Australian Lustre

During the ’80s, I spent every school holiday at a caravan park with my family. We’d road trip from our insular Northern Beaches home in Sydney and relocate for weeks at a time to Budgewoi, a quiet town up the coast. Every time we went, things would feel different and a little funny at first.

At home, the city was loud, busy, and competitive. Up there, our little town seemed to move at the perfect speed every day, and over the years it kept itself stuck in time. The caravan park was wedged between an enormous open sharky beach and a smelly stagnant lake that gave you pelican itch. Across the water, a power station loomed as the centrepiece to our sunset view. The air was thick with salt, glazing everything with a distinct coastal patina. Most things would decay in the elements. Bikes and barbecues tended to go first. The hard sun and open space didn’t help, yet the heat was perfect for fish and chips, bare feet and ice cream.

Over the years, we grew to love our little slice of regional Australia — the people, the slang, the rituals, the beaches, the colours and the atmosphere. During these never-ending holidays, our family existed in a quintessentially Australian world, and the experiences were etched deep into the corners of my subconscious, truly informing the curiosity and passion that I carry with me on the road now.

Today, I find myself pointing a camera towards the past, holding onto those cherished slices of time in hope to infuse the reflections and feelings into pictures. Sometimes, I retrace and redocument places and things over the years. Is this collection a study of time and place? It is in some respects, but it’s more than that. In the same way I’m drawn back to my childhood experiences, these pictures delve into a deeper family past — that of my colonial ancestors who arrived here as part of the First Fleet.

Thinking about the darker undertones and, at times, ridiculousness and contradictions of the culture we have created here, feels deeply unsettling. I might not have realised it as a twelve-year-old, but I’ve always questioned where we stand in this strange and compelling land. Raising a lens to things I do and don’t like, Australian Lustre is a fifteen-year voyage based on a true story at the crossroads between yesterday and today, memories and dreams. An experiment with time and a process of reckoning with identity.

- Trent Mitchell