Love story in Mackay

Last year, I spent 5 months in Mackay, a mining town in northern Queensland, Australia.
I found a job in a grocery store and was living with an Australian family. It was quite a nice period.
But to be honest, there wasn’t much to do in this town, I quickly got bored going in circles! So I took the opportunity to explore the city!

Something quickly caught my attention: numerous shopping carts were wandering around the town.
In France, when we go to the supermarket we put a token or coin to get a cart and we put it back in place once our shopping is done to get our coin or token back. That way no stray carts!

In the street, in nature, on the grass, by the river, wheels in the air, half in the ditch! In short, I came across them almost everywhere, all the time and in all positions.
They looked like lost animals.

And that’s where my imagination takes over…

What if I humanized this everyday object to create a love story between two shopping carts?
It’s romantic, unusual, unexpected and funny at the same time. A bit like me haha.

I imagined a scenario with the photos I already had to build this beautiful love story.
This step allowed me to identify the scenes I was missing. And chance did the rest.

I identified the key moments of a romantic relationship:

• drinking to forget your last love
• living your single life
• the encounter
• girls’ night to debrief about the meeting
• the first date
• falling in love
• true love

I walked around for several weeks with the photos to take in mind. It forced me to be active, to walk everywhere in the city while having my sense of observation on alert and ready to pull out my camera.

Here’s the result.

The neighbor

The big love