I’ll have to change the flavour of my blog since the project in South Australia is over. Still there are some images to share though. The digital gear was dead at the time of my visit to Fowler Bay, so the analogue camera got some use. I used t-max 100 for the images.
Fowlers Bay, few houses hugging a remote coastline of the far west of South Australia, some 900 km from Adelaide.
The township was surveyed in 1890 and as I walked the streets (all 4 of them) I tried to envision what it would have been like at the time. How long would it have taken from a ship to get from Adelaide to Fowlers Bay? How would the isolation have felt? Even in 2013 it felt like the end of the world.
It was and is a remote area, and there had to be some facilities for residents and travelers (but who would travel past Fowlers Bay at the turn of last century?). So there was a hotel built in 1892. It cease to operate in 1936 and today the only remains is the sign where the hotel once stood.
In this small place, the Hotel was not the only place for social interaction. There was also a community hall. Fowlers Bay was not the only place where I felt utterly amazed at hard working settlers who, apart from establishing a life at the end of the world, also had the will and energy to build venues for social life.
About a mile from the township there’s a small cemetery. There aren’t many marked graves there. From those that are there, one can divine that life was hard in the early days.