Lena the Octopus

In the late 90s and early 00s I shot a few weddings in Bali for Australian couples. The classiest wedding was for a couple who had lived and worked a decade in Bali - he was an architect and she was the marketing manager for a chain of upmarket hotels throughout Asia. Both were born and bred West Aussies.

I survived a series of serious parties in the days and nights leading up to wedding day. The reception was held at a lavish five star hotel at Candi Desa. I put in a big effort photographing the beautiful bride and her charming groom (who also was a dyed-in-the-wool Docker's supporter).

Candlelit tables were clustered precariously close to poolside just a hundred metres from the surf. A balmy, tropical evening - the mood was relaxed, romantic and joyous, the air laden with the delicious scent of frangipani and jasmine. My job as photographer was almost done. I enjoyed a glass of champagne and another and sampled the exotic food.  Now in relaxed mode I approached the dance floor that was thumping to electrified sounds and was lit by a kaleidoscope of pulsating coloured lights.

Out of the darkness leapt a young woman who grabbed my hand and dragged me into the middle of the dance floor. I had never seen her before - not even among the wedding guests. She could easily have won the next heat of 'Dancing with the Stars'. She gyrated and twirled and swung me this way and that. In the darkness I felt every inch of her svelte body as she pulsed with the music. This was better than champagne. She didn't stop. She didn't interrupt her seductive, serpent like movements when she told me her name was Lena.

I thought Holey Shamoley! Who IS this creature from the dark lagoon? I have to get a  shot. I let auto-exposue and auto everything do their things because I couldn't see a damn thing.  She wrapped me up in her tentacles again as we continued this crazy, seductive dance with my tiny Leica gasping for air.

Then poof! In an instant, she was gone! She disappeared into the Balinese darkness like an Indonesian shadow puppet.

I had a sleepless night. I dreamt of Lena and Leicas.

The next morning hundreds of wedding guests were in the luxurious open-sided restaurant overlooking a milky sea, enjoying breakfast and recounting stories from the wedding, the parties and the guests.  I experienced the best egg breakfast of my life - scrambled eggs with black truffle oil on hot buttered toast. The truffle oil vapours permeate the back of your throat and air passages and give you the equivalent of a nasal orgasm.

If that wasn't enough my heart leapt as I saw my exotic 'dirty dancer' Lena enter the restaurant followed by a man and a couple of young ankle-biters. I couldn't help myself, I just had to go up and say 'Good Morning'.
She looked up from her table perplexed and with the expression of a stunned mullet.
'Sorry who are you?  she asked.
I was taken aback. How could my dancing dream girl NOT remember me?
'You were dancing with me at the wedding last night', I said.
'I'm sorry, I don't remember at all'
Bugger! Deflation set in ..... permanently.

Two days later I was enjoying a farewell drink with the newly married couple before flying back to Australia. I related the story about Lena. The bride's eyes narrowed and she looked like a judge about to deliver a death sentence on a  prisoner.
'You mean Lena the Octopus'
'Octopus?' I queried
'Women here know that Lena's like an octopus around men'
(To be truthful I had noticed Lena's all embracing tentacles)
'Actually she wasn't invited to the wedding', the bride continued 'she just sort of turned up. Hubby babysat in the room while she partied'

ooOoo

These days I love eating octopus and have my own speciality dish called Octopus Lena - raw naked octopus  marinated in truffle oil with a hint of ginger and a whack of chilli.

Dinner for One

'Living on earth is expensive, but it does include a free trip around the sun once a year'

The Ranger squinted at me through the dirty, cracked windscreen and in a monotonic voice said,

'Jane turned her 4WD over sixty kilometres down the track. She and the kids are being flown to hospital with the Royal Flying Doctor'

I carried the battered contents of Jane's car inside the house and sat down, alone. Just me and my soup. I ate the bread. Silently, I photographed my soup on film.

Through the window of the dining room I could see the southern tip of Dirk Hartog Island under a full moon. I was sitting alone in a large sprawling stone mansion just fifty metres from the Indian Ocean just east of Steep Point. Apart from the Ranger's cottage this was the western most house in Australia.

What set out to be  a week of private coaching for my student Jane ended up being a week of a Robinson Crusoe existence on one of the world's most exotic shorelines.

The difference was I was in a massive three wing building with an auto-start power plant, my own desalination system and a cellar with a hundred bottles of the finest wines.

There was no vehicle, no telephone, no radio, no television. I did have a camera, twenty rolls of film, a fishing line and a feeling of trepidation being on my own in this magical place.

The moon shone through the open window of my west wing bedroom and, aided by a bottle of fine red wine, I pondered what I would do for a week, on my own, in this remote, romantic location. Except for the gentle lapping of the waves on a moonlit shore there was nothing. Not even a friendly mosquito. My mind drifted to places I'd adventured in and faces I had imaged. 

You are Never Too Old

I saw him walking alone along the parapet wall of the monastery.
An old man, with a bald head.
He could have been a reflection in a mirror.
He was singing in French, naturally happy in his own world.
'Che Sera Sera'
At two metres our eyes met and I followed singing the next line
'Whatever will be will be'
French or Australian we were both fans of Doris Day, it seems.
He beamed the most beautiful smile.
I gestured that I would like to photograph him but he declined.
He said something in French.
Nearby, Susan translated his words for me,
'No, I am too old'
I felt disappointed and a bit sad. You are never too old. In particular, you are never too old to be photographed.

Later, I saw my Frenchman looking reflectively towards a cross on the mountaintop from Montserrat.
My mind raced back to early 1958 when I faced one of the most important decisions of my life; whether to join the Marist Brothers as a religious brother. I had tossed and turned countless nights wrestling with the decision.

Eventually, it was meeting a girl that changed my mind. I decided I was never going to give up the loving someone real for something intangible.

There was my Frenchman, the Benedictine monk nurturing the boy and the cross on the clifftop. Then, a girl walked through my frame.
Whatever will be, will be.
Che Sera Sera   

Leprosarium Girl

Following my photographic coverage of the 2004 tsunami in India I lived in the Hebron Orphanage in Andreh Pradesh for a  short period.
The orphanage accommodated about 200 orphans and was located alongside a busy canal that bore more resemblance to a sewer than a river.

My Indian minders kept careful watch on every step I made and every photograph I took 'for my own good'. I didn't react too well to being constrained and after a few 'exchanges' they let me go my own way
About five hundred metres down the road was a leprosarium. I was told that this area was strictly out of bounds and in no way was i to visit the  area.
After a casual walk one afternoon I entered the leprosarium and spoke to adults and children for thirty minutes before my minders located me and attempted to round me up.

The girl pictured above was a member of the leper community. She stepped forward from her group of children and talked to me. She had no mother and father and lived in the colony with her grandmother who had contracted leprosy.

  

Miss Horrocks - Walking on Sunshine

It was 1960.
It happened in Subiaco, Western Australia.
St Joseph's Marist Brothers School

Imagine an all boys school with 400 Catholic boys aged between ten and seventeen. Imagine all fifteen teachers are male Marist Brothers. Imagine St Joseph's Church a stone's throw away with two Catholic priests. Imagine one boy has a camera.

Imagine what might happen when the Marist Brothers School employs a new Grade Four teacher. The new teacher is not a Marist Brother or priest. The new teacher belongs to no religious order at all. The new teacher is secular, single and sexy.

The new teacher is female.

Miss Horrock's arrival at Marist Brothers was as though the sun had burst through the grey clouds. If you listened hard enough you could hear Katrina and the Waves singing 'Walking on Sunshine' (except Katrina wasn't around yet). There was chatter and gossip; in the same league as if Pope Pius XII got caught reading Playboy. Miss Horrocks arrival did not go unnoticed ........ by anybody. There were stirrings in the ranks of both boys and brothers.

To make matters worse (better I thought!) Miss Horrocks was slightly shy and bashful and suffered from a delightfully bad case of blushing at the slightest attention. With over 400 rampant lads in the paddock suffering from a sacred dose of Catholcity  Miss Horrocks received more than the occasional glance. She blushed quite a bit.

Build into this scenario that one fifteen year old lad had worked his butt off for eight weeks during Perth's searing summer to buy himself a Hanimex C35 camera.

Just like in the Agatha Christie novels there was motive and passion. Then opportunity came knocking. The Feast of Christ the King was a major celebration for Catholics worldwide - even in Subiaco. All the boys and brothers piled into buses headed for Aquinas College to join all the other Catholic schools and colleges for Mass and singing and marching.

My mind was somewhere else.

I was  fifteen and had never asked a woman to pose for me (especially one I had never met formally). But armed with my new camera and a roll of film I felt brave. Not only did I have the confidence to ask Miss Horrocks to pose, I felt it my duty to do so.

Her cheeks flushed when I asked her but she sat on the wall and held her hat and smiled so gracefully. I focused and clicked the shutter. Just one shot.

I thought 'I really like this' and sat next to Miss Horrocks for the ride to Aquinas.

It was my Catholic duty.

Bridging the Gap

It was 1985 and my body told me something was seriously wrong. In the space of 48 hours I had gone from being a seriously fit professional cyclist racing 200 kms in a day to barely being able to climb three steps to my front door. It virtually happened overnight on 15 September 1985.

Three months later my doctor diagnosed myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME*.)  Dr Trevor lord smiled gently and uttered words I've never forgotten,
'Dale, you've got something called ME. Now for the bad news; its not going to kill you'

Trevor Lord was right. ME didn't kill me. However, it was the end of my job, the end of my cycling, the dwindling of friendships and almost the severing of my marriage and family. They were tough days.

Two and a half years later and still struggling physically and mentally I joined the Cycle Touring Association's (CTA) Bicentennial Tour from Albany to Perth. I didn't ride my bike; I drove a car. I wanted to be with cyclists along country roads. Fourteen years earlier I had helped start the CTA in Western Australia. The CTA was like family to me.  It was part of my part of my blood.

I drove my KIngswood station wagon and photographed the 21 cyclists riding through the south-west forests, freewheeling down hills in their white and yellow shirts and camping in youth hostels.


'A palette of colour races past. Gears and chains chime out their melody and then fade. I turn and look 
at the yellow and white stream winding effortlessly, gracefully down the grade and out of sight.'

In cycle racing parlance the term Bridging the Gap is used to describe the effort put in by the peleton to catch a breakaway. In 1988 the gap was between my body and mind and that of the healthy throng of cyclists.

'Let's count the spokes in their wheels on the print. 1/1000 sec @ f5.6 on Plus X film. Sit on the road; worm's eye view - remember the shot of Greg Jack on Gravity Hill in'78, sitting on the road. That road's bloody hot! Have to settle for eye-level.'


In reality it took another seven years to regain my health to be able to work again and cycle but the Bicentennial Tour was the catalyst that got me back on the road, struggling every day to bridge the gap.

I was fortunate a few years later to meet Australia's most famous cyclist and member of parliament Sir Hubert Opperman. I remember his words fondly,
"Unless you have headwinds and hills, you never appreciate the tailwinds and downhills'
Life's like that as well.

Inside the weatherboard and iron dormitory the wafting incense of the mosquito coil overpowers me and I drift off to dream of  ... Banjo  ..... bicycles  .... and beautiful things.

(The full story of Bridging the Gap was printed in the September/Ocober 1988 edition of Freewheeling)
*ME is now referred to as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)

footnote: In 2014 the CTA will celebrate its 40 Anniversary and will re-run the Perth-Albany Tour. 

Photos:
Top: Stan Wiechecki leads the descent through Karri Valley
Second: Donna Earles (USA) cools off after a 40 deg celsius ride
Thurd: Bea Page on the flat near Pemberton
Bottom: Leone Pollard of NSW with local farmer near Pemberton

All photos shot on a Yashica Mat 124G 120 roll film camera on Kodak Plux X film

This is my home

One of the most inspirational photographers in my life was Margaret Bourke-White. Not only was she one of America's most passionate photographers but she broke new grounds for female photographers. She was unafraid - unafraid of war, unafraid of challenges and unafraid of the so-called glass ceiling. She loved photography and she loved life.

On the wall next to me as I write I have just one quote on the wall. Its from Bourke-White:

'Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand'

In January 2007 I led a group of photographers through Egypt. At the end of three weeks I was exhausted and headed to Marrakesh in Morocco for some R & R. I chatted to  a local driver and asked him to drive me into the Atlas Mountains in his 1958 Mercedes 220S. He knew the area well, spoke good English and seemed tuned in to me as a photographer. As he pulled into a 'scenic lookout' I eyeballed my driver and told him I didn't want any more scenic lookouts. I wanted people, real people.

The Mercedes climbed through smaller and smaller villages into the Atlas mountains. The driver left me to have coffee and ventured by foot up a steep slope. He returned twenty minutes later saying he had found a lady who had agreed that I could visit her home.
We walked for a further thirty minutes to small hamlet of brown, tumble-down mud-brick buildings surrounding a courtyard. I met the lady, a middle-aged muslim mother of three who inited me into her home.

 It was the smallest  house I had ever been in in my life. It consisted of one room, one end of which was the kitchen and the other end the sleeping quarters. I sat on a small wooden stool in the sleeping quarters while she prepared tea. The only light entering the house came through a glassless window opening and the doorway.

The mother boiled the kettle on single butane burner. My driver translated back and forth. She told me she was honoured and excited to make tea for me. Her husband had left three years earlier to find work in the city and she hadn't heard from him again. She did not know if he was still alive.

 I told her that it was me who felt honoured being in her home and sharing tea with her. She laughed and chuckled when I asked to photograph her. 'Why?' she asked. 'Because you are a good mother and a survivor' I replied 'and i think you have made me the best tea I have had in a month. She laughed again but never posed. I photographed her as she went about her tea-making.

oOo

The 2015 Fremantle International Portrait Prize is Western Australia's premier photographic award with a $5000 cash first prize. Entries open in June 2015. Entries are open to photographers worldwide. Click here for details.

(Photo info: Fuji S2 Pro 6MP camera, 12-24mm Nikon lens @ 12mm, 1/45s @ f4 handheld 1600ISO. 29 Jan 2007)

Elephantine Island - Egypt

Elephantine is an island in the Nile River in northern Nubia. It is a part of the modern city of Aswan, in southern Egypt. There are archaeological sites on the island.

Between 2005 and 2009 I led five groups of photographers on cultural, historic and photographic tours of Egypt before the revolution.

We lived on one of the hundreds of cruise ships while navigating the Nile. In some ways, the Nile cruises were the highlight of the tour. We got to observe ordinary, everyday, non-touristy life on the banks of the Nile. Women washing clothes, men tending goats, children playing, crops being harvested. In my imagination I could so easily transpose the scenes to a hundred or a thousand years beforehand. I had the rather presumptuous advantage of sitting on board a boat with a tripod and long lens. However, I did feel that I was not intruding on life.

We often rented a felucca (beautiful traditional Egyptian sailing boat) for an afternoon, sailing the Nile and visiting Elephantine Island which is populated mainly by Nubians. Here, the Nubians live their traditional lives without pretence or pandering to tourists. Vibrant colours adorn the buildings and the fences. Unpaved streets wind aimlessly between houses, shops and yards of sheep and goats

My number one photographic goal on each of the five tours was to capture a close-up of a Muslim woman in a full burka. Its not easy. Being an older white Caucasian makes it even more difficult. I got close many times in my negotiations and had some partial success but never achieved a 'keeper'.

T spotted the women in this shot from a distance. It was patently obvious to me that I would not get any co-operation in taking shots. As I raised my lens they stared at me for a few seconds then covered their faces completely. The dark blue colouring on the lips is natural.

Dale Neill conducts photography workshops at UWA Extension in Perth, Western Australia. Find out more about his workshops at http://www.extension.uwa.edu.au/tutor/39