Manly… 1000 Miles from Care?

When you want to capture images of Australia there is no better place to start than at a beach.

The beach and its coastal communities are an iconic part of the Australian way of life.

Photojournalist David Hancock has spent almost 25 years photographing the environment and people nearby his home in Manly Australia. Hancock says, "It is one of the most beautifully intact environments in the world this close to a major city."
“We’ve got whales, turtles, penguins and a truly amazing diversity of underwater life and the geography is absolutely stunning.”

Hancock’s photographic perspective of Manly captures the beauty of the environment and the people, but also encompasses a sense of history. “It is more by accident than design that the environment around Manly has been preserved,” he said. “The Defence department, the Quarantine station and the Catholic Church locked up large tracts of land thus preserving them from the worst excesses of 20th century development.”

His new 120 page self-published book will be on sale at local outlets and online from July 2008. David uses Manly as a backdrop for a look at a slice of Australian life. "Manly was a kind of 19th Century amusement parlour, a place where people came to get away from their mundane lives and a degree of that remains today. You see this influence in how business is done and in the casual way people live here."