Faded red lettering on a weathered board reads Filthy Phills Ranch, fixed to a roofline at Tin City. This collection of shacks in the Stockton Bight sand dunes, New South Wales, began.

Signage

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 200mm · f/8.0 · 1/200 · ISO 180
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Faded red lettering on a weathered board reads Filthy Phills Ranch, fixed to a roofline at Tin City. This collection of shacks in the Stockton Bight sand dunes, New South Wales, began with two tin sheds erected in the late 19th century to hold provisions for shipwrecked sailors.

Edition

Open edition

Open edition
Printed to order, no fixed quantity. Each print is hand-signed by the photographer.

Limited edition
A fixed number of prints exist. Once sold, the edition closes permanently. Each print is individually numbered and signed.

$100.00 AUD

Colour

Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 5 to 10 business days (unframed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

Signage at Tin City, black-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Signage at Tin City, raw timber-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.

Signage at Tin City, glass print displayed in situ on a wall.

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Signage
Series: Tin City
Catalogue: TCI-015
Process: Giclée
Captured: 31 January 2018
Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1/200 s
ISO: 180
Focal length: 200 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 297 × 210 mm
Location: Anna Bay, New South Wales, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Anna Bay, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

Red lettering spells out "Filthy Phills Ranch" across a weathered white board fixed to the roofline of one of the Tin City shacks, mounted on a pair of rusted L-shaped metal brackets. The strokes are uneven, the spacing improvised. Years of weather have faded the paint. It is one of the more insistent personal touches among the shacks.

Signage at Tin City does what signage does in any settlement that grew without planning: it does the work of street numbers, postcodes, and property registers, but in language the residents wrote themselves. Some of the shacks have a name lettered onto the front; others carry a painted number. Some carry warnings, some carry a welcome, some carry both. The naming and the lettering predate the formal licence system; they belong to the period when the shacks were technically illegal and the residents preferred their own informal addresses. The signs have stayed up. They are still the way the community refers to the buildings.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Faded red lettering on a weathered board reads Filthy Phills Ranch, fixed to a roofline at Tin City.

Brett Patman

The series

Tin City

37 photographs

Tin City is the local name for a group of huts behind the frontal dune on Stockton Bight, in the Worimi Conservation Lands between Newcastle and Port Stephens, New South Wales, on Worimi country. In 2015 there were 11, all single storey and clad in corrugated iron, with gable or skillion roofs. Most were built in the 1970s and 1980s; the oldest still standing that year dated from December 1970 and the youngest from 1992.

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

The anatomy view shows what this finish is as a physical object: paper margin, mat band, frame depth, acrylic profile. The comparison strip shows how each size sits relative to the others at true scale. Click a size or a finish to update both.