Millicent 2004

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Monday, 20 September 2004
What will this trip away bring? I'm sitting in another motel, this time in the South Australian town of Millicent. I arrived via Ballarate, Hamilton and Mount Gambia. It included one stretch of road west of Hamilton that I had never driven on before.
Millicent is not a large town but it does have more then one Child Care Centre. I remember a few years ago I worked in another Kindergarten in town.
Booked into the Diplomat Motor Inn which sounds pretty up market. Its a nice enough motel and the owners are friendly. The room I'm in, seems to be equipped for pensioners. Bars in the bathroom allows you to move from the shower to the toilet then to the wash bowl without loosing your grip on a handle. The shower tap is both hot and cold, with instructions that read "Turn to the right to get hot water, then turn to the left to arrive at the temperature you desire"
It took about five hours to reach here and I'm glad there is room service.

Tuesday, 21 September 2004
The director showed me around three rooms and told me I had three days to complete the assignment. It seemed an easy shoot was coming up. Within the hour my mind had changed. That first hour was spent trying to get babies to smile which proved to be impossible.
My next hurdle was trying to photograph twenty babies on a mat for a group photo.
The director told me I had all day to finish. I hadn't planned any sight seeing, so that was fine with me.
After another hour or so with crying visitors upsetting the children, some who were so scared that eventually I had to suggest we leave them out of the group photo altogether. I was ready to pack up and go back to Melbourne (sounds familiar)
The morning became the afternoon and the number of expose film grow to twenty. I still had to photograph children in the other two rooms who were only in that day.
Finished at two in the afternoon. Not much else happened for the rest of the day.

Wednesday, 22 September 2004
Most of the staff were very helpful and didn't mind sitting the children at activities. When I organise the children I always get good shots. I also understand you can't do the same with babies.
Again the sheer number of children makes this centre hard to do properly.
As it turned out twenty children needed to photographed in one room and a few extra children in the other rooms.
Before leaving there was a large group photo that needed to be shot. Some parents wanted to stay with their children to get activities shots before they took their children home. Mid-day arrived and most of the babies were in bed.

I made a phone call to my boss letting her know I would not be available for the next two weeks.

I continued with the single day older children. Children who didn't sleep were also able to photographed . By time the last shot had been exposed it was three o'clock. Only a morning session on thursday then I drive back to Melbourne and a break from photographing little children.

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