Been documenting the suburb of Newcastle known as Kooragang for a photography project created by Dylan Smyth called 2 hrs north.
One of the geographically largest and most trafficked suburbs of Newcastle – the strangest thing about Kooragang is that no one (officially) lives there.
One side of the suburb known as Kooragang Island is a desolate industrial landscape, a land of coal loaders and fertiliser factories, stolen cars, graffiti, lost underwear, homeless shelters, wild rabbits and burn outs. The other side known as Ash Island, though it remains isolated and access is by dirt road via Hexham, has an interesting and ongoing artistic history, community regeneration projects, nature walks, and a coal industry sponsored sanctuary for an endangered species of frog. Tried to get a bit of a sense of the 2 sides in this simple documentary series.
