Now that Shrine has been set up, opened and now out there I thought I would share the Multi Media component of the exhibition now on at the Supreme Court in Darwin.
My motives for embarking on this project were mixed, I my first memory is of a car accident that we happened along on a lonely stretch of the Flinders Highway, the death of the first person that was close to me was my best mates little sister at the age of 17, I was utterly drained from a tumultulous couple of years crossing the country and the world and needed to be somewhere else for a while, and at that time being in a car with no fixed destination was the best place to be.
As I drove I thought about the grieving families I met in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings , both in Sydney and later in Kuta as people tried to deal with such a mindless act that tore apart their lives and changed forever the way they saw the world because the ones they loved the most were no longer in it.
I started to slow down when I passed a cross on the highway, started to get out of the car, then started to photograph, now seeing, now knowing the depth of the emotions that drove those left behind to build some reminder to their loved one who left them on the worst day of their lives.
But to make the work honest and real I had to find out the story behind at least some of these places and that meant convincing firstly the Downes family,
mainly Terry and Val to talk about the death of their son Aaron and Nerida Noble to talk about her friend J-Bird, both of whom died 6 months apart not 20 km away from each other on the Stuart Highway north of Katherine , these photographs were technically easy to take, sometimes lit, sometimes not but any chance successful communication that this project may have, would be nil without the generosity, compassion and trust that I encountered with Terry and Val Downes and Nerida Noble, so I thank you all.

One week to go till the opening of my new exhibition “SHRINE”, in the gallery/foyer of the Northern Territory Supreme Court during the Darwin festival so if your up before the beak any time in late August please stop by and have a look.

Below are are a group of photographs from the show of 4 roadside memorials that dot a 20 km stretch of road from the Finke turn off to the community of Titjikala in central Australia.

I can remember my first ever model airplane because it was the General Dynamics F-111 in USAF livery and around the time the RAAF was buying a fleet of them and soon changed it’s USAF name from the F 111 Aardvark to rename them affectionately as ” The Pig”.
My model turned out to be a plane crash after I used Tarzan’s Grip instead of modeling glue ending up with the pilot stuck fast to my fingers and having to be removed in the day surgery at the hospital.
My next encounter with “the Pig” was 30 years later when I was on assignment last week for the SMH to shoot some pictures of “The Pig” up close, they are in the middle of their last ever war games and will be retired in December and the Pig will fly no more
Though not ever used in combat this one was well and truly blooded after I left a fair bit of DNA on one of it’s many pointy bits ( see below) , The LAC I was with ” Oh you gotta be careful there, that one gets most blokes about your height !”.

I have been a bit slack in my posting of late , covering a bit of country and taking a few pictures, from the banks of Magella Creek in Kakadu,

To Brunette Downs on the Barkly Tableland,

and south to The Alice.

I was kicking back in Larrimah Pop 12, totally missing the night of the long knives and nearly spilt my coffee on the dash board when I came back into wireless range and learned that the country had a new Prime Minister and a Ginger at that!
It got me thinking about Prime Ministers past and present and the relative freedoms that we Australian photographers enjoy with our national leaders compared to our colleagues in Washington.
My first Prime Ministerial experience was as a green cadet photographer on one of my first assignments for the Townsville Buliten in the outback town of Winton when the Government jet landed at dusk and Paul Keating PM and entourage stepped down onto the black soil plains to plant a gum tree in the main street, up till then I had been the only photographer around, blissfully shooting the “Waltzing Matilda” festival, so when it came to scrum time I was woefully unprepared for the tender attentions of the press gallery shooters Mike Bowers, and Lyndon Michelson so after copping a few elbows and then a hand on my shoulder I gave back a decent backwards stiff arm salute and turn around to see that I had just elbowed the Prime Minister in the guts.
Needless to say I was quickly hauled out of there!
No pics of that one I’m afraid.
Since I have been in Darwin We’ve been graced with the presence of 3 Prime Ministers

Former service Station attendant, John Winston Howard PM

Laurie Oakes’s former house cleaner, Kevin Michael Rudd PM

and of late former Adelaide schoolgirl, Julia Eileen Gillard PM , whom during her short stint in the top job has visited the “Top End” twice, the first time spruiking her border protection credentials.

and the second to attend the funeral of Katherine born Soldier Scott Palmer who was killed in Afghanistan.

Will keep you posted on the third but Damian Hale I’m sure will be welded to her shoulder on the next Prime Ministerial doorstop.

It took 5 months since I first saw the Annandale Homestead from the air for the desert to dry out enough for me to return and spend a couple of days camped beside Eyre Creek and shooting dawn and dusk pictures of the old homestead,

the yards

and thinking how in the hell did anyone think that running sheep in the Simpson Desert was a good idea.
The yards and the gallows were made of local timber,

all that remained of the homestead was the ornate stone chimney ,corrugated Iron and spinifex used for walls.

If few days on your own in the desert can’t cure what ails you I don’t know what will, so I left Annandale with a lighter heart and drove back to Birdsville and a cold beer in the pub , where I got talking to this old bloke who upon hearing that I had been camped at the Annandale ruins asked me,

” Did You find the graves of the Angels?”

“Uhh No…No graves…What Graves?”

He then told me the story of the “Angels of Annandale” , Early 1900’s and the Simpson desert was in the grip of an extreme dry spell and out in the sand dunes was a family of 4 running sheep and not having a good time of it, eventually the father had to take the flock away in search of feed and left his wife and 2 sons at the homestead.
Days turned to weeks and weeks to months as the year slipped into it’s scorching zenith , January in the desert is beyond redemption.
The water hole had dried up , food was running out , she was beside herself with worry and desperation and still with not a word from her husband she slipped into madness.
In her state she decided that there was no way out , the only way to ease her suffering was to kill the children and then herself., she dosed the boys with poison, killing them, and then took it herself, but she failed to administer a fatal dose to herself and was found the next day wandering the sand dunes irretrievably insane, by her husband’s head stock man , part of an advance party paving the way for his return.

I put my beer down and went straight back out there , muttering ” How could I miss 2 bloody graves?” after all I spent so much time there?
I had 2 days to be back in Sydney and prepare for an extensive overseas assignment early the next month , I crisscrossed the ruins as the afternoon light faded , was it true? or was that just one more piece of outback bullshit?
Then as the light faded , I found a small cross , a child’s grave covered in wire mesh to keep the dingo’s out.

I drove back to Birdsville and then on to Mt Isa in the dead of night to catch my plane to Sydney the next day, thinking about the angels , where was the other grave?
Are there any records? A double infanticide and attempted suicide must be documented somewhere …you’d think!

As it turned out I didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on the Angels because a week later 9/11 happened and a week after that I found myself in the Hindu Kush, in Peshawar on the border of Afghanistan, thinking I was a long way from home.
To be continued…