This remote settlement is 2,500kms from Brisbane and 827km’s from Cairns. Its location makes it a major logistical challenge to get equipment and manpower on site even before you start considering the technical difficulties of the job.
However, for Fulton Hogan’s specialist airport team, it was simply a matter of taking everything in their stride and making sure they trucked in all they would need, including their massive transportable asphalt plant.
For the uninitiated it is akin to a giant multi-vehicle transformer, that arrives as a series of large articulated truck trailers and turns into an asphalt plant capable of producing 300 tonnes of black top an hour with its own portable laboratory where technicians and scientists continually check samples to ensure the plant maintains the highest possible quality product for resurfacing the runway.
For LP Commercial Photography, it meant flying me, seven camera bodies, time-lapse slider and controller and an assortment of lenses, gimbal, tripods, microphones and everything in the kitchen sink off to Weipa to live on a local mining camp for a week. A one-man mission to capture as many of the FH team’s different techniques and processes as possible to create a short documentary film on the project both as a record of the work and also for use for future marketing endeavours.
The brief was to supply a range of stills and video from the project and also capture the surrounding community.
Far North Queensland was a new experience, on the challenging side was the heat and wind that blew constant clouds of dust from the surrounding landscape across the airport. I still have a camera where the grip is slightly tinted red from the dust that I just can’t get out of the little grooves in the rubber.
But on the plus side was the incredible FH team on the job and the local people, all of whom were great to work with, friendly, inviting and always interested in what was going on.
One of my favourite moments was creating the last time lapse section of video, with the sunsetting over the sea.
The sequence took about 3 hours to film and while I was sitting there manning the cameras I watched a father teaching his two young sons - who probably weren’t yet into double digits - how to fish with a spear. Then as the sky started to darken they left leaving me alone at the spot.
Then a few minutes later a ute came racing over to me…. not sure what to expect, a man jumped out breathless dangling a massive fish…. “I saw you over here with your cameras…. I just caught this and nobody is going to believe me…. Please can you take a photo and send it to me!!!”
He then left and I was alone again as dusk turned to the dark blue of twilight and it began to get seriously dark. As I waited for the time-lapse sequence to finish I glanced over at the “Warning Crocodiles” signs and thought. “You know what, I wonder if crocs are active at night now I’m alone here...” OK, I’ll admit it was not the best time to check that type of information…. particularly when wikipedia on my phone told me they were most active hunters at night…. you have never seen a set of cameras packed away as quickly as I did that night while all the time scanning a torch over the ocean to see if there was a glint of eye reflection on the water line!!!
When I worked as a photojournalist my cameras took me on so many different adventures, experiences and locations. Thirty-three years later and working in commercial photography it’s great to know that they still do. Weipa Airport what can I say, a great shoot, great people and a beautiful location. Thanks for having us.
Andy
