empty places

As far back as I can remember, urban disrepair has fascinated me. Simply magnetised to anything slightly dangerous and cut off from the everyday places of human traffic.
As a kid I was always drawn to construction sites, and was like a tiny archaeologist among the gyprock, plaster, wire spools, rusty nails, so nourished by the smell of wet concrete and tangled temporary fencing.

As I got older and braver, I developed a thirst for night wandering. Sneaking down my street in my pjs, or creeping to the edge of the bushland (which was by day more familiar than my mother's smell, but by night terrifying and unreal). Always trying to turn every sleepover into a night explorer mission, usually met with blank stares from the other kids, followed by stoopid questions like, "...why?".

I grew up exploring the most untrodden and overgrown parts of the big old Rookwood cemetary, the places where the anonymous war dead lay under metres of grass and broken stone, where tunnels run underfoot that take you from one ruined section to the next, the darkest dark I've ever known. Pink noise: I think that's the term for the noises of your own biobeats in silent black places...

As an adult I am fascinated by empty hospitals, schools, factories, obsolete industrial sites: forgotten spaces. One hilarious night, a bunch of grown up Goonies decided to bust into this huge old warehouse building in Sydney, revealing 8 floors the size of city blocks to explore in the dark. We split up into teams, all of us sweating from the noises the old building was throwing at us, until we reunited on the top floor, the penthouse, which was full of treasure and glittering city views.


the old train tunnels at pyrmont
the disused railways shed behind newtown station
the bluestone alleyways that seduced me when I first came to melbourne all those years ago, with their glittering spines in the moonlight and giggling dead ends
the squats and shacks of friends of friends
empty dank echoey concrete places full of ghosts and possibility