tee at 4th

The texture of fairway and tee is a bit different on an outback golf course in comparison to the well groomed courses most golfers use.

This course is located in the middle of the wheat belt on Eyre Peninsula, South Australia.

Room with a view

Room with a view to rural South Australia, somewhere between Cowell and Cleve on Eyre Peninsula.

The window is in the one and only room in the former Crossville school. It was operating from 1909 to 1946. Nearby is a ruin which I presume was the teacher’s house but it could also have been a farm house. It was, as I understand, common for the rural teachers to be lodged with a family on a local farm nearby the school house.

WordPress photo challenge: Room

Weekly Photo Challenge: Abandoned

Alas, the change of ownership did not seem to improve the state of this dilapidated building.

Calca district cemetery

I’ve got a (morbid?) fascination of cemeteries, so I stopped by the Calca district cemetery on my journey through South Australia earlier this year. Calca district is so sparsely populated that it does not even have its own information on the internet. That tells you how sparsely populated it is. Does it even exist if there’s no information on the net? It’s part of Streaky Bay district council which in total covers 6250 square kilometers. Like 6 times the land area of Hong Kong for example. Today, the council area has some 2100 residents. When it was established in the late 19th century, the population was all of 111 people.

Some of the souls that lived there found their way to the cemetery in the end. It’s located between Port Kenny and Streaky Bay on the western edge of Eyre Peninsula.

The end of the road

Calca district cemetery

Who knows what happened to young Gwendaline? In the early days, a doctor would have been difficult to get to – if there indeed was a doctor in the district at all. Life for the settlers was hard.

Fowlers Bay

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.

Fowlers Bay from the jetty

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.

Fowlers Bay

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.

Fowlers Bay Hotel

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.

Fowlers Bay community hall

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.

Fowlers Bay cemetery

Fowlers Bay cemetery

Iron Knob Revisited (A Sad Little Town (2))

I’m slowly catching up with the analogue B/W photos I took during my project in South Australia. In some cases the black and white images caught the mood (my mood that is) way better than the digital color images did. In an earlier post I had some color images from Iron Knob. The analogue black and white images are a better reflection of my memories from the place.

The derelict Iron Knob roadhouse

This guy rocked up at the petrol station whilst I was taking photos and asked if petrol was available as his map said it would be. I told him he was probably a decade too late. He was heading west and put his bet on that his petrol meter was correct in which case he would make the 90km to Kimba. Just.

The Petrol Station

Remnants of the Iron Knob motel

 

Main Street

The back yard

The Exhibition

The project on South Australian country pubs is coming to an end. During the past week-end we had the final exhibition at the school on our respective projects together with the art course. It was well attended and quite a jolly day.

We were allowed to exhibit 3 images each. There’s more of course, in the form of a presentation and a photo book, but for the exhibition there were 3 images. I tried to select 3 that went well together and that formed a coherent image together. Did I succeed and does it present a fair image of the country pub as social center?

Friday evening at Darke Peak Hotel

At the Streaky Bay Hotel

Streaky Bay Hotel

A Day At The Farm

The delay between taking an image and being able to look at it has a lot to say for it. One can concentrate on the photography rather than constantly breaking concentration to check what actually happened to be recorded by the sensor. To view the film strips after development is a bit like Christmas. I’ve not kept any notes on what I took and from where and there were many pleasant (and less pleasant) surprises.

The images here are from a roll I took as part of my project at a visit to a farm on Eyre Peninsula. The farm junk yard to be more precise. It was a fascinating place where future archeologists will be able to follow in detail how farm life has developed since land there was cleared for agriculture in the early 20th century. I used my trusty Canon EOS3000 that I picked up from Ebay for a few dollars and tri-x.

Is that telly still working? Showing a nature program?

The family pride and joy from the 60ies (?)

And from the 70ies, in the form of a dead Holden Kingswood

Remnants from an early agricultural machine (tractor? harvester?). Must have been a bit of a bumpy ride

Remnants from a more recent machine, probably a tractor I’d say.

The old work horse put out to pasture. This is a Thames Trader and the model was current around 1960.

 

 

Friday at Penong Hotel

Penong is a small settlement in the far west of Eyre Peninsula (at least I think it is regarded as part of Eyre Peninsula). It is the last real township for 1000 km on the way to Western Australia.

I came to Penong on a Friday evening and got accommodation at the one and only hotel in town. As the battery in my digital camera had gone flat and the power adapter had been left in a hotel some 400km away I had a marvellous opportunity to shoot some black and white film.

The Front Bar in Penong Hotel

The front bar at Penong Hotel

There was also a beer garden at the hotel, where I had a chat with some friendly locals.

The beer garden at Penong Hotel

At the beer garden, Penong Hotel

I took some images of the pub from the street, but felt that these would have been better in colour. Since my digital camera was dead at the time, here is one of the black and white images.

Penong Hotel

Poochera Hotel Revisited

Having returned to home country I have had the opportunity to develop some of the film I took during my road trip. Yes, I carted around an analogue camera as well. It’s an entry model Canon SLR bought for next to nix on eBay. The shots here are all shot on TRI-X and scanned with a Reflecta crystal scan 7200.

When I stayed at Poochera Hotel I thought some of the interior would come out better in BW than color. In particular the dining room that was beautifully preserved from, well, perhaps folks from Down Under can pinpoint the epoch better than I. I thought it was very homely. More’s the pity that it was empty.

The dining room at Poochera Hotel

The dining room at Poochera Hotel

There was some beautiful items there. From the 50ies?

The dining room at Poochera Hotel

The front bar was almost as empty as the dining room on the day I was there.

Poochera Hotel, front bar

I stayed overnight at the hotel. The rooms were, as they usually are in country hotels, basic. They do serve the purpose for which they are offered: for the weary traveler to get some sleep.

Guest accommodation at Poochera Hotel

I do think that B/W captures the atmosphere quite a lot better than the color images I took.