Sandstorm

A sandstorm at Tin City reduces the settlement to a series of partial silhouettes. The sand carried by the wind off the dunes fills the foreground of the frame, blowing parallel to the ground. The shacks behind it appear as dark shapes, the corrugated rooflines cutting in and out of the haze as the wind eases and gusts. The ocean is invisible in the direction of the storm, and the dunes themselves are obscured. Daylight comes through as a flat amber wash. Anything not anchored down has been blown into the corners of the frame.

The Stockton Bight is exposed to the southern weather systems that cross from the Pacific to the New South Wales coast. Sandstorms here can run for hours, and the settlement's residents build for them. Doors and windows are tight-fitted and sealed where possible. The cladding on the windward sides of the shacks takes the worst of the sand-blast; on most buildings, the iron on those walls has been replaced more often than the rest. Storms like this one are part of the standing weather of Tin City, not an exception to it. The shacks are designed to be passed through by sand and wind without coming apart.