The Workshop

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 70mm · f/8.0 · 1/125 · ISO 64
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Sand has drifted waist-high against the corrugated iron walls of a low workshop building at Tin City. Roller doors sit half-buried. Two flue pipes rise from the roof. The sky is flat and grey.

Edition

Open edition

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

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

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Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 10 to 20 business days (framed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: The Workshop
Series: Tin City
Catalogue: TCI-021
Process: Giclée
Captured: 31 January 2018
Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1/125 s
ISO: 64
Focal length: 70 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Lake Macquarie, 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

Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

The workshop at one of the Tin City shacks is a small lean-to off the main building, walled in mismatched corrugated iron and roofed in the same. A workbench runs along the back wall, made of timber salvaged from beachfront pallets. A vice is bolted to one end. Hand tools hang from nails along the timber back-board: shifting spanners, a hacksaw, a hammer, several pairs of pliers. A small angle grinder sits on the bench connected to a power cable that runs back to the main shack. The floor is sand, packed hard from years of foot traffic, with a sheet of plywood laid in front of the bench as a working surface.

Most things at Tin City need to be made, fixed, or salvaged on site. Materials arrive in by 4WD over the dunes, often second-hand. A workshop is part of every functioning shack: a place to cut metal to fit a wall, replace a hinge, sharpen something, sort through the contents of a pile of driftwood and choose what's usable. The 11 remaining shacks continue under a licence system that does not allow new construction or rebuilding after destruction, which makes ongoing maintenance the only path the settlement has. The workshop is where that maintenance gets done.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A low corrugated iron structure sits half-swallowed by sand dunes at Tin City. The roofline barely clears the surrounding terrain. Weathered panels of grey and rust-brown iron are bolted to a timber frame. Green trim runs along the fascia. A stovepipe juts from the roof. Roller doors and windows face the open sand. Fence posts stand in a line to the left, almost buried. The sky is flat and overcast. Nothing moves.

Brett Patman

The series

Tin City

2018 · 37 photographs

Two tin sheds were put up on the Stockton Bight dunes in the late nineteenth century to hold provisions for sailors shipwrecked on the beach. During the Great Depression a group of squatters built a series of shacks around them. The settlement that grew became Tin City, on Worimi country, in the largest mobile coastal sand mass in the Southern Hemisphere.

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.