During December 1978, Ruth Maddison and her partner Bob Daly spent three weeks at his parents’ house at Mermaid Beach, on Queensland’s Gold Coast. Maddison documented their holiday and the resulting series formed her first solo exhibition in November 1979 at Ewing Gallery, Melbourne.

From a Russian–Jewish background, Maddison grew up in an extended family, which she says explains her obsessive exploration of Australian popular culture. The artist once stated: ‘I look at 20 years of my work and think that I am a quasi-sociologist and a voyeur who works with a camera’.

Maddison was one of the foremost exponents of hand-coloured photographs in Australia in the 1970s and early ’80s. This series exemplifies a consciously intimate approach to documentary photography that emerged around this time.