White wine is essential to Eirik's signature seafood extravaganza.

Darwin represented the halfway point of my Odyssey, as I would part with Team Fantastic in Perth. After having spent nearly three weeks in the scorching desert heat of Australia’s centre in high summer, the cut-the-air-with-a-knife humid heat of subtropical Darwin was a welcome relief. Or maybe it was the air-conditioned room at the backpacker’s. Or maybe it was the rooftop pool and bar, with the cheapest shots in town. Or maybe it was just that because of the cyclone season the tent stayed in the car for three days. Whatever the reason, Darwin was a welcome break. But more important, it was Christmas!

Now, Christmas dinner can be many things to many people, but where we’re from it consists mainly of stuffing your gut with as much pork fat as humanly possible. True, there will usually be some garnish to add colour to the plate, but that will be cooked in pork fat as well. On the day of Christmas Eve, in Norway it’s customary to eat Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve and digest it on Christmas day. However, we realised that roasting a side of pork, frying up pork and lard meatballs and pork and lard sausages did not seem as tantalizing as it normally does in the sub zero temperatures of the homeland. It is tempting to explain this deviation from tradition by pointing out that the rooftop kitchen at the backpacker’s was pretty busy, and that it would be rude to the other guests to occupy most of it for the time it would take to prepare our traditional plethora of pork, but that would be a blatant lie. The truth is we simply weren’t in the right place to glut on pork. Instead, we willed to wander the way we would’ve wandered were we in Darwin. Where we were.

See Eirik in action in episode 7 of The Inland Sea.

As it turned out, what we would have done in Darwin was to go for seafood, which we did. That was a first for Christmas for me, and that fitted neatly with the Odyssey’s theme as a whole – it was all a first. The dish we made, dubbed Random Crap in a Wok, ended up as a casserole with rock lobster, prawns and a thickened white wine sauce, complete with pasta and a side of garlic bread. As the fillum shows, cooking on a rooftop kitchen in Darwin in December was a somewhat more physical experience than what I was used to, is used to and most likely ever will be used to associate with epicurean pursuits. The previously mentioned humidity in Darwin coupled with the not insignificant heat emitted from numerous gas stoves in the kitchen resulted in one goddamned sweaty chef. Still, ludicrous humidity and ridiculous heat could not stop us from enjoying a borderline decent dinner on Christmas Eve in the Northern Territory. As is so often the case in this curious experience through time and space, the environmental challenges of that particular kitchen could be overcome with a healthy measurement of cheap wine. There you go then, Christmas dinner and chef cooked with a combination of gas and sub tropical climate in a rooftop kitchen at the friendliest backpacker’s in Darwin. Nicely so.

 RECIPE: Random Crap in a Wok (serves 5 in 37.5 degree heat with 150 per cent humidity)

- 1 glass chilled dry white wine for the chef

- 2 rock lobsters

- 300g tiger prawns

- 6 to 8 french shallots

- 1 leek

- 2 garlic cloves

- 4 carrots

- 1 broccoli

- 1 glass dry white wine for the sauce, probably a bit more

- An additional glass of dry white wine for the chef, chilled

- Thickening

- 1 punnet of light cream

- Juice from 1 lemon

- More wine for the chef on the final stretch

- Plenty of dill

- Salt and pepper to taste

- Ever so slightly with sugar (you know, for the shallots)

- Fresh pasta

- Garlic bread

Best served with chilled White wine (if there’s any more left).

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Yes! The Inland Sea has a nice new intro thanks to the hard work and dedication of two talented Norwegians who have been studying in Melbourne in the last few years. The design of the sequence has been done by graphic designer Stig Bratvold, who also made The Inland Sea’s logo and the visual identity for our Twitter page and YouTube channel. It has been brought to life by animator Håvard Forland Isaksen, with music from French band Hasch’m'Meneum. I am forever grateful for their efforts and couldn’t be happier about the result.

Take a look for yourselves and feel free to let us know what you think below.

It should be added here that beyond the excitement of having a slick looking and exciting piece to introduce every episode, and a more defined visual identity across the web site and social media umbrella, it has been inspiring to work on the project over the last few months. Being the sole motor can get a bit ‘lonely’ and it has been extremely motivating to see others take an interest in the furthering of the series.

The revamped site design, as you may or may not have noticed, is still in process but we’re getting there. It has been made possible thanks to the helpful hands of Morten Warholm Haugen and Chris Scanlon.

Another inspiring note is that The Inland Sea was the second most watched series on KoldCast TV Thursday this week, with nearly 9,000 views in one day. There’s definitely excitement in those numbers.

Thanks are in order to Aydrea Walden ten Bosch who wrote this piece for The Sixth Wall, KoldCast TV’s blog, about Australian things (and people) who have made an impact on the world. No doubt this piece was driving factor for increasing the views for our show.

Make sure to catch up on previous episodes in their new packaging, and keep an eye out for brand new material, as the odyssey will continue next week. Join us on Facebook, and check back here regularly for exclusive content.

You can always find us on KoldCast TV, ‘the other TV network’, where you can browse a range of other original series, across all genres, made by independent filmmakers and documentarians.Tweet

Shooting on location is always a challenge. Shooting on location while on a road trip is an even greater challenge. How do you plan for something you don’t yet know what looks like? asks visual artist Dida Sundet. (The text continues below the gallery).

Before we left Melbourne I had little to no idea what to expect. I had started working on an idea for a new series that would deal with fear, specifically fear of the unknown, the juxtaposition of horror and humour, and feelings of displacement. My research up to that point had looked at two things in particular: European fairytales, and the typical Australian outback horror scenario from films like Wolf Creek, a crazy lone man in the middle of nowhere, seemingly helpful to lost travellers, only to turn out to be their worst nightmare. There is something very alluring about such stories, and the questionable divide between fact and fiction in them.

Preparing for the shoots remained a challenge pre-departure. There was very limited space for props in the car, and the choice fell naturally on some cheap replicas of hockey masks in honour of horror clichés. That was all we had room for, really, no costumes, no back ups, just a few pieces of plastic.

Lusus Naturae (2009) and Desert Nightmare (2009) are images based on classical pop cultural characters, specifically homicidal maniacs, from the cinematic likes of Jason (Friday the 13^th,), The Humungus (Mad Max 2) or Mick (Wolf Creek). They play on the well-known story and frightening idea of an encounter with a madman in a deserted place. The unusual perspective and the tension between our memories of similar narratives and the strangeness of the scene is intended to make its audience feel uneasy and reflect a general fear of the unknown, but also aims to partly diffuse and confuse by contrasting strange elements. The absurdness of these elements and the way they are presented are meant to juxtapose the implied horror with a touch of humour.

Coober Pedy was my first meeting with the desert. As a Norwegian, the Australian outback was, and still is, an unfamiliar universe. Mesmerizing, alluring and terrifying all at once. In Coober Pedy I immediately knew I had found a perfect location to visualize images of a “desert nightmare”. As with my previous work, juxtaposing the real with the unreal, and horror with humour, are key elements to represent notions of displacement, and to visualize a borderland between reality and fantasy.

Check out our  photos from Coober Pedy here.

The chaos that followed the shoot feeds perfectly into the thematic of the images. It was terrifying at first, and absurdly humorous in hindsight. As we packed up at about 2 o’clock in the morning (light painters are creatures of the night) and headed back to camp, two motorbikes we had observed earlier returned and started chasing us while screaming some rather unpleasant things. For what reason, I am not sure, but I can only guess it was part boredom, part curiosity and perhaps a desire for mischief. Faced with a situation in which all factors are unknown, in an unfamiliar (and pitch black) landscape, panic and fear spreads like wildfire. As Eirik stated the next day, I’m sure we must have looked like idiots and probably played right into their practical joke, if it was indeed a joke…(?) But at the time the fear I felt was very real. All of a sudden I found myself faced with a myth, a scenario, I was having fun with only moments earlier – a real life desert nightmare. These images now embody for me what I thought was pure fantasy, as I found myself faced with my Norwegian ‘small-town naivety’ in the vast Australian outback. In some ways, it could not have been more perfect.

Watch episode 3 here.

I do need to add this: Coober Pedy was one of the most exciting and exotic places I have ever been. It is a place I would go back to in a second if given the chance, and I have nothing but love and admiration for it. In many ways Coober Pedy was the first place on our trip that opened my eyes to the incredible beauty of the Australian outback, and my imagination to ways of creating a dialogue between my cultural heritage and my new country of residence.

Image gallery “En route to episode 3″ here.

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"The Ship": Norwegian Asgeir Wølner lives 15 metres above ground in a tree hut called "The Ship".

There were really three things in particular that sparked the idea and framed the project. I wanted to work with multimedia narratives, something I had never done before. I was also very excited about the opportunity to travel through the outback. Additionally, I was curious about intentional communities in Australia. This was sparked by a couple of articles I wrote while I was in Norway back in 2007.

I heard about a place called Trehyttelandsbyen (The Tree Hut Village) outside of Oslo. Seven people in their 20s had purchased an old cabin and an acre of land in the forest. They decided the cabin was their communal space and each built their own tree hut surrounding it, to live in. These were small huts, from 12-20 square meters, some as high up as 20 meters above ground.

All the tree huts were built exclusively with second-hand materials, and they had also added two buildings on the ground – an art workshop and a sound recording studio. They were not connected to the power grid or the council’s sewage system, as they used an outdoor composting toilet to fertilize the soil in their vegetable gardens. The group had done extensive work on their land to grow as much of their own food as possible, opting for a sustainable lifestyle, in accordance with nature.

Photo gallery from Trehyttelandsbyen here.

After the group had lived in the village for eight years, the local council evicted them for breaching local building laws. The residents were also asked to tear down the tree huts. So began a long campaign for them to be recognized as an experimental eco-community.

Since then, the group has received much help in framing a proposal to the council, and as of mid-year 2010 they were successful, and have now moved back into their tree huts.

Read article in Dagsavisen (2007, Norwegian).Tweet

It is with a mix of excitement, nerves and total exhaustion that I now can finally present the first instalment of The Inland Sea: An Australian Odyssey. It’s an adventure and an experiment. It’s an online documentary made under mindboggling harsh conditions, while attempting to do too many things all at once. This, in order to replicate a somewhat extreme pressure on contemporary journalists to become “Inspector Gadget” reporters, mastering everything from writing to producing audio-visual material, making singular stories in to multimedia events.

Watch episode 1 here.

Our crew, three men and one lady strong, drove across Australia in ten weeks, covering a distance similar to that from Melbourne to Oslo. We had not a single interview set up before departure. We had little or no time to do prior research, and no previous insight to the interview subjects. Having driven for 12 hours non-stop, in 40+ degrees, we walked out of the car and straight into an interview, and then on to post a blog and photos online. Finally, we’d pitch our tents for a couple of hours of sleep before repeating it all again. We did this almost every day for ten weeks.

It has been just over two years since we returned from our adventure. It has taken this long to digest the experiences, and to get enough distance to the material to actually sit down and write and edit it, without being too conscious of myself, of us, being subjects in the narrative. That is, we’re not really. We made the stories, and rarely turned the camera on ourselves, because we were too busy chasing the next story. Hence, the stock footage has its limitations, both in what we’ve captured, as well as the quality of what we did capture.

The footage is rough, the sound occasionally very poor, and the editing likely to be a bit choppy along the way.

Having said that, I really don’t mean to be apologetic about the quality of the production. But, I believe it makes for an interesting project that reflects contemporary movements in the journalism industry. We now have so many tools at our disposal; only the imagination really sets the boundaries for development of new expressions and new genres. That is, as long as we learn to properly utilize the new tools we are offered, and as long as our editors and employers will allow us to experiment with them.

This was the impetus for the project. I came from a newspaper background, and besides being a useful point-and-shoot photographer, I didn’t really know much about the practical applications of visual journalism, let alone using audio, and building online publishing platforms. But, I’m slowly learning, and I’m eager to learn more.

Over the next few months, the webisodes will roll out approximately fortnightly. At this point I can’t say how many I will be making, but a rough estimate is 20, following our travel route. This coming part of the process is about making as much material, as many stories as I can out of what we’ve got.

We will visit ecovillages, encounter wildlife and talk about community experience in the outback. We will have audience with royalty, try to celebrate Christmas and new years very far away from home (with debatable success), and we’ll even go scouting for UFOs in the red centre.

The process has been amazing and awful at the same time. It has been overwhelming and exciting and, not to mention, eye opening. It has been, and will continue to be, a path of stratospheric highs and equally remarkable lows.

My hope is that at the end of the journey, I will have learnt a whole lot – and you will have been reasonably informed, perhaps even entertained.

Cheers,

SteinarTweet

A presentation of The Inland Sea at La Trobe University during the Media and Cinema Studies Program’s postgraduate conference in November 2010.

Abstract:

The Inland Sea: An Australian Odyssey is an online travel documentary. Over ten weeks in 2008/09 Steinar Ellingsen and a team of three travelled 16,000 km through Australia. The impetus for the project was to look for alternative communities in remote, rural and suburban Australia.

Last year’s presentation was based around a literature review discussing the theoretical framework of the project, which is best described as an experiment in convergence journalism – by a journalist with a background exclusively in paper.

As The Inland Sea is about to be edited and released as short episodes online over the coming months, this presentation will focus on form and content and background for the online documentary.

Topics to be covered include: online publishing; multimedia journalism on the web; the thematic background for the project; and the bilingual element of the documentary (English/Norwegian).Tweet

It’s a first time for everything, and perhaps a belated one as such in this instance. I recently wrote a piece about The Inland Sea in Norwegian. The article appeared in ANSAnytt, a quarterly magazine for Norwegian international students worldwide, published by the Association of Norwegian Students Abroad (ANSA).

Get the full article (in Norwegian) here.

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Note: Under the banner PhDelirium, I will be blogging about the project, sharing my excitement and frustration with the tasks at hand. I also want to use this space as an online research journal of sorts, to share more fully the ins and outs of the project.

Right. After a year of reworking the project and upgrading my candidature to a PhD, it is finally time to start our ‘second trip’ around Australia.

Just over a year ago we were in the middle of the desert, crossing the Nullarbor, on our way back to Melbourne after 72 days of charging through the Australian outback, armed to the teeth with cameras and laptops, and other recording devices.

We were coming home from an odyssey that none of us could possibly wrap our heads around pre-departure.

It was extremely weird to come back to Melbourne. It had been an extended period of camping, working around the clock in burning heat, and often driving for days without much social interaction beyond the personnel in the car.

Coming back to Melbourne, all we wanted to do was to hide away and not talk to anybody. I think it funny in a way, seeing we had set out to explore the notion of ‘community’ in the outback. I will consider this point to greater extents in upcoming blogs.

Going over the footage, we soon discovered that what we had shot on the road was something very different to what we had initially thought. Then again, I’m not sure we even really knew what we thought it would be like in the first place.

We were throwing ourselves out there to see what we could find, and trying to make sense of the unknown as we rushed onwards in a battle against time.  We often referred to our trip as ‘the Japanese tourist’-version of documentary making. Hence, some ‘holes’ were to be expected in the film stock.

To a notable extent, the footage we got suffered because of three main things: little time for planning the documentary pre-departure; limited time to travel, rarely giving us more than two-three days in each place; and finally, our very poor sound gear.

Having gone through the motions from excitement to outright despair in the last year, it is with a refreshed pair of eyes that I am now going back to the footage, to present the material, with the benefit of hindsight. It’s an exciting task (at least at the moment) to now go back and revisit what we actually did get, work out ways to present it online, and cataloguing the process of editing as well as the trip itself.

I believe there are still good stories there to be told.  Different from what I had imagined at the start, perhaps. But there are stories to come that definitely do focus on the notion community – from alternative communities such as a handful of ecovillages and the micronation Hutt River, to community groups like Care for Hedland in Port Hedland, monitoring turtles on the local beaches, the Margaret River Soupie, a group of tree-logging protesters in a WA forest.

There are stories about people – and places. Some very short stories, some longer stories. Some little interviews, some bigger.

There is some Australiana; snakes and crocodiles, and the desert spectacular that this country has to offer. There is even a failed attempt at discovering UFOs in the red centre.

So without too much ado, I say it’s time to get started.

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Geraldton: Ben Clarke and his family are restricting themselves to eating and drinking only what is produced within a 250km radius of their home in Geraldton.

“We start on the 1st of Feb,” says Ben Clarke.

We’re in his front yard, crouching over a pile of drying apricots he got from Northampton, about 50kms north of Geraldton – about as far north as you can grow stone fruit, Ben informs us.

“We got these from a local farmers market that is starting up. There’s a few people
who are selling stuff there already on Sundays. And that encourages community, when you know the people that are growing your food, and they know who they’re providing it to.”

This is the onset for the 100-mile diet.

Not a weight loss program

It has nothing to do with losing weight or looking after your posture. Rather, it has everything to do with connecting to the people, the land and the produce in your local surroundings.

It is an attempt to re-engage with place through food. As a teacher in sustainability at a local high school, this is something that is close to Ben’s heart.

“[As people] we’ve re-imagined ourselves as global Gods and say that we live in a global village, eating stuff that comes from all over the place. When you look at recipes in newspapers – nine times out of ten the asparagus that you need is not in season unless you import them from Chile or somewhere else.”

As such, the 100-mile diet involves taking a firm stand against the globalisation of food distribution, and what Ben refers to as ‘replicating humanity as a series of McDonald’s chains.’

“What we’re saying is that to live in Geraldton and to be a part of the community in Geraldton, we need to be committed to working out what it means to live here. What seasons are here and what kind of food can you produce. Because, otherwise you end up in a global suburb where you don’t really know what’s different.”

Preparing for the diet

Next to the apricots, a few corncobs are looking nearly ready to be ground to flour. Another first for the Clarkes, who love their organic experiments. They swapped the corn for a few chooks they had to spare. Although they are already reaping the benefits of having their own wheat flour, this process is different, and again, the only way to learn is to try.

We carry on through the front yard, through an array of plants and vegetables. Some struggling, others thriving. Ben grabs a handful of the sandy soil that is typical of the mid-west coast. He shrugs as the sand runs through his fingers.

It’s not a particularly good soil for growing a lot of typical European vegetables, but Ben is absolutely determined they will find there are loads of things that will grow here, eventually.

Even in the scorching hot and dry, windy, summer of Sun City there ought to be ways to keep a domestic garden in good health. The only way to find out what, and how, is to experiment with ways of keeping the moisture in the ground, and dry composting, Ben says.

In the kitchen his wife Tamara is cooking up a large pot of apricot jam, infused with ginger. The house smells like an organic heaven. With six children to feed as well themselves, the couple need to approach the starting date with a bit of preparation.

They know that they will have to give up on a lot of big things. Sugar, rice, and possibly coffee are the first major things to be crossed off the usual consumption-list. But Ben’s not fazed at all. A cheeky smile and a truckload of enthusiasm spell out the strong determination behind the diet. He draws a link to travelling, and to discovering a fresh new, local, cuisine.

“The other day we went down to one of the beaches and got some cockles and boiled them up. And the indigenous people of this area know a lot about the food that you can eat. They’re going to take us to some places and show us some of the things that they eat. But, again, it’s seasonal, and it’s not a lot that is in season at the moment. This is traditionally the hottest and driest time of the year. So you wouldn’t expect to find a lot of stuff.”

“Biting the bullet”

-So why would you start such a diet at the supposedly ‘worst’ time of year?

“We talked about it all last year, so we gotta bite the bullet and start,” Ben laughs. “Rather than looking at it as a negative thing in terms of what we’re going to miss out on, we’re excited to see what we are going to find and how it is going to connect us to this place.”

“Our generation loves being nomads, to be able get up and have no commitments. And I think in one sense we are richer, but in another sense we are poorer.”

Ben and Tamara have lived in every state of Australia. They have spent five years in Eastern Europe, and their kids are well travelled. But, he says he would like them to know and understand the seasons, and to know what land does over time.

“How does this affect our land into the future? What happens if we put seaweed on it? Is it going to be a good thing or is it going to increase the salt content of the soil so much it is going to be useless? I don’t think it will, but unless you actually do that, you’re not going to find out. Is bringing sheep manure going to be a good thing? How many chooks can we run as a family?”

Ben is a man of many ideas and many experiments. Possibly, he’s a man with even more questions. And he wants those questions answered. But, more than anything at the moment, he’s ready to start the family’s new diet.

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Eirik Laugerud pulls a signature move on the road to Darwin.

Written by Eirik Laugerud

Being on the road in Oz for some seven weeks, you learn a lot about many things; your self, colliding cultures, man vs nature and so on. For me, driving, one of the most interesting and heart-warming things I’ve gotten acquainted with is the wave. I was first introduced to the wave when we left the Barossa Valley, heading north on the Stuart Highway, by our fearless film-maker and native Oztralian Ben Hall.

I was excited. In the motherland, you never wave at someone, unless you’re trying to make a point about someone acting like an ass in traffic, or if you see someone you know. The wave had to be tried out, and fast. To my delight, I found that, indeed, the wave is an integral part of life on the road in outback Oz.

Now, after roughly 10,000 kms on the roads of Oz, mostly the Sturt highway and the roads down the west coast, I’ve had  plenty of time to contemplate the significance of the wave. I’ve come to a few conclusions.

First, in this country there’s a group of professionals that truly deserves the wave. Without truckies, this weird and wonderful continent would have grinded to a halt pretty quick. That doesn’t take a lot of insight, and so I quickly realised that those brave men and women in their gigantic road trains deserved every wave I could hand out. If nothing else, just as a sign of appreciation of the dirty, lonely and hard work they perform day in and day out.

Second, and this is a bit more individual on my part I reckon, the roads through the desert and general outback areas of Oz are, if not dangerous and treacherous, at least they are roads where things can go wrong, horribly wrong. Therefore, I find that the wave signals something of a bond between travellers; a sign that those few others who frequent the same road as you are aware of your presence. And, that in case of need or emergency they will help you recover.

A lot has been written about the harshness of this country and its nature, and I’m not sure how much of it I actually agree with. However, I do see that the sometimes rugged, sometimes beautiful, always mesmerising interior of Oz can easily swallow you whole, never to see daylight again. You drive for hours on end, never seeing a single person other than the ones in your own car. The possibility of your car breaking down always lingers at the back of your head. That’s why the wave is such a reassuring feature of outback driving. No matter if the person you meet is a miner, prospector, road worker, truckie, fellow traveller or something entirely different, you make the tiny effort of raising a limb to show that: yes, we are both out here in the middle of the goddamned nowhere and we might both need assistance around the next bend. So, I greet you and you greet me and we both make a silent wish none of us will need that help.

Luckily, we have come a long way without any need for assistance, and we haven’t come  across any one who have had the need either.

Lately, there’s been a steady decline of waves, as we’ve down south on the west coast through more and more densely populated areas; a decline that much resembles the rise in waves we saw when we headed north from Adelaide on the Stuart highway. There must be reasons, and here, too, I’ve had some time to contemplate possible answers.

A couple of unwritten rules have established themselves regarding the use of the wave.

First, there seems to be a perimeter around built up areas. Whenever the speed limit drops from the highest allowed, the wave is no longer part of the highway vernacular. Especially around towns, the wave ceases to be part of the common code of conduct.

Second, if the distances between built up areas, again towns especially, drops to, say, 250-300 kms, there is no use for the wave. I have come to think that the bond one forges on the road where nothing is around for hundreds upon hundreds of kms is seen as unnecessary if one is within reasonable proximity of some kind of civilization. Which is fair dinkum, I guess. I reckon it helps keep the wave special. Or, at least it helps keep the feeling that my presumption, about it being a silent recognition, just might be right. Out there, we’re all in the same boat – and we can all be caught in a storm.

Sadly, the time has come for me to return to Norway and it’s waveless traffic environment. But, I will always cherish the truly good memories I take home with me of Oz, the lonely highways and the wave I’ve shared with so many fellow travellers on those roads. Such is life. What tomorrow brings, no one knows. Maybe I will be back; waving again, in a shorter time than any one had dared dream possible.

Peace.

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