Category: Tanami
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photography after Lajamanu
We left Lajamanu via Top Springs so that we could link up to the Stuart Highway via the Buntine and Buchanan Highways. The Landrover’s compressor housing had been damaged, and so we had to avoid the long drive over the severe corrugations on the Tamani Road. Whilst having lunch at Top Springs I realised…
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at Emu waterhole
Between the end of the 2016 Milpirri Festival and prior to leaving Lajamanu we visited Emu water hole just outside Lajamanu. The waterhole was full and it in a Tanami desert-scape of sparse vegetation ( spinifex, desert oaks, acacias and mulga trees), blue skies and strong sunlight. The history of the desert is one…
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landscapes at Lajamanu
Whilst I was in Lajamanu I experimented with making a few black and white landscapes around Hooker Creek as well as making the coloured ones. These images show that the conventional idea of the arid landscape in this region of the Tanami desert as a timeless boring, barren landscape that you drive through to get to the…
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historical silences
A couple of days after the Milpirri Festival had finished we drove north out of Lajamanu to Top Springs via the Buntine Highway The Landrover Discovery was damaged, so we did not make a detour to go to Kalkarindji (formerly Wave Hill) or to take a look at the Victoria River. This region is the traditional land…
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more Tanami landscapes
The most seductive time for my photography in the Tamani Desert was just as the sun dipped below the horizon. The magic hour. Except that the hour was more like 15 -20 minutes: It was a world of gentle and subtle pastel colours. Even more so than just after dawn. I confess that I had the…
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Armenian Khachkars at Lajamanu
Whilst I was at Lajamanu I was fortunate enough to attend a Baptist service in which Bishop Haigazoun Najarian and Deacon Nishan Basmajian from the Armenian Apostolic Church of the Holy Resurrection in Chatswood, Sydney gifted and blessed two Armenian khachkars (or cross stones) to the indigenous Baptist Church, under Jerry Jangala Patrick, the local pastor. Baptist missionaries…
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Milpirri portraits
Photographing people was very different at Lajamanu during Milpirri that it is in Australian cities. Many of the young Milpirri wanted to have their photos taken, and they often presented themselves in front of the camera. Then they would ask their friends to be part of their performance. Often they would direct in…
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Milpirri Festival at Lajamanu
A key reason for the roadtrip to Lajamanu was to see the Warlpiri’s large-scale outdoor Milpirri Festival, which is put on by the Warlpiri community in partnership with the Tracks Dance Company for one night only every two years. The one that I saw on Saturday October 15 was the seventh biannual festival. The rehearsals for Milpirri…
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the heavy weight of the past
The common interpretation of the frontier wars between settler Australia and the Aboriginal people is that this history is a case of a doomed hunter-gatherer people unable to withstand the agriculture, animal husbandry and machinery of modern capitalism. This downplays the history of the killing phases, segregation-by-incarceration phases, assimilation or absorption- to-the-point-of-disappearance phases, and the erasure-of-their- presence…
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landscape, Tanami Desert
Late one afternoon whilst I was at Lajamanu I went on a brief phototrip with Helga Leunig to take photos of the Tanami Desert landscape. We travelled a short distance along the gravel road that provides access to the local cemetery and rubbish dump. This road north from Lajamanu, which connects Lajamanu to the Bunting…
The Long Road to the North 