We left Wilsons Promontory for Penola in SA yesterday morning. We farewelled the dairy country that surrounded Wilsons Promontory and headed to check out Fish Creek.

Gary Sauer-Thompson, rock and tree, near Wilsons Promontory, 2007

I kept on thinking about some of the photos that I'd taken in the National Park in my attempt to break away from the pre-modernist picturesque. I needed to break away despite my appreciation that the picturesque had been used by artists to protest the appalling rate of destruction that accompanied the manifestations of ‘progress’, such as land clearing, in colonial settler society and that it embodied an incipient environmental consciousness.

I felt that my images were a mixed bag. There were some closeups that required reshooting with a larger format camera:

Gary Sauer-Thompson, rock and plant, Wilsons Promontory, 2007

There were some distance shots that remembered or recalled the work of Eugene von Guerard and which succumbed to pretty views evoking a benign wilderness setting:

Gary Sauer-Thompson, towards Tidal River, Wilsons Promontory, 2007

Fish Creek was an eye opener. It was situated in the middle of dairy farmer country, had lots of street art and had an art gallery---the Gecko Studio Gallery, which held regular exhibitions and it was supporting a photographic Workshop at Wilsons Prom with Lloyd Godman and Silvi Glattauer in association with the Baldessin Press. This work was a long way from the picturesque.

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