Journeys North

MaxPam Artists statement When I was young, Queensland was the promised land. I would be taken on the long journey north every year in the family Holden, along with Dad, Mum, and my sister. This was our annual escape from cold-hearted and dull Melbourne.When I say Queensland was the promised land, I really mean Surfers Paradise, for that is where we would go, to stay at the El-Dorado motel. The El-Dorado was the last word in early sixties plastique; it was expensive and popular enough for Dad to secure a place by booking one year in advance. Everything in Surfers Paradise looked suitably American: imported cars with fins; and - that sure barometer of imported fashion - the hairstyle: flat-tops, jellyrolls, and duck's tails, the Ronald Reagan pompadour and the Brenda Lee bullet-proof. Brylcreamwas still adverfo~ed on T.V. and hair spray had poked a hole in the ozone layer above the Gold Coast. It was at the El-Dorado that I took (aged ten) my first photo: a shaky portrait ofMarcia and Dad in the games room. Times have changed: now I am the Dad, the family car is a Datsun, the El-Dorado is a youth-hostel, Surfers Paradise is not Queensland, and other promised lands have long since captured me; yet, Queensland retains a big presence. Only in the state ofQueensland do you have a tropical, desert, sea reef island, rainforest land: a land that shimmers with sensual geophysical display. This quality is unique within the context of the Australian continent, for our country has, more often than not, a virtually unknowable, austere and arid beauty. In 1986, I spent the best part of six months driving all over the state, following a path from National Park to State Forest. I broke tent pegs, hammering them into the concrete soil of Julia Creek, and I pushed them in with my foot on the beach at Hinchinbrook Island. All this I did together with my family, our tent, the billy, the esky, and a sailboard. My pictures do not describe a family on the move.What they describe is the Australian tent household in Queensland and just what happens when you unzip the front door and walk out into the landscape: breakfast with a kangaroo, the local newspaper, and my brother-in-law's mirror-backed wrap-arounds. A series ofautobiographies When we crossed the border into Queensland, I knew for sure that I had to photograph the Big Pineapple. This was the only pre-meditated photo that I had. I felt good the whole time I was in Queensland: this place really cooks and I hope above all else that this quality shows through in the photographs.When I look at the images that I collected in '86, they fit closely a style that I have always used: a style that owes much to my great friend and mentor, French photographer, Bernard Plossu.What is different in this body ofwork is, that after seventeen years as a photographer, spent mostly travelling through Asia, this is the first photographic statement of mine that deals directly with Australia. By the time Sue Smith rang me in Sydney (mid-'85), and offered me a role photographing living in Queensland, I was up to my neck in the septic tank that photography has built for itself there. I am eternally grateful to Sue for throwing me a life-line onto that wonderful Highway No. I that encircles Australia: surely, the greatest repository of images in this land.