The Kalgoorlie report
This week I am in Kalgoorlie, in rural Western Australia.
I am here because an arts organisation reached out and asked me if I’d be interested in teaching some workshops here. After leaving my full time job I was able to push forward the timeline and lock two-and-a-bit weeks in WA doing a lot of teaching.
In Kalgoorlie I’ll teach three workshops. Two to adults (which have both finished) and a final one to teens (which is tomorrow). The arts centre was able to get some grant funding and it’s ended up being a nicely paid week!
I am enjoying Kalgoorlie. It’s a weird place, being riddled with mines, miners, wealth, poverty and nature. The landscape is very much like the Mallee in Victoria - gnarled gums, shrubs abound and loads of space. Yet the town is very old school - pies, beers, bars and blokes.
I’ll walk down the street and pass $100,000 4WDs and think ‘christ miners are rich’ and then pass just dozens of dilapidated houses, shuttered shops and folks asking for money on the street. I suppose that’s true of most places - any city or town has both those at the top and those at the bottom. Still, it feels more stark here, and I don’t know why.
The other good things about coming here is that the community seem hungry for me to return. Although Kalgoorlie is far away, it’s not that far away (1 hour flight from Perth) and yet there are several opportunities for reasonably paid art work, especially if one is willing to do some community/education work like I am.
As I look further towards the future, I can see spending a month or two a year working with rural communities providing a reasonable chunk of income.
I’ve also started thinking about how I want to grow my business. I think that now is a good time for investing in it further. As I hope to earn more of my income from books, education and other things I look at our online presence and feel that it’s worse than the quality I offer. I think about how people find us and how I can make those first and follow up impressions really positive. I’m wondering about what I can do to increase both the size of our customer base AND the quality of their perception of us/me. Kalgoorlie is good for this because I have loads of time to wander and wonder and think and discuss and write and plan. Less on the agenda leads to some deeper thinking, for me at least.
I have plenty of ideas here, and will likely spend a big chunk of summer working on those upgrades.
The downside to Kalgoorlie is that I would like to be a bit more social. I’m not lonely per se, but a few times I’ve felt ‘man it would be good to catch up with someone for a chat’, but I only know two or three folks here, and I don’t want to wear out my welcome! That’s always been the downside of rural spaces for me. I lived in rural Victoria for three years and more or less decided to return to the big city because I wanted a girlfriend and mates again.
Still, I’m only here a week or so and being a little less social is a good price to pay for paid work, good thinking and drumming up further opportunities for the future.
Outside of trying to make it all work, I’ve been trying to work a bit on my health. For whatever reason I feel that my cardio fitness has dropped a lot since I was hospitalised last year. Things that used to be effortless now puff me out and, despite regularly jogging 5km things feel a bit stagnant. So I’ve been adding sprints and other higher intensity activities in.
Kalgoorlie has been good for that because there’s just loads of space to fling myself out on a run and go hard. So easy to fit it in.
That’s a long way of saying - I know I’m not very expressive in this week’s newsletter, and that’s because I smashed a tough run and am worn out!
Finally - next week I’m in Perth and there’s a few things you might want to come to if you’re in town:
4th of September I’ll be at the Photobook Club at Lawson Flat. Register here.
5th of September I’ll be at the first ‘A common practice’ meetup in Perth. This is a great artist hangout and it’s happening from 6pm at Ode to Sirens in Fremantle. No registration required, just come along and have a chat.
7th + 8th of September I’m teaching a great weekend workshop with Perth centre for photography. Check it out here.