Just East of Now

After many trips and expeditions exploring and marvelling at the streets of foreign cities, worlds away from my home and upbringing, I returned with fresh eyes and perspective. I was excited to once again be on MY streets, my familiar territory. And what I came home to see was the slow and painful decaying and disintegrating of towns and populations living in rural Australia. My streets were disappearing before my very eyes. Sadly rural Australia is dying. It once used to be a thriving, prosperous area, with millions of Australians choosing the freedom of the bush over the crowded, fast paced urban life. Recently however, many people have chosen to walk off the land and move to the cities, leaving very few remaining rural residents to grapple with the strain of such an isolated and arduous existence. These images document the unusual, distinctive, and bizarre goings-on of a civilisation in decline, and highlight the unobserved details that produce the stark contrast between rural and urban living. Walking around the streets of my hometown of Quairading in Western Australia, wished to capture it's demise, and depict the blue collar people living lives of quiet desperation, portraying everyday struggle and ordinary tragedy, in hope of somehow understanding this reality and making sense of it all.