Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, December 2006 the missing booklet Project

The house in Newcastle NSW

Me and John (?)

The House parking slot

from google maps (the art gallery marked with the A)

from the Newcastle city parking map - the grey area is Precinct 4.


once, i was hired by the bezalel photo department to clean out an old storage room and over summer break.
Me and Moti the lab tech met for a few weeks every morning hauling dumping piles of crap that has been laying there for more then 20 years. boxes and crates filled with papers, from budgets to floor plans for a new building, 80's film samples and prices from ilford and agfa, dozens od old enlargers endless piles of crap. in one of the boxes, i found Dr. Hanan Laskin's old Rolodex box. in it were contact info card, all the way from people like Dr. Michael Langford to Bruce Davidson. under the Lee Friedlander page was a little Black and white print, a picture of a dog running through a park in winter, and on the back the inscription in hebrew: "לחנן, שנה טובה, לי" (Hanan, Happy new year, Lee) and folowing Lee's new address in paris and phone number.
This was worth more then anything i was being paid to do this stuff and as this rolodex was going to the garbage i took the more interesting names out and posted them on the department bulletin board and kept the print. i had just gotten a small blue notepad to keep close for logging the daily frame project as the notebook i was using untill then was way to big to carry around, the print went in to the back cover binding of that little blue notebook.
the notebook lived in my domke and went where ever i did go. so was the case when i traveled to Australia on December of 2006, to attend the wedding of my Cousin who was getting married in Sydney. as i was going to australia and i wanted to do that any way, i was going to hire a bike and ride it for the few days i had free after the wedding. though this is not the place for the story of my bike ride itself, i did ride the bike from sydney with a goal of reaching Brisbane, but ended up riding about 5000KM in 10 days and not reaching Brisbane but instead meeting new extremely nice poeple to ride with almost every day and staying in some of their Homes along the way.
One of these poeple was this guy, i am pretty sure his name is John. he was on his way to his sisters house in Newcastle, NSW. riding on a Suzuki R750 with a polished frame, throwing the occasional Willy and Burnout.
He had told me he had been in a car crash some time before and hurt his back or neck.
Of course i took down his email, and contact and we parted after a long party night in Newcastle.
Upon returning to Israel, My house was broken in to and the bag along with all my cameras and other gear andd the blue booklet was stolen. the burglar was kind enough to dump a ziplock bag with all the films form the trip and the memory cards as well. what a nice guy.
but the booklet was gone. the freidlander print was gone, and so were all the contacts from the trip.
now - i have tried to do this soon after i returned, using google maps to find the exact house number of this guys sister, but there was no street view of newcastle back then and i could not do it. i used to remember more or less where the house was in relation to the regional art gallery, but as time went by that memory faded.
using the photos and the newcastle city parking zone map i was able to narrow down the search zone to a 4X5 block area.
i havent gone trough all the streets yet but it does not look promising.

Any one recognize this guy? the plate number? the house? the street?
I will keep this blog posted with my results.