On a recent trip in 2022 through the north-western Victorian Mallee I retraced a section of this earlier tip in 2021. I stayed a couple of nights at Lake Lascelles in Hopetoun for a photo session the next day. I had stayed there in 2017 in the early collaborative stages of the Mallee Routes project; a stage that finished once the project became more conceptual in orientation.

Just prior to this trip I had been looking at Martin Mischkulnig and Tim Winton’s Smalltown and both the photos and text encouraged me to go through the Mallee Routes archives. In doing so I came across a couple of possibilities for some large format photography in Hopetoun. Hence the stopover.

This is a photo of a water tower, playing field and silos in Hopetoun that I made whilst on the 2022 trip:

It was made in the early morning. It was chilly and my fingers got really cold from working the aluminium knobs on the Linhof Technika. I really needed gloves. Unfortunately, I only had ski mittens which didn’t allow me to use my fingers.