This Shits For The Birds
My second animated short film commissioned by Tamworth Regional Gallery in 2026, and a joint venture with Drawspace Gallery in Sydney, turned out to be the most personal and political film I have made in many, many years. Somehow, it is both something completely new for me creatively while also being a return to a visual and filmmaking style I was experimenting with in the early 2010s.
Regional living? That shit’s for the birds. I mean, I personally love it. I’m out documenting my life in the country at 5:30am every morning, but while people who don’t live in regional areas probably imagine golden sunrises and singing birds (and we definitely get those), the quiet calm of the early morning also makes it easy to notice a world that’s slowly in decline.
What was once critical transport infrastructure is left to rust, shopping trolleys are strewn kilometres from their homes because there are no supermarkets near the poorer parts of town, and those trolleys almost always end up in the creek courtesy of bored teenagers during the night. Some results of this decline can be quirky and fun, abandoned homes in the middle of town with alpacas wandering around inside them, or mowing your lawn while sheep angrily stomp their feet on the other side of the fence, creating this strange feeling of two different eras colliding. But a lot of it just feels sad.
And yet, amongst all of it, there are always the birds. They can fly away, go wherever they want, but they choose to stay here. They seem to love it, and so do I.
Shits for the Birds started out as two photography projects. One was called Morning Chorus, where I documented the local currawong and crow populations I encountered on my morning walks. I’ve always been fascinated by the strange line where nature merges with what mankind has created, and I can’t think of a better symbol of that than the silhouettes of birds perched on TV antennas, power lines, and streetlights against the morning light.
The other project was simply titled Trolley Town, documenting shopping trolleys in places they absolutely don’t belong. I often found myself wondering how they ended up where they were. If only trolleys could talk, I’m sure they’d have some stories. They might even enjoy their adventures away from the supermarkets, even if they do become eyesores in the process.
I’ve used many of these photos as references for the illustrations in this animation project. I think these two very different ideas work surprisingly well together to tell a larger story about living in a place that sometimes feels forgotten by those in charge, a feeling reinforced even more whenever I return to my hometown of Lismore in the Northern Rivers, a town devastated by floods in 2022 that still hasn’t truly recovered.
These issues aren’t unique to Lismore or Armidale, you’ll find them everywhere, but there’s something particularly distinct about the feeling of nature slowly reclaiming the world around you as parts of regional life fall away. It’s a feeling I hope I’ve managed to capture and convey through this piece of work. This shit’s not for the birds because it sucks, but because sometimes it feels like, in a few more decades, all of this will belong to them.
Client Name
Tamworth Regional Gallery
Date
June 2026
Category
Animation
Directors
Daniel Elliott
