourne

Marilyn suggested we run a tour to Singapore to photograph orchids. I thought that sounded a bit mundane. Then she suggested we take a group to Borneo on a wildlife tour to photograph orang utans. She offered to organise teh tour. I thought 'Why not?'

En-route to Borneo we were invited on a VIP tour of the Singapore Zoo and met a beautiful young guide Pamela Wildheart. On the flight from Singapore to Kota Kinabalu Marilyn and I agreed to form a business 'Wildheart Adventures.

Later that  year I photographed Marilyn at the Mundaring Weir Hotel in the Darling Range east of Perth. She had visited the Good Samaritans store in Fremantle and bought a recycled dress for $5. The back shot of Marilyn wearing her $5 dress and twinkling the keys on David Helfgott's piano won a Silver Award later that year at the Canon APPA Awards in Melbourne.

She looked a million dollars in a five dollar dress.

In 2004 Marilyn and I joined forces for one of our most ambitious projects - the RSPCA 'Here Boy' Calendar (Men and their Dogs). We toured much of rural Western Australia to shoot the men and their dogs, raising funds for the RSPCA.




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Through a Train Window

Overnight on a train from Cairo to Luxor we came to a stumbling, shunting halt around midnight.
8 January 2007.
As first light broke I tried wiping some of the ten year old diesel grime and grease from the compartment window. Men with automatic weapons surrounded the train. I counted forty or fifty militia standing around in the cold morning air, smoking cigarettes with their rifles slung aimlessly over their shoulders.
My first thought was that we were hostages and the train would soon be boarded.
Then it dawned on me; they weren't terrorists but private armed guards to protect the train and passengers from bandits and terrorists.
Just then, a group of children walked by led by a muslim woman; probably on their way to school. They paid scant regard to the men  and walked casually in front of the barrels of the guns.

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Wounded Princess

I first saw Gerry in the Cappuccino strip in Fremantle. I was driving slowly through the strip and I saw this ferrel girl wearing outlandish clothes and chicken bones in her hair. I thought I'd love to photograph her but I couldn't just stop the car i the middle of traffic.


A few days later I'd gone for  a bike ride and when I returned home I found Gerry inexplicably standing on the footpath gazing at our garden. I thought 'God works in strange ways; the stars must have aligned' We chatted for a bit and jerry agreed to let me photograph her.

While driving to York a week later Gerry told me of her traumatic and troubled life - having no father and losing her mother at ten, being expelled from school, involvement with drugs and having spent time as a professional protester. Gerry showed me her art sketches which showed artistic talent but were dark and macabre.

At coffee I asked her about her nose ring and the pain involved in the self-piercing. She then rolled up her sleeves to reveal deep thickened scars. She has been in a protest movement in the south-west if Western Australia when the bulldozers moved in to smash down the trees.

That night around the camp-fire she asked her fellow protesters to brand her with hot irons.
'Mother earth had suffered and i wanted to suffer along with Mother Earth' she told me.
What didn't fit the image was Gerry's voice. Cultured, melodious, warm; it juts didn't fit the image. I asked Gerry how it was that she possessed such a beautiful voice.
'I used to listen to the ABC every night in bed'

We climbed to the first floor of the Old Court House in York. I asked her to imagine that she was at a ball and a handsome man in uniform asked her to dance. She perfected a perfect curtsy. And smiled the smile of a tragic, wounded princess.

A year later I had a chance meeting with am older 'alternative' friend of Gerry. 'You know you changed her life' the woman said.
'What do you mean?' I asked.
''Just before you photographed her, Gerry had applied for a job working at Ada Rose (the local brothel). Then you took her to York, photographed her so beautifully and showed her the prints. A few days later the Madam from Ada Rose telephoned Gerry and told her she had a job, starting the next day. Gerry replied by saying she had changed her mind; she now valued her body differently.'

Gerry moved to Tasmania, git married, finished her art course in TAFE and settled down. Three years later she visited me again in Fremantle. The feral was gone. She looked like the girl next door.

The Zimmers Apprentices and singer songwriter Tony Dunkley have written a song The Wounded Princess based on this story.