Road Report
Hello everyone,
Last week I shared that I was writing my newsletter while on the road, and promised a quick update about what I was doing and how it was going.
Basically, I was on a road trip trying to find evidence of violence against Dingoes. For those who perhaps could use a quick overview:
a) Dingoes are Australia’s largest land-based predator - they are a native species.
b) For as long as there’s been white people here, they have been a problematic animal for farmers and have been driven off large parts of the country.
c) Each year, guided by national-level policy, large amounts of poison, shooting, trapping and exclusion take place. In several states, farmers have a legal responsibility to take all measures to rid their land of dingoes.
d) In addition to this being cruel, and continuing a legacy of attacking native species, Dingoes are a crucial species in Australia - they play a huge role in sustaining biodiversity by killing invasive pests (foxes, cats, goats) and by ensuring herbivore numbers are lower so that vegetation is more varied (if there’s loads of kangaroos and goats, many trees get eaten while they are seedlings).
e) In the face of this, there are hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually killing them, and erecting larger and longer fences to keep them away from sheep. The world’s longest fence (5500+ km AND getting longer) exists for this reason. All that fencing has disastrous effects on the landscape as it prevents animals following water and keeps predators off something like 1/3 of the country.
I’ve been focusing on Dingoes because, like all my work, I’m trying to make something that asks audiences to think about two questions:
Do we REALLY understand the status quo? All the ins and outs? All the pros and cons? What we do and why?
Is the status quo worth it?
I’ve been feeling like my project has been missing something. As I’ve been photographing more and more I’ve been wondering how successful I’ve been. In my heart, I want to try and get this one done by the end of the year, but I’m also wondering if it’ll be good enough by then.
So - on this road trip there were many things I was looking to photograph.
Firstly, as I said, I wanted to photograph evidence of violence. It is 100% legal to shoot, trap, poison or kill Dingoes in every state, and they are only protected in very specific areas. I was able to find two dingo trees - basically trees on the road where a farmer had hung recently killed dingoes.
I was very unsure if I’d find even a single tree - as mostly these are very, very far away from me. Still I wanted to try and show people what we allow in Australia. Nothing that I’ve photographed is illegal, after all, and in fact these farmers HAVE to kill the animals (though they don’t need to string them up…).
Secondly, I wanted to photograph where the Dingo fence ends - not too far from Brisbane in Queensland. I was able to do this and it was really bizarre. At the very end of the Dingo fence there’s a commemorative plaque and a picnic table. There’s something so bizarre about how mundane and bland the end to such a colossal structure is. Last year I visited where the fence begins - bolted onto these soaring cliffs - with magnetic sunsets and soaring sunrises - it felt and looked so immense. In other parts of the fence I’ve visited it looks so domineering - this metal juggernaut just plowing through the land. But at the end, where it finishes, it’s smaller, squatter, tamer and more bland.
Finally, I was hoping to photograph some dingoes, but the weather was so bad I didn’t get around to this. I was staying in a mix of motels and camping and, to be honest, if it’s pouring down with rain, I don’t really relish camping. I got a bit stuck - I traveled as far north as I was expecting to go and to the East it was raining and to the West it was raining. I’m glad I didn’t go West as ALL the roads out where I was planning on being are shut, so I’d be stuck. To cut a long story short, I looked at the weather, looked at the map and thought ‘you know what? just head home’. I did miss one opportunity by not staying longer, someone messaged me another location of a dingo tree and, by the time I had received the message I was just too far away to visit. But I’m ok with that - you can never do it all.
Since getting home I’ve actually been sleeping a lot. I do a terrible job of working out how worn out I am and am guilty of running myself down. I think I drove like 25-27 hours over 3 days and that wiped me out.
Despite the change, I think the roadtrip was successful. While I haven’t properly looked at the photos, but it helped me articulate more of what I was looking for and what I needed to add to the project. I think that this will be a very multi-media heavy project, likely with scanned books, re-produced policy documents and a bunch of other things alongside photographs.
Still I feel I haven’t gotten the best images of the Dingoes yet, and there are definitely gaps in what I’m shooting. The poison that is used Australia wide, 1080 (Sodium fluoroacetate for the chemists), I’d like to photograph the actual chemical and man that is proving really, really hard to do. I’m fairly sure the best option is just to take a chemical handling course and then purchase some, but then I have an incredibly lethal poison just sitting in my house…
Anyway, I’m off on the road again on the weekend, heading to Ngarkat. Ngarkat is an interesting place, it’s a National Park in South Australia that borders Victoria. In Victoria there’s Big Desert and Wyperfield National Parks. These three pieces of land are connected but, because of state borders, different policy governs them. In Victoria, the Dingo population that lives there (about 40 Dingoes) has recently been declared genetically distinct and protected (eg, it is now ILLEGAL for farmers to kill them), however in South Australia the government wants ALL dingoes in the area killed by 2030. So there’s this population of Dingoes moving between these three parks - in two they are safe, in the third they are hunted, trapped, poisoned and killed. It’s this sort of insane double standard that I find critical in showing people and asking them to consider ‘are we really ok with the status quo?’.
A big part of having six months off is seeing if the extra time enables better creative output. I sure hope it does, but ‘better’ won’t happen without work, and work for this project requires a LOT of travel. Australia really is a big place, and the next spot to explore is Queensland - I really need to get up there a bit more.
I also had a few other pieces of good news:
A workshop I’m teaching in Kalgoorlie was confirmed
I teed up some more teaching in Perth around the same time
Tall Poppy was accepted to be at the Singapore Art Book Fair
We had our first book orders of the new financial year!
It’s been a nice week.
Next week I’ll share a bit about my time in Ngarkat and some upcoming things going on with Tall Poppy.
Ciao :)