Beautiful Bougainvillea in Carnarvon

There’s something so tropical about the bougainvillea - we started to see it everywhere once we reached Yalgoo and headed into station country. Whether it’s surrounding caravan parks in Carnarvon (especially the Capricorn Caravan Park) or brightening up run-down station yards and sheds, it puts on such a show. I think this is the first time I’ve ever tried to photograph them.

Dr Harry in Carnarvon

It seems the whole of Carnarvon knows Dr Harry Sneddon. For many years he was the town’s vet treating creatures great and small. A quietly spoken, gentle man - a gentleman in its truest sense - it’s not hard to imagine him tenderly handling someone’s fur child at his practice in town, or horse whispering out on a cattle station. More recently he’s owned and operated the general store just out of the town centre to keep himself busy in his retirement.

Bryan at Gascoyne Junction

While we were hanging out with Spags, we also met Bryan. Spags seems not to have a care in the world. His mate Bryan though has the weight of the world on his shoulders right now after losing everything in a fire a month ago. Bryan had been living in his caravan inside a big shed at Spags’ place. He was working out bush when he got a call from a mate to say the shed had burnt to the ground. “It was April Fool’s Day”, Bryan said “I thought they were pulling my leg.”

Gravel Dragon

A few days ago we were photographing up at Carey Downs Station. As I was getting out of the car to open a gate, a small movement caught my eye. It took a moment to see what had moved as it was so well camouflaged. It moved like a lizard - close to the ground and fast scuttling, but had legs like a frog although not the webbed feet, and it had a long skinny tail. We’d never seen anything like it before! Alys from the Station sent the photo to Don Bradshaw at UWA…

Stock photography at Carey Downs Station

For the last nine years Carey Downs Station has been home to the McKeough family. They are in the process of setting up so they can offer station stays and were keen to get their own stock library of images ready for their website and social media. Steve and I spent a long day following a map that showed tracks and landmarks such as soaks and bores, to the spots that had been marked on for us to photograph. Over the course of the day I tried to capture the remoteness, the harshness, the beauty, the colours, the scenery, the 4wd tracks, and the history...

Taking the back roads in remote WA

After a fun few days with Frances and David at Wooleen Station we headed north to Carey Downs Station. The recent rains that had allowed swimming and canoeing on the Murchison River, also meant there were plenty of wash-outs and road closures. We fuelled up at Murchison Settlement, checked out the road report, asked Wink and the roadhouse for his local knowledge, and opted to take the most direct route via the back tracks…but kept our fingers crossed.

Camping at Wooleen Station

We set off on our meander through WA with no set time frame and no planned route. There was however a couple of places we knew we wanted to go which gave us a rough skeleton of a plan when we left home on the south coast of WA. Wooleen Station was one of those places. We’ve visited Wooleen a few times before, in fact we photographed Frances and David’s wedding a couple of years ago…

Anzac Day at Murchison Settlement

We got up early on 25 April to drive 140km from Yuin Station to Murchison Settlement for the Anzac Day Dawn Ceremony. Fortunately due to the distances that most attendees had to drive, the dawn service was scheduled to start at 10am…

Yuin Station in the Murchison

We first met the Foulkes-Taylors, owners of Yuin Station, when we photographed Frances and David’s wedding at Wooleen Station two years ago. Since then I’ve been following Emma on Instagram - @outbacklarder - in awe of the fresh produce she manages to grow in this dry and dusty land. On our way through to Murchison Settlement for the Anzac Day ceremony we spent a night at Yuin where three generations now call home…

Stan at the Yalgoo Hotel

The pub at Yalgoo is quite spectacular when seen for the first time hot pink and glowing in the late afternoon sun. However, it’s the paint job inside that’s the show stealer - the liberal use of a garish green the likes of which I’ve never seen before, certainly not in nature, but somehow, in this setting, it actually works. The walls are largely bare except for a couple of jokey 80s-style alcohol-related posters, a collection of old Yalgoo number plates, and an upside-down Exit sign.

Retired stockman in Yalgoo

Their father was a stockman and their mother also “worked the cattle from the back of a horse” - it was only natural for Patrick to follow in their footsteps. He spoke fondly of his memories, mustering by day and gathering around campfires in the middle of nowhere at night before falling asleep under the stars…

Yalgoo

Yalgoo, affectionately known as The Goo, feels like that one-horse town. There’s still plenty of evidence of its once thriving past, and the town has obviously realised that if it is to stay alive in the 21st century, it needs to keep its history alive too…

Wheatbelt mother and son

Neighbours to Robin and Robert, Margaret Scally lives in Goodlands, on the northern edge of the Wheatbelt in Western Australia with her two sons. It’s not the easiest place to find but we spotted their ‘mailboxes’ next to the road sign bearing their name. Standing at her back door with views across to ‘the hills’, Mt Singleton and Mt Gibson, Margaret told us of her earliest memory - aged around five, being given the last rites by the priest when she had “the black measles”.

Wheatbelt father and son portraits

Now 77, Robin’s life has not always been easy but it’s been full of love. Emerging from the school principal’s office after getting “the cuts” for wolf-whistling at her, Robin first saw his “Princess”, Kaye as she walked across the schoolyard. “You know when you’ve seen an angel” he told me. Knowing he’d got a keeper, Robin asked her father if he could marry her six times before he gained approval…

Family portraits in the Wheatbelt

We’ve had a blast the last few days camping on fellow photographer Jo Ashworth’s family farm on the northern edge of the Wheatbelt. Jo really wanted some portraits of the family that truly reflected them day-to-day so between exploring the farm, photographing some wonderful characters in the district, and sharing stories around their kitchen table and our campfire, we squeezed in this photo session.