Like many before it this trip began with grand plans and high expectations. Mother Nature, however, had other ideas, delivering gale force winds and flooding to much of Victoria and New South Wales. With my schedule locked in well in advance I had no choice but to forge ahead.
As winter came to a close in 2016 I was fixed on making another snow trip before the season concluded. I had my heart set on a particular mountain hut and had conducted what I thought was considerable research on snow levels and trails, only to discover, a mere day before launch that vehicle access was in fact far more limited than I realised. My usual trick of hiking through the night to be onsite for the following dawn wasn’t going to cut it. I’d waste too many days hiking in and out.
The first time I hiked into Craigs Hut via Mt Stirling was some 30 years ago. Back then I was a kid with a camera, enjoying the company of my father (sadly now passed). We schlepped our packs over the steep terrain and finally set up our little tent near the hut only to be astonished when a busload of tourists arrived by road.
Since then I’ve revisited, by foot, or by car, nearly every year. I’ve seen it in all seasons, and watched it and its environment change over time. The loss of the alpine grazing, bushfires (at least once resulting in the hut being rebuilt), and abundant regrowth have all played a role in its transformation. It remains, however, an icon. Forged by its role in the classic Australian drama movie “The Man from Snowy River”, and woven into legend by decades of visitors flocking to the picturesk locale.
With only a few days up my sleeve, and winter just upon us, the question of where to shoot required some thought. I have a lot of photos ideas, a combination of locations I’ve scouted from previous trips, discussions with locals, images that have inspired me, and my own research. These I keep in a series of folders, broken down by state and annotated as new information comes to hand about seasonal preferences, access, tide requirements, light direction, and so on. Some pages are more of a wish list, a beautiful place I’ll probably never be able to afford to visit, whilst others are reasonably local.
Autumn this year brought both colourful foliage and terrible sadness to our world. On the photographic front I managed a trip north, attempting to capture those golden hues at Mt Wilson in the Blue Mountains and also country New South Wales. The trees were alive with vibrant shades. By pure chance I happened upon a scene in the farmland surrounding Kosciuszko National Park where an old leaf strewn road lead between towers of yellow. A grand find, all the more exciting for being unexpected.
In my head lie grand plans of exploring and photographing Australia’s remote regions, far north Queensland, outback Western Australia, the deep south of Tasmania and even our many beautiful islands. However the reality is that such places will have to remain the stuff of my dreams for some time to come. I’m anchored by constraints of time, money and responsibility as are, I imagine, most people. So it was that this collection of photos came, as it were, from the extent of my tethers.
Well now, where to begin. This was one big photo trip, racking up nearly 5,000 kilometres over the course of a couple of weeks, shooting every sunset and dawn, with intensive scouting for locations in between. Lots of driving through the night, too much bad road food and almost no sleep was par for the course, but the lure of getting that “one great shot” impelled me onwards.
With so many people walking around with a camera (ie. phone) in their pocket and the ease with which it can be used to capture a quick snapshot there is perhaps a misunderstanding about what it actually takes to produce the kind of landscape image that can be proudly printed metres wide and hung on a wall. It would be wonderful if landscape photography was all about laying around in the sunshine in beautiful locations waiting for the light, clicking the shutter and that being the end of it, but the truth is very different.
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