The end of year holidays have provided rare opportunites to explore city, country, and local suburbs. It’s nice to chuck the Kodak Charmera into a pocket and simply walk around an unfamiliar neighbourhood, keep an open mind, and see what catches my attention and focus. The unobtrustive nature of the little Kodak also means that I can largely remain unnoticed on suburban streets.

The fantastic Community Hub and Library here stands as a testament to the vision and the efforts of locals and politicians to ensure that the area, known to have numerous endemic social, economic, and health problems, provides community, resources, recreation, and safe places to gather. Walking through those tall glass doors, the immediate quiet and calm is in stark contrast to the incidents of drug-affected shouting at the air and the turmoil of relationships on the rocks that seem to define the street corners.

Standing before the prize winning photographic prints printed large adorning the gallery space in the Library, I think of the steep price of all the camera gear listed versus the social conditions and poverty outside.

A small photo of a nine year old girl, brandishing a Nikon Z9 and a giant lens, thicker than her arm, stares back at me from an artist card placed under the runner-up picture she entered into the competition – a photo of a dead shark on a tropical beach. Her hands curl around a camera body that cost thousands and a lens that cost even more. And here I am with my $50 Kodak Charmera, looking out of the Library window to the old cemetery that was here before the shopping centre, pondering the absurdity of it all.