This photo of Marg studying hard for her degree was taken in the dining room of our first home together. Apart from the thoughtful pose of my young wife, observe a few things. The phone is sitting on the chest of drawers – no mobiles. Marg is using a pen – no computers. She would write her essays longhand and then type them on the manual typewriter. We had wine in a box, but we had obviously also splashed out on bottled wine at some stage. The poster on the wall is a classic Lord of the Rings, decades before it was made into a movie.
I took this photo from the front veranda of that first house. As the construction site took over, I lost access to the river that I had photographed earlier (see 1978), as did the suburb behind us. By my count, a photo from the same place today would look over about thirteen lanes of traffic, two rail lines and a cycle path.
Photography records moments in time that only reveal their significance as the world moves on.
I don’t know if the encroachment of the city into our front yard had anything to do with it, but in 1979 Marg and I developed a shared interest that would thread through our lives for decades. We decided to go bushwalking. We pulled together a tent, a couple of sleeping bags and two backpacks, and headed down to a friend’s place near Pemberton.
Four of us went bush for a couple of days, and the photo shows our campsite in the forest. I like the classical feel of the image, with the fire, muted green bush, black tree trunk and a touch of blue smoke. However, Tom Roberts would never have painted bright orange tents, I’m sure.
Bushwalking and the natural environment become a recurring theme in my photography from here on, although I have never approached the subject with any defined intent. It’s just that I spent more time in the bush and recorded my interest.
At this time, I started taking fewer black and white photos. It was harder to set up a dark room for processing and printing in the little rented house. After about six months we moved and did some house-sitting for a friend of a friend. Somebody else’s place, not conducive to temporary darkrooms, and, once again, fewer opportunities to process my own film.