Just East of Now

Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s theory of the uncanny and unheimlich, Just East of Now portrays everyday struggle and ordinary tragedy, and depicts the blue collar people living lives of quiet desperation, through the lens of the isolated existence experienced in dying rural Australian towns.

Rural Australia used to once be a thriving, prosperous area, with millions of Australians choosing the freedom of the bush and it’s wide-open spaces, over the crowded and fast paced urban life. However, in recent decades the balance between an agrarian society and an urban one has tilted in favour of the all-pervading metrocentric existence, and as such, rural communities are seemingly stuck in a backward spiral of declining public services, social infrastructure, and commercial facilities. As a result, regional Australia has suffered a rapid and painful demise, leading to many people giving up and choosing to walk off the land, leaving very few remaining rural residents to grapple with the strain of such an isolated and arduous existence. For many, especially those accustomed to urban living, this way of life in the bush is difficult to comprehend.

Drawing on Sigmund Freud’s theory of the uncanny and that that is unheimlich, and my hometown of Quairading in rural Western Australia, I aspire to arrest the uneasy and frightening oddity of the familiar through the quality of isolated existence in rural Australia. Freud proclaimed that unheimlich in relation to the uncanny is that which is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar. Myself being an inhabitant of a rural town, the motivation behind this series is to document the unusual, distinctive, and often bizarre goings-on, and highlight the unobserved details that produce the stark contrast between rural and urban civilisations.

Situated 167km east of Perth in the centre of the wheatbelt, Quairading is a small agricultural community with a shire population of just under 700. Very little goes on here and opportunities leading to anything bigger than the town itself are rare. Here, one either escapes when given the chance, or chooses to stay and sign their life away in a slow and tedious demise. This plight of country life causes unease and discontent to those within the boundaries of modern society, those who are not satisfied with remaining a hostage of the past. Quairading is so rural and patinaed with the past, it allows such a remove, the distance of another time. This is what can be considered uncanny, a stunted form of civilisation. One that has, and will always, remain in the past.

Since leaving regional Australia and living in the city, I have gained a new appreciation for those that decide to stay and struggle. Upon returning home, I am always greeted by an intense familiarity of boredom and content, always contemplating how in such a small time frame, my town has whittled away, being eaten up by the ever hungry Perth. And hence the title of this series, Just East of Now. Quairading will always be slightly east of present times, represented by the modern metropolis, Perth.

Just East of Now aims to attract a desire, and a need to understand a place that is situated in the present, but belonging to the past. Through capturing the remaining few residents, who are troubled, but not lost - for they carry a dignified endurance and sense of bruised optimism - I want this series to depict the blue collar people living lives of quiet desperation, people who are feeling their way in the dark. Just East of Now not only portrays everyday struggle and ordinary tragedy, but brings to bear the oddities of Quairading, and the uncanny state of being trapped and handcuffed to the past, sentenced to a life of prosaic existence.