Abandoned Places in Australia

Hard to find, usually difficult to access and few and far between, Australia’s abandoned locations exist on the fringes of a country experiencing one of the worlds most expensive housing development booms.

 

With the exception of a handful of copper thieves, graffiti artists, curious teenagers, ruins enthusiasts and squatters, Australia’s abandoned places sit untouched in shadowy silence.  Yet they still contain traces of lingering human emotion that hang long after the occupants have departed the space.

 

It is important to note that any discussion of Australian land, be it abandoned or not, must recognise its rich and valued indigenous culture – a culture that stretches back tens of thousands of years. And while these places are loaded with recent, urban historical insight, ancient feet walked across these spaces long before the colonial cement was poured.

 

Such rapid development means that Australia’s urban and rural realms are constantly rubbed out and reset like a repetitive Ctrl Alt Delete.   But through this erasure we are annihilating  an abundance of stories that should be documented because they all play a part in the preservation of our urban past and sense of place.  Australia has a wonderful multicultural society with so many interesting tales to be shared, so the cataloguing of these spaces perhaps becomes integral to understanding Australia's contemporary cultural identity.

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Of course in a fast growing country where development is constant, it is impossible to expect an unused urban space to remain simply for the delight of adventurous photographers (with the exception of heritage listed structures).  But there is an importance for someone to at least visually document these forgotten urban fragments before the sledgehammering begins.