On the last Sunday of June each year, Derby hosts the annual Bush Poets Breakfast.
All in Living Life Well
Norval Gallery in Derby
If you ever find yourself in Derby in the Kimberley region of WA, it’s surely only a matter of time before you discover the Norval Gallery. It is crammed full of artist Mark Norval’s work, past and present, along with artwork by other local artists and it’s a feast for the eyes.
Broome's Hermit Crab Hunters
Steve’s been away working over on Koolan Island recently, so Jazzy and I have been on our own in Broome for part of the last month, spending a lot of time around Town Beach. This was the day we got a lesson from some local kids in finding hermit crabs in the roots of the mangrove trees.
Pancho and friends at K-Town, Exmouth
While we were all having coffee in town one morning, we were introduced to a bloke by the name of Pancho. Pancho had been a prawn boat skipper for MG Kailis back in the day, and had recently written a book about that and a lifetime of other adventures (including a riotous weekend on Rottnest with Bob Hawke before he was PM)…
Festival rehearsals at Warroora Station
Over the years I’ve taken hundreds of photos at Warroora Station and each time I try to capture it differently. This year I photographed circus performers at sunset - that was unexpected and definitely gave me the opportunity to photograph Warroora in a different way! Gascoyne in May is a coordinated circuit of festivals held annually across the region, and the performers were staying at Warroora Station’s Dudley House for a week of rehearsals before the Ningaloo Whale Shark Festival in Exmouth…
Off-grid at Gnaraloo
There’s no grey nomads, individual TV satellite dishes or nighties hanging on the communal washing line here…Gnaraloo is not for the faint-hearted…
President of the Old Bastards
It turns out you don’t need to be old to be an Old Bastard. We’d been told that John Wheelock has been the president of Carnarvon’s Old Bastards since its inception in 1982. A quick google revealed that the Australasian Order of the Old Bastards is an Australia-wide organisation, far less organised than the Rotary Club or the Lions, but just as effective where fund-raising is concerned…
Salty Sea Dogs of Carnarvon
I met up with Ray and Macca at the Yacht Club for the Sunday Session, and they decided I need to meet Irish too. “He looks like a leprechaun” they told me.
Roo shooter Peter in Carnarvon WA
“Karl Brandenberg, Carnarvon’s Shire President, dobbed his mate Peter in as a local, colourful character I ought to photograph. Karl told me that Peter was the roo shooter for the district for years. “He’s a laugh a minute…and tough. Cheeky as they bloody come”…
Growers in Carnarvon
Before any photographs were taken I sat down to enjoy a home-grown mango smoothie and a chat at the kitchen table with Carnarvon grower Rick Skender and his mum, Zarka…
Mick at his Blowholes shack
Now in his 80s, Mick has spent a huge part of his life living in the beach shack his father built back in 1959, just north of Carnarvon. In fact he still spends a large part of each year there - having arrived in January he has no plans of heading back south until August. When I visit Mick, his mate Faye is there for a few weeks too.
Ray and Merle in Carnarvon
I first met Ray and Merle when I was photographing their granddaughter Jamee-Lee’s wedding about five years ago, and remember thinking that I’d love to do a portrait shoot . I discovered that they lived in Carnarvon and filed that thought away for another day. This week I caught up with them at their home…
John at the Heritage Precinct in Carnarvon
John McCloy originally came to Carnarvon as a teacher for the School of the Air. These days, in retirement, he can be found volunteering at the recently opened Museum down by the One Mile Jetty in Carnarvon’s Heritage Precinct.
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.
Spags - local colour at Gascoyne Junction
We called into the CRC as soon as we reached The Junction, to see if they could suggest a great local character to perhaps photograph. “Spags! Go over the bridge, you can’t miss his house…it’s got a boat on the roof”…
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…
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.
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…