Outback NSW
A recent drive over to the other side of the State..
I knew very little about Broken Hill, other than being a remote mining town in far Western New South Wales about 14 hour drive from Sydney, AND I knew that it was the home of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and Mad Max II. If honest, the latter was the most compelling reason I’ve wanted to visit this place since the 80s. I love that movie!
So there’s me - your modern day Road Warrier; swapping out Mel Gibson’s 1973 V8 Interceptor from his brutal dystopian world where you loose a limbs over a tank of fuel, for a 2015 Mazda 3 with air-conditioning, cruise control, and endless hours of bluetoothed crime podcasts.
On the way out to the desert I passed through Orange, Dubbo, Cobar, Wilcannia, and finally Broken Hill a couple of days later. Along the way staying in remote pubs with character; meeting locals with even more character.
The landscape change is subtle, but beautiful…especially as you see both the sunrise and sunset golden hours… all during the same day’s driving. The roads start to become longer, straighter and littered with more kangaroo carcasses (I hit one roo, and narrowly missed a large emu). That’s the reality. It's a tough environment known best by the local indigenous population, rural farmers and road train drivers, but the red dirt, huge open space and remote quietness all around you is magnetising.
Broken Hill is way more than a simple mining town. Plenty of art galleries and restaurants. I stayed in the large old Palace Hotel where Pricilla was filmed; walls covered from top to bottom in local landscape murals, and legal Two-Up every Friday night! (the town has some sort of exemption from the rest of the country apparently?!). That was a fun night mixing with locals, miners, engineers, students and travellers.
30kms further takes you to Silverton. A movie-set perfect outback town of a few houses, dry riverbeds, old vehicle bones, donkeys and a pub…oh, and the Mad Max II museum..... all separated by dust and sand.
Mundi Mundi plains lie just over the hills; a huge expanse of open flat dessert; wide and far enough to see the curvature of the earth. This is where I was most excited to get the camera and drone out!
The journey home took me south through Mildura in Victoria and the large country town of Wagga Wagga back in NSW. I looked at the map when I got back to Sydney and remembered I had only travelled around a tiny corner of Australia's map. So much more to explore!
Special thanks to the Roth's who put me up in Orange on my first night!
Tasmania
A visit to The Island of Inspiration
A quiet week on the work front in Sydney gave me the excuse to jump on a flight down to Australia's island state. My first, well overdue visit...what a great place!
So, my flight from warm, sunny New South Wales landed just after Jetstar flight no. -010 from Antarctica touched down in Hobart. On board that flight was 'Mr Brass-Balls cold-as-ice weather front' who came up to join me on my Spring trip. Crikey...even the locals were rugged-up and swearing under visible breath as they walked into the pub! Unfortunately, along with the unseasonably low temperatures came some snow, which meant the roads up to Mt Wellington and Cradle Mountain were shut, so I missed a few photography hotspots I was hoping to get to. I'll have to go back another time!
Here are the things I learned about the island on my quick visit...
This is a charming beautiful island; super empty and remote at this time of year.
Tasmania doesn’t have 'four seasons in one day’. It has four seasons every hour.
Here phone coverage & working WIFI are wondrous myths, rather than an actual real things that exist.
Tasmanian people are extremely inclusive, knowledgable and proud (I found this from all my cafe, petrol station, restaurant and pub conversations)
Below are some photographs from my journey (plus some random iPhone shots mixed in for good measure). You'll notice the lack of people & cars in the images. That's because there aren't many! I left out any photos from the MONA on my first day... 'The Wall of Vaginas' and Cloaca's real life 'poop machine' are best seen in person... that place is brilliant, and totally bonkers.
I really give full credit to those photographers who make landscape photography their full-time job. Yes they go to some beautiful places; working with stunning environments, animals and people, but I also realise it takes a lot of time, local knowledge & research, and a ton of patience and persistence to get brilliant results.
Bombing around the countryside for a few days with a camera and a tripod and no real plan (i.e this trip), is really no match for researching locations, watching weather charts, traveling to the right place and then waiting hours/days in position, hoping for that ideal time where all perfect photographic conditions align.
It was fun though, and that counts for a lot!