Wow. What a day.
This morning was my first time in a helicopter,
and what a great first flight! We arrived at the aerodrome to be
greeted by Mark, our pilot who would be flying us today. The doors had
been taken off the chopper on one side so that Jason and I could hang
out the side and get some shots. It was pretty chilly on the ground and
I couldn’t imagine how cold it would be one we got up in the air!
Thankfully I wore about 5 t-shirts and a small coat and was fine!
Unfortunately, we ran into the same problem as race day one; a thick
overcast sky. The light was pretty horrible, and the land below up
looked very flat (well it sort of is right?) and muted of any colour.
Thankfully we managed to fly over Porcupine Gorge and the White
Mountains, which are absolutely breathtaking, I’ll let my pictures do
the talking, as words can’t describe their natural beauty. It was
pretty intimidating being up there changing lenses and reloading film
in my camera with cold numb hands, I kept having visions of a lens, or
worse, a roll of film going off the edge! After all it’s probably
cheaper to buy a new lens than to hire a helicopter for an hour!
Once
we got back into town, we packed our bags, cleaned out our now
semi-permanent offices in our hotel rooms, and got some last few
pictures before heading homeward. We said our goodbyes to the Jockeys,
Paddy, our new friend Mayor Brendan, and even the Camels. We would miss
Hughenden for it’s eccentric touch, it’s people and most of all the
F.J. Superburgers at the F.J. Holden Café. Thanks Hughenden, I don’t
know if I’ll ever be back, but the times I had were great and those
memories will last forever.
We were now heading back to Longreach,
with a planned stop just out of Hughenden to get some pictures of a
local cowboy called Bill who was mustering 1760 cattle down past
Longreach. In an excellent twist, we missed the turn off, drove 10km
too far, and found ourselves in the middle of nowhere. In a stroke of
luck, those extra 10k brought us to the remains of an old wreck of a
1960’s looking pick-up truck in the middle of a field, next to a small
tree. Scatted around this wreck were loads of bones from a sheep that
had gotten its feet tangled in the rusty springs of what was left of
the trucks seat. To add to the surreal landscape, the truck was riddled
with bullet holes, and there were old beer bottles scattered around the
whole scene.
When we finally found the herd, our timing couldn’t
have been any better. Bill and his three helpers were just finishing a
days work and we watched them herd the cattle into a coral made of a
temporary electric fence powered by a car battery. Once the cattle were
rounded up for the night, the boys then got to grooming and feeding
their horses, and got changed into more relaxed clothes for dinner
around the campfire. As I mentioned before, the timing was amazing, as
we got to shoot all of this with a nice warm glow from the setting sun
behind everything. As the night went on we all sat around the campfire
and exchanged stories of life in the city and life on the farm over a
couple beers. This was by far the most memorable part of the trip, and
I really feel that I captured the moment with my pictures.
It was
dark when we got back on the road after saying our goodbyes to the
cowboys, and we were only 30km out of Hughenden. Do we drive to
Longreach in the dark? Ha! We learned our lesson about driving at night
on day one! Back to Hughenden for the night; we thought we would never
come back, but here we were. We checked back into the hotel for a night
and had our meal in Hughenden. Again.
