Goblin Swamp
D'Entrecasteaux National Park
Prints are available for sale as limited edition archivally processed selenium toned silver gelatine prints from the original negative
December 1988, my first vist to Goblin Swamp. The day was sunny, far too sunny for such a contrasty subject. This image has ben re-printed on my big DeVere to subdue the highlights, but not too much
Goblin Swamp is at the western end of D'Entrecasteaux National Park. I made my first images in Goblin Swamp in 1998. However, as this is such a tiny and fragile ecosytem I have not made these images very public. Recently Goblin Swamp has become a "tourist ikon", so keeping these images hidden no longer helps protect the site
Some of these images include glimpses of bodies as I have occasionally used Goblin Swamp as a setting for pictures of friends. In the images on this page showing people the figures in Goblin Swamp are tiny. Most do not include glimpses of people, however, because of the nature of the location viewers often see figures where none exist. For images featuring people please go to Naked Portraits 1994 - 1999
The monstrous root forms, part of the visual appeal of Goblin Swamp, were originally under a layer of peat. This peat has been lost to Western Australian Dept of Environmental Consternation badly supervised fuel reduction burns. I have long advocated a change in policy to protect DEZs like peat swamps, granite monadnocks and riparian systems during burns. However, DEC seem to go out of their way to destroy these tiny, fragile forest jewels in their broadscale burns. See Karara in Peat Loss
John Austin