The criteria for a well-known (and very rich) photographic competition asks for images that reflect “Australian life”.  

It’s absurd to expect this to be represented in a solitary image and most of the time attempts result in a forced cliché of a kind of crude, misguided myth.

But that’s not to say that you meet a person and they give an impression that they could be from no other part of the world.

It’s then more like an experience with character, place and time rather than a definitive image; you are interacting with language, expression, light, sound, environment, a presence… all distinctively Australian and the remaining picture is one small–but enticing– fragment of a whole.