East Gippsland,  Australia, 2016 — present 

^{We are our landscape}

With the permission of Elders on the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation , 0n 24 October 2012, I started a series of landscape portraits at Boney Point in East Gippsland, aptly named by locals after Angus McMillian and his men took the lives of an unknown number of Gunaikurnai people there in 1840.

The images I took that day were the catalyst to begin this project.

In the libraries, cultural centres, and online portals of East Gippsland, I quickly found maps and documentation of the 1836–1853 killings of the Gunaikurnai. The project took me on a journey through a most brutal history, a history that I could not help but imagine alongside that of my own ancestors. They were timberfellas and tradespeople, and they built and erased landscapes in the name of progress.

In many ways I felt I had no right to be taking these photos, but I wanted to know more about what the region’s colonisers (and my own forebears) had done to and thought about the people who had been living in these places for 70,000 years, and their rich culture and deep knowledge. 

I hope that they did the right thing, but not many did.