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September 24, 2006
Tasmania is an island of contrasts: wilderness & heritage sit along side the gingho exploitation of resources. This consists of daming the wild rivers to generate electricity, logging the old growth native forests for woodchip, the mining of minerals for export and farming. It's impossible not to notice the contradictions even when one is there just a tourist visiting landmarks and seeing the 'sights'.
The conventions of wilderness photography are irrelevant to tourists quickly moving through the landscape in a car. After leaving Tunbridge in the Tasmanian Midlands we travelled along the Heritage Highway to Launceston, looked around the town, had a quick dinner in Devonport, then stayed the night on the north coast near Port Sorrell. The dog friendly place was in Hawley Beach.
In the morning we went for a walk with the dogs along the beach that opened onto the wild waters of Bass Strait. As we were due to have lunch with Suzanne's relatives in Penguin, west of Devonport, that morning we only had time for an early morning walk. The nomadic photography is done on the run.You see something, snap, then move on, ever mindful of being just a tourist caught up in the iamges of a tourist industry that strips out the authenticity (and the meaning) of a place with skillful regularity and determination:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Rocks, Tasmania series, 2006
David Stephenson points out that in wilderness photography, nature as wilderness is 'aestheticised and depicted within rigid codes of representation as orderly, benevolent, and beautiful. Wilderness is traditionally defined as land devoid of human impact... In Tasmania wilderness photography links views of untouched wilderness with conservation aims.'
The iconic photographs of the wilderness have a strong resonance in Tasmania as the imagery is now being used to market the 'natural' landscape for the national and international tourism industry. A tourist perspective sees things more mundanely:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, rocks and sand, Tasmania series, 2006
Is there a tourist photographic aesthetic? One conception of tourist photographic aesthetic is the representation of nature being based on the typical visitor/tourist experience of wilderness and the landscape. It is postmodern in that it is taking pictures that represent ourselves as a part of nature, not as standing outslde it looking at it. So it also breaks with the conventions of documentary photography.
After lunch we travelled west along the north coast, raced through the ugly industrial town of Burnie and ended up staying in a pet friendly caravan park just west of Rocky Cape National Park. It was called Crayfish Creek, and just up the road was a pelletizing plant at Port Latta:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, beach near Port Latta, from Tasmania series, 2006
As black dust was everywhere the local crayfish were off the evening menu. Apparently the iron concentrate for the pettising plant is produced at a mill in Savage River and is pumped as a slurry through an 80km pipeline to Port Latta, where it is converted into pellets ready for shipment overseas.
This is old Tasmania, a resource based economy that sits uncomfortably with the historic tourist places, such as Stanley just up the road. In old Tasmania the "minerals industry is the cornerstone of Tasmania's economy. The economic cornerstone of the new Tasmania is tourism. Stanley is heritage tourism:---the whole town is under the protection of the National Trust and the tasteful heritage colours of the cottages reflect the work of heritage designers. Stanley, even more than Ross on the Heritage Highway, is a fascinating illustration of the tourist industry and the manufacture of 'heritage'.
It was at Stanley that I understood that the cultural significance of photography's influence on tourism from the nineteenth century onwards. Photography and tourism go hand in hand. Sadly, I've lost the roll of film I shot of heritage in Stanley.
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hope you enjoyed your trip, its devonport by the way.