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About this photograph
A lightning storm over the horizon off Redgate Beach, after sunset.
Storms tracking up the coast can be watched from Redgate for an hour before they arrive, and after sunset they light themselves from the inside. This frame catches a strike out over the horizon, well offshore, with the last of the daylight still in the water.
Weather of this order is not incidental to the exhibition. The Georgette was lost to water she could not keep out — a leak that beat the pumps and then drowned the fires — and she was put on this beach because her captain had no other option left. The sea in this photograph is the same sea, on a night when it happens to be putting on a show rather than taking a ship.
This is one of two prints in the collection available at A1, at which size the strike reads at close to life scale across a wall.
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.
