A slightly different perspective of an Australian icon. I have lived and worked at Uluru for nearly eight years. This part of the country is home to Anangu (the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara language people).

I stand alongside people, some fragile and elderly now, who still remember their first sightings of ‘white fellas’ and their camels in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Some of these people were actually teenagers before they saw their first ‘white fellas’.

One cannot begin to imagine the incredible and unfathomable changes that these people have witnessed in their lifetime. Roads and fences have sprung up all over the countryside. Townships have been developed and expanded. An ever increasing explosion of tourists continues to arrive. Airports, hotels, million-dollar motohomes and four wheel drives, cameras, videos and the worst of all new imports – alcohol – have been brought to this special part of the country.

Life has changed here forever.

’Don’t Fence Me In’ is an attempt to symbolise the frustrations felt by many good people around the place, who must constantly battle with the slow lumbering world of government and bureaucracy, in attempting to find real and effective solutions to the many problems and health challenges facing Anangu in 2008.

May we find these solutions before it is too late.

Uluru, 2007.

[Creative Effects: Omni Spotlight effect with Photoshop]