King Island, Australia (1993)
During my first year studying Photography at RMIT, a small group of us travelled to King Island which sits in the strait between mainland Australia and the Island of Tasmania. King Island is a rugged place, home to warm hearted rugged people getting on with island life. There’s a beautiful windswept emptiness to the island and a surreal coastal landscape that looks like its been constantly blown by the wind in one direction for a thousand years. It’s the first place I had ever travelled to, to explore a documentary theme.
Photography
© Bruce Mitchell
Bernie Shacklock and Fletch III
Kelp farming is a back-breaking occupation surly designed for the sturdiest of humans. It involves collecting, dragging, hanging and drying heavy kelp washed up along the shoreline. The sight of rows of drying racks create a surreal landscape of long black strips of kelp hanging from racks struggling against the wind.
Kanga and crew
Lobster farming is another main industry for the Island. Simon and I went out on the trawler one morning to collect pots with Kanga and crew. That was the morning I discovered I get seasick, very seasick, so I left most of that mornings Photography to Simon and his sturdy sea legs, until we got back to dry land.
Albert O’Neil
We arrived during the height of the Mutton birding season, when hunters from nearby Tasmania arrive to harvest Mutton Bird chicks from their nesting burrows in the coastal dunes around the Island. If I had to pick any form of hunting, it probably wouldn’t be Mutton Birding. A fatty oily bird with an overpowering odor, in order to get at the chick it involves laying flat and reaching deep down into a burrow to extract the bird. That leaves the odd chance that it’s not a bird at the other end (I’m told), but rather a snake. The birds are dispatched quickly, prepared and packaged onsite for freezing and winter storage.
