19/08/2025
In July, Dan and I went on a road-trip up to Winton, going through St George, Cunnamulla, Charleville, Longreach, Emerald, Rockhampton, Bundaberg, and Tin Can Bay. Our purpose in going to Winton was to visit the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum. My learning interests are mainly historical, and Dan’s are scientific, so the subject where we intersect is dinosaurs.
I saw aspects of Australia I never thought I’d get to see.
In anticipation of our trip, I prepared a bunch of cyanotype papers, all various polaroid sizes (both Polaroid brand and Fuji, in case you’re interested).
I tried to develop a lot of cyanotypes on the car dashboard while travelling, to really varied results. The roads we were driving on were proper outback roads, so there were potholes and floodways and noisy lines and road trains, and I didn’t have anything to keep the design in place (like glass over the top, which seemed like a risky thing to pack). Sometimes I was moved by the location to make a cyanotype, but sometimes I’d keep bits of plants folded up in my books, ready to make a print as soon as we stopped. Part of the fun is remembering how they were developed, though, which explains some of their captions/titles.
1. My polaroids
2. Cotton from St George
3. Cunnamulla lunch-time
4. Leaf from something that looks like a Queensland bottle tree, but isn’t, found in Jericho
5. Cunnamulla gum-tree
6. Cunnamulla flowers, made amongst the flowers while we went for a walk
7. Road-side flowers, made in the car 2
8. Road-side flowers, made in the car 1
9. Underdeveloped, made in Winton while listening to Gregory North at the North Gregory Hotel, performing Banjo Paterson poetry (Road-side flowers)