York carries the moniker of “the oldest inland town in Western Australia”. The Ballardong Nyoongar people were custodians of the region for millennia before it was violently occupied by Europeans in 1831. The land was required for sheep and grain farming to feed the increasing settlement population, but the town grew slowly due to farming techniques intended for a European climate and facing resistance from the local population. In response, Lieutenant Henry William St Pierre Bunbury was sent on a mission to York “to make war upon the native”, resulting in the murders of many Ballardong people. Although non-Indigenous Australians now acknowledge traditional owners of the land, land has not and will not be ceded anytime soon so long as this agricultural infrastructure remains on the stolen land.

This work is informed by post-colonial perspectives on the occupation and ownership of the land, putting forward my own self-conscious response to landscape as a white Australian, centring on those metal agricultural structures, fenced properties, and sculpted pastel landscapes of York.

I was warned whilst taking these photographs not to “trespass” by one of the landowners, and the irony stuck with me.