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Charles Page Born 1946, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 1 The ‘Journeys north’ portfolio 1986 was commissioned by the Queensland Art Gallery with financial support from the Australian Bicentennial Authority. 2 Charles Page, in Clare Williamson, Journeys North [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1988, p.36. Charles Page , photographs from ‘Journeys north’ portfolio 1986 In Charles Page’s photographs from the ‘Journeys north’ portfolio 1986, we see scarred landscapes entangled with mining infrastructure, coal haulage trucks working through the night, and a sunlit coal handling plant casting dramatic shadows. 1 Children on poolside bleachers are framed by smelter stacks, from which a billowing softness of industrial emissions reaches into the sky. A miner’s easy smile captures the camaraderie of those working deep underground. Page was one of six photographers invited to document community life in Queensland in the late 1980s, to commemorate Australia’s Bicentenary. Believing mining had ‘changed the face of the State more than anything else’, Page travelled to central, western and northern Queensland over an 18-month period. 2 143 142 Burn Burn