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About this photograph
A guitar player sings from a rock after a beautiful autumn sunset at Redgate Beach.
Taken after the light had gone, when most people have packed up and left the beach. A guitar player has stayed behind on one of the rocks and is playing to the water.
It is a picture about how this beach is used now. The same sand that took fifty survivors out of the surf in 1876 is, on an ordinary autumn evening a century and a half later, somewhere to sit with a guitar until it gets too dark to see the strings. Both things are true of the place at once, and the exhibition is largely about holding them together.
About Redgate Beach and Calgardup Bay
Redgate Beach sits on the Calgardup Bay shoreline south of Margaret River, on the section of coast now followed by the Cape to Cape Track. It is an ordinary-looking surf beach with an extraordinary thing underneath it: the wreck of the SS Georgette, which grounded here on the morning of 1 December 1876 after her pumps failed and rising water put out her boiler fires.
The wreck lies a few metres down, just offshore. On a rare day — low swell, clear water, low tide, the sand moved off her — the hull shows as a dark line from the beach or from the air. Most days it is invisible, and most people walking the sand have no idea it is there.
The full account of the wreck — the failed pumps, the lifeboat, Grace Bussell and Sam Isaacs, and the inquiry that followed — is set out in the story of the SS Georgette. The research behind it is described in the author's preface.
About the print
Printed to order on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, a 100% cotton archival paper, and supplied with an edition number. Free shipping within Australia.
