Memoryscoping the Bunurong Coast: A project-based PhD speculating on the intimate and complex histories of a personally significant place
Every day of that first arduous COVID winter, Rees Quilford dived into the bracing cold of Bass Strait, took a Polaroid photo, and documented his thoughts. The resulting essay has won the 2021 Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction.
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A gallery of my Polaroid portraits of Cape Paterson’s Bay Beach compiled each day of our first COVID winter.
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A collection of audio/polaroid/prose speculations on days spent at Cape Paterson’s Bay Beach during the COVID winter of 2020.
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A mixed media experiment in the embodied documentation of a local and personally familiar place – Cape Paterson’s Bay Beach.
Continue readingThis work was developed on the unceded lands and waterways of the Boon wurrung and Woi Wurrung language groups of the Kulin Nations. Much of the fieldwork, including visitation, writing and documentation, was undertaken on the lands of the Bunurong/Boonwurrung people.
The Bunurong/Boonwurrung people are the first storytellers of these lands. Their sovereignty was never ceded. This is, and always will be Aboriginal Land.
I respectfully acknowledge the Ancestors and Elders, past, present and emerging.
In terms of my position as a visitor on those lands, I state my lineage and purpose. I am Rees Quilford. I am a fourth-generation settler of Welsh-Irish descent. I am a writer, communications professional and a PhD candidate with RMIT University.
I was born and currently live on Bunurong/Boonwurrung land. I try to tread lightly, understand my place and listen to what it’s telling me.