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Australian Rural Architecture - Stories From The Past


This series of black and white images has been selected from photographs I have taken over the past ten years while travelling the Australian countryside.
Some areas I have re-visited many times, others just once. These faded structures remind us all of the inexorability of physical, economic and social change, and increasingly of climate change. There is a pathos to some of the deserted and disintegrating houses. Sometimes a certain dignity survives in the curve of an arch, or the overall proportion. Other examples have survived adapted and thrived. Yet things that were once prominent such as the RSL, are now relics as those who served in the two world wars have slowly passed away.

Locations extend from South Australia to Far North Queensland, but the bulk are from Central Victoria.
There is a quality to Australian light, and a sense of space that does not readily exist in other countries. I grew up when the notion of the Commonwealth meant something, and continuity and slow change were the norm, until disasters such as war, drought, flood or fire upset the patterns of daily life.
Something we have had to re-learn over the past 12 months is that nothing is predictable and that change can come when least expected. In this sense, we share much with our forefathers.