Two white guys carrying a fountain

An antique Greco-Roman water fountain, carried into the middle of the Simpson Desert along the route Burke and Wills got lost on.

2 November 2015

A man in pale clothes stands on red desert gravel under a blue sky, carrying an ornate stone water fountain balanced on his head.

We went to the middle of the Simpson Desert, where Burke and Wills got lost searching for water. We bought an antique Greco-Roman water fountain and took it out there to make the shot.

The initial intention was to draw light to the fact that Indigenous communities don’t have access to clean drinking water. Collaborating with the communities to share that message, doing something Priscilla, Queen of the Desert-like, was very difficult. So we decided to just take it ourselves.

Then it became a commentary on two white guys carrying this fountain, almost following the footsteps of Burke and Wills, searching for a non-existent inland sea in the middle of Australia. We were searching for a non-existent reparation, or change we could make, in a very complicated colonial history.

There we are literally carrying a water fountain along the roads, being driven past by grey nomads and four-wheel drivers thinking what the hell are these guys doing.

A single figure in white, small in the distance, walking the centre line of an empty highway through dry scrub.

A film by Trent Crawford and Finn Astle.

There are also poems.