At the end of January, Elaine ever so thoughtfully organised a weekend trip to Bendigo to celebrate our first meeting anniversary (not to be confused with engagement anniversary, buying house anniversary or wedding anniversary). She’s good in doing that sort of thing.

Why Bendigo? Well, I’d never actually visited Bendigo before (Mum or Dad, feel free to leave a comment to the contrary), and their town gallery was holding a photographic exhibition from London entitled “The World’s Most Photographed”. As part of a special package we got a night’s accommodation at Marlborough House and two tickets to the exhibition at a pretty darn good rate.

The best Information Centre I’ve yet seen

Marlborough House

The tickets to The World’s Most Photographed

The first day in Bendigo we spent the afternoon visiting their famous pottery factory. They make all sort of plates, cups, jugs, bowls and just about any vessel you can think of. In a side room they had a man making these little dishes on a pottery wheel (I think that’s what they’re called, feel free to correct me). He made it look so easy. You know, when someone makes it look so easy, it’s generally because they are utterly amazing at what they do.

Master clay turner in action

Later on the first day, we spent some time at the Chinese Museum commemorating the once significant Bendigo Chinese community that quickly emerged during the time of the Gold Rush, and subsequently disappeared just as quickly when the gold ran out. The purpose built Museum contained the most extensive collection of Chinese artefacts I’d seen outside of China, it’s was truly impressive. The centrepiece of their collection is the longest Chinese Dragon in the world, which makes an appearance every Easter.

The colourful Chinese temple

The Joss House

Inside the Chinese Museum

A statue. Of who? I don’t know…

A sign entitled “A tribute to all good mothers”

The Sacred Heart Cathedral located next to where we were staying

A hefty surf’n'turf from The Foundry

On the second day we quickly dropped by the Bendigo market in the morning, which was surprisingly busy and comparatively full of quality goods.

It was then onto the main reason why we were there, The World’s Most Photographed exhibition. The exhibition contained about 20-30 photographs of… well… you guessed it, each of the world’s most photographed people, which included Muhammad Ali, James Dean, Mahatma Gandhi, Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, Adolf Hitler, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Queen Victoria.

I thought they were just going to just be reproductions or something, but they were the actual prints made by the actual negatives developed by the actual photographers who took photos of the actual people. There’s a good chance that each of those people listed above held and critically evaluated the prints that were hanging on the wall in front of me. Crazy.

Each of the pictures had a little white card next it which explained who the photographer was, when the photograph was taken, and a little back story to the image. One of the most interesting stories was how the photo below came to be. During a fashion photo shoot Marilyn got a chance to go through some of the proofs, and while most people would mark discarded images in the frame with a pen, she used a hairpin to destroy images of herself she didn’t like. Hence the orange cross created by a smudging of the photographic chemicals before they had a chance to dry. The photographer still liked the image and decided to print it anyway. Ironically it’s now become one of the iconic images of Marilyn.

Photograph by Bert Stern, 1962

After the exhibition, and a quick look around the rest of the gallery (paintings don’t excite me half as much as photographs), we started the trek home. Just outside Bendigo we stumbled upon a disused mining shaft which had been converted into a small tourist/education attraction. I just had to climb the tower (I’m a guy after all, and guys like climbing things). From the top I got an unhindered view of the surreal skyline around Bendigo that resulted in the amazing photos below.

Surreal sky

A view of Elaine napping from the top of the tower

Finally, to finish off the day, we dropped by Castlemaine. It’s a reasonably quiet town, but we did manage to find some interesting shops. One in particular sold just about anything you could think of. It was like a junkyard from the 50’s, but everything was in great condition. It’s definitely worth visiting Castlemaine just to see that!

This is just the front entrance, there’s a Bunnings-sized warehouse out back!

It was such a great way to spend the weekend. Bendigo threw up some really great photographic opportunities, and the exhibition fired up my interest in portrait photography again. Double bonus points for Elaine. Cool.