A lesson in landscape photography

A few weeks ago, I wrote about landscapes and posed the question: Where are all the landscapes? The piece meandered into the realm of the liminal, and the thinking behind the process of taking photographs that interrogate the vast topic of landscape photography.

Several readers have asked for a more literal answer to that original proposition, so here I will offer names and locations of places in SA that one might consider my “favourites” with the caveat that such lists can only ever be subjective and that these kinds of lists are never exhaustive; they represent only a fraction of the total places that are interesting to me photographically.

These places that I love are interesting to me; I’m almost never interested in shooting pictures that are interesting to “somebody else” or “beautiful” or designed to appeal to “followers” or posh art buyers or your family or gallery curators.

Photographers should find better ways to tap into their creativity and some of those ways are here in the previous article. Developing your own recognisable aesthetics will have payoffs down the track.

My first port of call when travelling is The Mallee. My advice is to enter the region via Langhorne Creek. Drive through the wine town and head towards Wellington. In a matter of a few minutes the annual rainfall drops from about 21 inches annually to eight.

As you drive past Nalpa station on the right, this is pure liminal territory, where the vegetation changes from moderate to marginal in quick time. Across the punt at Wellington and you’re into one of the most fascinating regions of SA.

Look at a map and you’ll find the names of towns you’ve probably never heard about. Elwomple, Sherlock and Naturi. Maggea, Moorlands and a fascinating place called Claypans, it’s Methodist Church a vestige of another world, a world where religious colonial folk embraced the credo “Rain Follows the Plough.”

Further afield, you can venture through a gigantic conservation park and witness how the original Mallee might have appeared before the madness of clearing began. This is the grand home of the Ngarkat people.

Heading north to Barmera via Walker Flat and Big Bend, I’ll marvel at the Mighty Murray and ruminate on the uniquely photographic question of whether the camera can capture and describe the original dreams of these once-booming towns.

Or are photographs simply, by their nature, laden with a saccharine nostalgia, a retrograde quality that holds the medium back?

Arkaroola is rich in uranium. An urban myth abounds that the nuclear material for the atomic bombs dropped on Japan were mined here. This is untrue. Scientist Reg Sprigg knew the hills were full of uranium, he told the ABC’s Bill Peach in ’76 that as a newly minted scientist, he was working with Sir Mark Oliphant to create the “energy source of the future”.

He eventually realised his bosses and overseers had more nefarious designs in mind. The fact that the park has been preserved as a wilderness sanctuary can be credited to Reg Sprigg and his family as well as Traditional Owners.

Speaking of war and the north, I do like to check in at Woomera, and into the very Lynchian Eldo Hotel; I anticipate a little person speaking backwards to greet me on arrival a la Twin Peaks.  In my time I have seen some deeply strange places as a backdrop for my photography, but none comes close to Woomera in terms of the sheer fever dream demented-ness the place exudes, in all its 20th century glory.

It’s a mix of science fiction, high school matinee movie and some half-remembered story about a bunch of rocket people caught in a space/time loop, with cocktails at the bowling club to pass the decades one after the other. In short, my kind of place.

Then, on to the only true ghost town in SA. Not Beltana, not Farina – I’m talking about Tarcoola, formerly a gold mining town, now deserted (and I mean really, truly deserted) with all the infrastructure remaining, the vestiges of human presence now vanished in the wind with all the bricks and mortar still extant.

Schools, pools, an old pub painted blood red, recalling Eastwood’s 1973 western, High Plains Drifter. It is where the great train routes of the Ghan and Indian Pacific intersect. Be careful on the dirt road coming in from Kingoonya.

The Gawler Ranges are now within reach and the big sheep stations like Yardea loom large in the West.

If you meet the pastoral leaseholder Sandy Morish he will show you Yardea with its networked shepherd’s huts (early internet?) on this gigantic tract of land that abuts Lake Gardner.

The land occupied by the station is on the traditional lands of the Kokatha, Wirangu and Barngarla peoples.

There was once an Aboriginal camp, including a freshwater spring later used as the station’s water source, and traditional owners maintained and used waterholes in the granite rock formations as a water source.

To top it off, a meteor landed on Yardea in 1972.

Southbound down into Eyre Peninsula, Barngala land, where one is spoiled for choice in terms of photographic options. Sceale Bay, Venus Bay, Cactus Beach, Penong and Dark Peake. The azure blues of the ocean, white sands, and marginalia in the townships in this part of SA could fill a separate essay.

So, these parts of SA are some of my favourite things. A snapshot, if you will. And words can only partly do them justice. Best to get out there with your favourite cameras and create a series that is unique, personal and, most importantly a vivid sense of the truly weird.

Alex Frayne‘s landscape book DISTANCE AND DESIRE is available in bookshops everywhere.

Part one of his landscape lessons for CityMag is available for free online here.

See Alex’s other instalments on street photography and photographing Asia.