ABOVE: ‘The Road to Eaglehawk’ painted by Geoff Hocking from photographs taken by Les Elliott of Geelong:
the road to Eaglehawk: remember the Fifties? Over the past year of gloom, doom and lockdown, a second cousin has been sending me images scanned from her late father’s collection of slides. By Geoff Hocking Her mother was my mother’s first cousin and they lived in Geelong. Both were great friends as young girls. My mother often spent her teenage holidays in Geelong, and they kept up a close relationship all their lives. Our relations would often come to Bendigo and stay with us in Golden Square. Her father, Les, was a keen amateur photographer, and he got out and about in Bendigo and surrounds making a
visual record of old mining sites, old and abandoned farmhouses, rusting winding gear, Lake Eppalock under construction, Lake Neangar at Eaglehawk, and the Bendigo Easter Fair. His photographs were mainly taken in the late Fifties. I can only work this out because any photograph in which I can be seen, I look about eight or nine years old, which would date the pictures as 1955. Receiving these photographs inspired me to
translate them into a series of paintings of the mining sites. One photograph that excited me in particular was of the tramline running through Long Gully. I have spoken about this stretch of road before, as it was drawn and reproduced as a coloured linocut by the artist Kenneth Jack at around the same time. What was serendipitous is that Les stood in exactly the same spot that Ken had done his drawing. 53
