I always find it intriguing the way foreigners view Australia. For many of my friends who live in Europe and the US, Australia is defined as a vast land where the majority of its happy-go-lucky population clings to the sea board, while the centre of the country is lost to a miasma of heat and dust, the endless red desert home to cattle stations the size of small countries, but little more.

It is true that Australia is a land of contrasts, and for city-dwellers like myself, the middle of the country is as foreign as it is to outsiders. I’ve flown over central Australia and seen the red earth from a lofty view, but I’ve never set foot in the Northern Territory, or the Top End as it’s known, and I am yet to experience the overwhelming vastness of my country of birth.

Often we are more fascinated with countries other than our own. That is certainly true for Viviane Dalles a French social documentary photographer who has been on the road for the past seven years. During this time she’s shot photo essays in India, Cambodia, Thailand, Bangladesh and Nepal in her pursuit to tell stories that are often overlooked by traditional media outlets. But it is only after publishing her book Terra Nullius on life in the Australian outback, that Dalles says she can now turn her attention to home.

This former archivist with Magnum Photos has devoted herself to documentary photography since the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, an event that changed her life and set her on her current course. She agrees that being a freelance documentary photographer is perhaps not one of the most secure career choices, but when a project comes together, as Terra Nullius did, somehow all the hard work, financial uncertainty and sleeping on friends’ couches is worth it.

Australia without the clichés
“I really wanted to do a story in Australia, but nothing to do with the clichés. I do think that in Europe we don’t know Australia at all, we have this idea of sharks, surfing and kangaroos and that’s it,” she laughs and I concur. “The way I tried to document this story was to relate it to the history of Australia, but also talk about daily life outside of the large cosmopolitan cities of Sydney and Melbourne.”

In the beginning Dalles thought she’d be able to set up contacts from her base in Sydney and fly into the Top End when everything was arranged. “But it was just impossible to get in touch with people, so I went to Alice Springs”. And that’s where the Terra Nullius story really began to take shape.

Alice Springs, or The Alice as it is called, is often described as the heart of Australia. “I figured even those living remotely at some point come to Alice Springs to go shopping, so it proved a very good base for me. But I did spend a lot of time waiting next to my mobile phone. You have to be very patient in the outback. Sometimes it drove me crazy, the waiting. But there came a point where I decided to adjust myself to the rhythm of the people living there, to the bush time. Sometimes I had to wait three days, sometimes two weeks and then at some point it would just happen and then it was WOW, that’s why I am here”.

Once people living in the outback decide you have good intentions, they can be very friendly. As a consequence Dalles was able to integrate a variety of situations that enabled her to photograph stockmen driving cattle across the country, a travelling boxing troupe, the cattle station owners of a vast tract of land and to take aerial shots flying with a pilot who allowed her to go with him whenever she wanted.

Not only has Dalles come away with a powerful body of work. There are the stories too like the time when she’d missed the last car going back to Alice Springs, a six-hour trip across the desert. “The cattle station owner said to me, do you drive? I said yes. And she said, okay just take my car and make your way back to Alice Springs. I laughed and she said, I am serious, just take my car and someone will pick it up once you get there. So I drove back on my own and it was just amazing”. She laughs at the memory, which is still tinged with disbelief.

To ensure her photo essay was representative of the cultural complexity that exists in the Australian outback, Dalles was also aware of the need to engage the Aboriginal community – the Northern Territory still has a significant indigenous population. Introduced by a friend who was respected in the community, Dalles was given access she would have otherwise been unable to gain, access that gave even greater depth to her story.

Dalles says battling the heat and flies were only part of the challenges. Language was another barrier “with my terrible French accent” and the colloquialisms of the Australian outback. And then there was the fact that she is an attractive woman and the outback is a male dominion. But she says the men respected her as a professional doing a job there. “I didn’t feel I was in danger”.

Not even when she was camping with the travelling troupe of boxers? “No, the boxers were amazing. They gave me a swag to sleep in, and fed and took care of me. I didn’t think danger would come from the boxers. And if someone tried to come into my tent at night I was surrounded by seven dogs and the boxers, so it was okay, and I felt very safe. And I am very grateful to these people because without them I couldn’t have done my story”.

Seven weeks turned into two years
A story that she originally thought would take around seven weeks ended up consuming several months in total with Dalles travelling to Australia four times in the space of two years. When Dalles returned to France earlier this year she set about finding a publisher, raising the funds for the book through CrowdBooks Publishing. Then it was time to organize the 63 prints for the exhibition in Millau, her hometown in southern France, at the Musée de Millau (Museum of Millau) who had commissioned the work. She hardly had time to catch her breath before there were book signings at Arles and later Perpignan. And now she is working to organize a Terra Nullius exhibition in Paris as well as juggling assignments, one of which will see her in Afghanistan before year’s end.

“And then I will start photographing my own country and get to know France better,” she laughs. But as our interview ends, I wonder how long it will be before her keen eye, and inquisitive mind take her to foreign shores again.

Alison Stieven-Taylor

Terra Nullius
Viviane Dalles

CrowdBooks Publishing © 2012
ISBN 979-10-90912-01-4
First limited edition 500 copies