A lifelong Carlton supporter and final year student in photography at Fairfield’s NMIT, Alice recently indulged one of her great passions in shooting points of interest at the famous place . . . Alice in Wonderland you might say.
“I wanted to document a slice of football history. Carlton’s is an old ground, and now that games are no longer played there it’s important that it is remembered,” she says.
On invitation from the club’s Social Media Co-ordinator Luca Gonano, Alice and a handful of fellow Carlton bloggers paid Visy Park a visit during the recent finals campaign. Alice later returned armed with her trusty Canon 5D Mark II and photographed what she saw.
“I spent a couple of hours wandering the ground and basically doing my own thing,” she says. “I was focusing on the details - the awnings on the old stand, the worn paint on the benchseats, and the brass plaques fixed to them. I took quite a few shots of the plaques because I thought it was important to perpetuate the memories of those who once sat there.
“The whole experience was quite eerie actually, as there are still some obvious remnants of matchday like the signage and what have you.”
Alice’s empathy for Visy Park masks the reality that at 23 years of age she has few real memories of Carlton games there.
“Unfortunately I don’t have too memories of the games at all, so I feel I’ve missed out there,” she says. “It’d be great to get games back to Carlton, but it would take a lot of work to get them back.”
As for the ’95 Grand Final, her only recollection is seeing her Carlton-supporting father and his cohorts smoking fat cigars amid the premiership celebrations that night.
But as she explains: “I barrack for Carlton because Dad barracks for Carlton . . . he used to support Melbourne, but when Ron Barassi crossed to Carlton Dad went with him”.
To view Alice’s images from the outer, click here.
