Renowned Australian photographer visits Warrnambool to share his new passion for the outback

The renowned photographer is in Warrnambool this weekend to run a photography workshop on Saturday, and will speak at Kardinia Church on Sunday at 10am as part of the Easter Arts Festival.

He is no stranger to the south-west. He was one of the few to be granted special permission to access a now-blocked off cliff tunnel so he could photograph the 12 Apostles from the beach below for the Sydney Olympics.

Duncan spent three weeks going there every day and night, with a ranger, knowing "it would never happen again". "It was amazing," he said.

Those iconic panoramic image were all shot in film. "I still shoot things on film from time to time because there's something very beautiful about film," he said.

It was as a teen he discovered his love for photography - something that has taken him all around the world capturing stunning images. But it has also taken him onto movie sets with the likes of Mel Gibson and Paul Hogan, and resulted in some of his most iconic images such as the album cover for Midnight Oil's Diesel and Dust record.

It was a 16-year-old Duncan who had an "epiphany" of sorts when he saw his own black and white photos appear in the tray when he was processing them at a technology camp. It was life changing. To the detriment of his schoolwork, his focus turned to photography.

"Because my parents weren't well off, they said: 'you're going to have to make this photography thing work, we can't afford to pay for all the bits of pieces'," he said.

And it did pay for itself. In the days well before the iPhone and selfie, Duncan started taking pictures for his school friends, turning his laundry at home into a dark room to process the photos. "That's how it started," he said.

Duncan got involved in the photographic industry when he left school, doing high-end commercial work shooting "cars, bras and handlebars".

But it soon lost its shine and Duncan decided he no longer wanted to be a slave to the commercial world to pay the bills. "I was making all this money. I decided it just wasn't working for me, I sold my house, sold everything and I disappeared," he said.

He ended up out in the Kunmunya in the Kimberleys where his parents had been missionaries in the late 1940s. "My parents birthed in me a love of the Indigenous people," he said. "We always grew up with Aboriginal people around us.

"I went up there and I spent all this time with the Aboriginal people learning about photography and them teaching me about how to understand about feeling the land."

Duncan's father had gone to Kunmunya because the government, through the churches, was trying to integrate Aboriginal people into the community.

"When my dad went up there, he fought that whole thing," he said. "He was very much about maintaining their culture but then also finding things that they could relate to."

Duncan is following in his father's footsteps but this time working with Aboriginal people in Haasts Bluff (Ikuntji) - 230 kilometres west of Alice Springs - where the residents have erected a giant 20-metre high cross atop Memory Mountain.

The project, supported by the Walk A While Foundation which includes Duncan and TV journalist Ray Martin as board members, will be officially launched this Easter.

Duncan said they were out in the community teaching photography, cinematography, music and tourism because that's what the people who live there wanted to do. "This is creating real jobs doing things that they love, where they are sharing their culture," Duncan said.

"You'll be able to come out and have guided walks up the mountain and see one of the most spectacular views. You can come out and understand the connection to land and place for them.

"For me there's nothing more important than working with the family out there to see their success. They're my family out there and, to tell you the truth, I spend more time working with them and am more excited about that than my own career.

"I've only got so much time left on this planet and I really want to be part of trying to see how we can work with the Aboriginal people, finding out what they want to do."

His new focus is a long way from the early days when his iconic image of an abandoned stone house on the outskirts of Burra in South Australia was used on the cover of Midnight Oil's Diesel and Dust album in 1987.

Duncan already knew Midnight Oil and their manager before he headed off to the Kimberleys. "They all just thought I'd disappeared. They all thought I'd lost the plot or something," he said.

When he returned they wanted to know what he'd been up to and, when they saw the photo of the abandoned house, Aussie music history was made.

"We did a special process on the shot in the days before Photoshop to give it that real intense look. It was quite revolutionary at the time," he said. "It won all these awards." Duncan also took the band's photo for Rolling Stone magazine in America.

Years later when he returned to Burra to retake the photo with a new camera, he discovered the house had become a tourism magnet but was in danger of collapse. With no public money forthcoming because it was on private land, he and Midnight Oil teamed up to raise the money to save it.

Interest in Duncan's panoramic work took off in Australia. He opened a number of galleries and he started selling limited edition prints - some he said even he can no longer afford to buy. "Some of them are worth thousands now," he said.

It was while he was travelling to the United States to photograph all 50 states that he met up with Australian actor Mel Gibson who he had known since his school days.

As a Christian, Duncan has many stories to tell about his time working on the set of the major film Passion of the Christ in 2004. "It was fantastic," he said.

"Wow. When I saw what happened on that set. The whole movie a was like a Caravaggio painting come to life. It was like I was being transported back in time to the Biblical times". His book on the movie sold more than 750,000 copies in America.

Closer to home, in 2009 he spent time with Paul Hogan and Shane Jacobson during the making of the film Charlie and Boots - which was partially filmed in Warrnambool. It was an adventure, he said, filled with plenty of jokes.

Despite his links to the movies, it is film of a different kind he is most well-known for.

"The reason I mainly shoot landscape is because we are so disconnected. Our world is in trouble. We've got idiots who are making bombs called planet destroyers and threatening to use them," he said.

"We need to get back in connection with land. The only thing that gives me hope is nature. I look at it and think, there's got to be some creator out there bigger than this. If not, then we're all toast."