Hedda and Alastair Morrison left Sarawak in 1966, after the transition years of
its incorporation into Malaysia. Always attracted by life in Australia, and with a connection through its being Alastair’s father’s homeland, they moved to Canberra in 1967. From there, as during their years in Sarawak, Hedda and Alastair continued to roam through the lesser-known parts of Asia.
 
The record of their travels, seen today in their passports, are the journeys of two adventurous, ever curious travellers. As throughout her life, Hedda’s cameras went with her – and thus, as year followed year, she built up an archive of impressive quality and size, now held at Cornell University.
 
Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, India, Papua New Guinea, Fiji... Indefatigably
they crossed and re-crossed the region. On various occasions they passed through Hong Kong – the longest visit being in 1959, when they stayed for some weeks. Hedda, as always, went out with her cameras. To the Morrisons the hustle and bustle, the forests of buildings, might have seemed daunting – for since 1947 they had lived in unhurried Sarawak. There Hedda’s work had been almost totally dedicated to photographing the lives of people in rural, barely developed areas
– indeed often people still living traditional, semi-nomadic jungle lives.
 
During their 1959 Hong Kong visit Hedda photographed the streets and markets, small merchants and artisans, traditional crafts and occupations, women and children. And, as most photographers would do, she returned to some of the sites
of her earlier work. She photographed again the fishing communities of Aberdeen and Shau Kei Wan; and she visited the urban hillsides, now a warren of squatter shacks. Some scattered tall buildings appear in her images. But much more
evident are the old traditional ways of life that still, precariously, endured. Progress, soon enough, would sweep them aside.
 
There are no extant writings by Hedda Morrison concerning her views of the
changes she saw from the Hong Kong of 1946 – 47 to that of 1959. However,
after visiting Peking in the 1980s she wrote – despite her admiration for the vastly improved conditions of daily life – with regret about the loss of so much of the old city’s physical fabric and heritage. About that time, hoping to publish a book presenting her postwar Hong Kong photographs, she wrote of her images from 1946 – 47, ‘The photographs in this album seek to convey some impression of
what HK was like before the onslaught of modern development.’