Salt of the earth

Story By Italo Vardaro

Listening to photographer Italo Vardaro tell the story of how he came to document the picturesque town of Sedan in South Australia, it sounds more like it chose him than vice versa. “Whenever I drive past it just calls out to me,” he says. Sedan sits to the north-east of Adelaide, just outside the fruit-fly exclusion zone, at the intersection of three roads that Italo passes through quite often. “It’s on the way to a lot of places and I just love driving through it. It’s this little place that’s basically been stopped in time. For instance, when somebody dies they still come together and dig the plot so they can bury their own.”
Sedan has a very strong German heritage and was first established by an entrepreneur who built the village and divided the district into farming blocks to be sold in the same way as a housing estate would be today. According to Italo, the residents could not have been more welcoming. “I just rocked into town and asked the guy at the general store who the local historian was. He told me where to find Lyn Seidel, who welcomed me into her home and even put me up for the night.”
Italo chooses “rustic” when asked to describe Sedan in a single word. “People just don’t live like that any more. These are salt-of-the-earth people.”