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| Beautiful centuries-old salmon gum trees. © T-Rex Photography |
Today is Mother's Day (5 March 2015). To celebrate both Mother's Day and the end of Seeding 2015, we've been invited by Our Aussie Family (a lovely family of farmers, located 120 kilometres north-west of Esperance, Western Australia) to drive an hour north of Our Aussie Family 3's farm for a barbecue picnic in the middle of the Australian bush.
We're meant to be meeting Our Aussie Family at 10:00am in a gravel pit (yes, you read that correctly) somewhere near Our Aussie Family 3's farm, for morning tea with Aussie Mum 3, who is heading back to Perth that day (and, therefore, cannot join us for the barbecue), before we head onwards for a barbecue in the bush.
This weekend, The Photographer and I, spent the weekend in the little studio/bedsit flat that we rent in Esperance. It takes me an hour and 20 minutes to drive to the farm in little red Larry the Lancer – that's about 20 minutes longer than everyone else who drives a ute and takes the shorter route via more gravel roads than the route that I take. In order to get to the gravel pit on time, I've worked out that I will have to get up at approximately 7:00am.
Now, I don't know about you but, I'm not a morning person, even at the best of times.
7:10am or thereabouts, The Photographer's alarm goes off. I try to keep sleeping. The Photographer checks is phone then rolls over and kisses me good morning (always checks his social media and football results first). As I've not been able to sleep in, I'm tired, which means I'm grumpy. I think The Photographer is slowly learning that being around me when I've not had enough sleep is not much fun really – I get a little grumpy and short tempered, and a bit snappy.
So anyway, I'm finally up and ready to go at 7:40am and as I'm trying to get going, The Photographer decides he wants to load all his farm groceries into the back of Larry, just because Larry is right outside the house and The Photographer's ute is a 30 second walk away from the house in a communal parking space at the end of the block of flats that we live in – too far for him to carry his groceries apparently. But, because I'm determined not to be late getting to the farm to drop off Larry, before we head off to the barbecue – because it takes me way longer than him to drive to the farm – I tell him No, demand a good-bye kiss, and drive off. Poor Photographer. I am a bit short with him sometimes. I really should work on that.
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| Endless beauty driving out to the farm. |
The drive out to the farm is beautiful. There's a whole lot of nothingness but it's absolutely beautiful. Long roads, miles of vast fields, grazing cattle and sheep, and occasionally there are horses in the fields closest to the highway. If you look carefully, sometimes you can see kangaroos grazing with the livestock – it beats seeing a kangaroo hopping in front of you on the road (poor little Larry wouldn't stand a chance; he'd be a complete write-off). Today is a lovely time of the year because there's lots of greenery around, rather than the dry fields in summer. I love driving out to the farm in the daytime; it is just so picturesque.
About 10 kilometres away from the farm, I see up ahead, a vehicle cross the last intersection (there are only three intersections to the farm once I'm on the South-Coast Highway) before the farm. Turns out it's The Photographer. I don't know when he left the town house but after only seeing less than half a dozen or so other vehicles in those 120 kilometres to the farm, the likelihood of seeing The Photographer at the last intersection before reaching the farm, is bloody slim. Suffice to say, even though I left before him, he still got there before me. I wish I had a ute.
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| Emus on the farm. |
On arrival at the farm, Our Aussie Family 3 is still sorting out Dino for our trip out to the bush. Dino is a big Toyota Land Cruiser, top of the line when it was new – over 30 years ago. These days, however, old Dino is the farm's cruddy old ute that gets used about twice a year. Aussie Dad 1 is vacuuming Dino and trying to make him all spic 'n' span for our trip out to the bush.
About an hour or so later, after we've packed all our bush gear into the back of Dino – including The Photographer's camera Goodie Bag and tripod – at 10:30 (which, of course, is the time we're meant to be AT the gravel pit), we set off on our journey, with the Seeding 2015 Casual Kiwi guy pointing out to us all that Dino smells like dead mice. Down go the windows.
On arrival at the gravel pit, I notice that it really is a gravel pit – there's gravel in a pit and everyone is parked around the edges of the pit and set up camping chairs (all West Australians have camping chairs – fact) and having coffee in the middle of the pit, where the gravel has pretty much compacted into a fairly stable surface. We are late (obviously). After a quick coffee and the rest of our crew laughing at our old utes (because everyone else has brought their regular good utes), Aussie Mum 3 heads off to Perth and the rest of us head off for our barbecue in the bush.
Turns out, this is the sandiest, bushiest, bumpiest and roughest terrain I will probably ever cross in my life and it's in the back of a 30-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser that smells like dead mice, with the windows down and dust swooshing inside the ute as our 'air conditioning' and an excellent mix between the two-way conversation of our six-ute-strong convoy, an Australian country music CD (I can't remember the name of the singer) and general conversation amongst the passengers bobbling about inside the 30-year-old Land Cruiser, as the entertainment for our one hour off-road drive… to have a barbecue in the middle of nowhere. We've got a great day ahead of us.
After driving around fallen trees and dodging the trees still standing, we get to our chosen destination. My uneducated guess is that we're about a kilometre away from one of the many salt lakes that Australia is known for, which we can see in the distance. The rollercoaster ride seemed to have tightened the belt across the bladder somewhat, so The Boss's Wife and I head off in opposite directions, bog roll in hand, to nature's loo.
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| The utes all lined up. © T-Rex Photography |
Back at the barbecue site, three camp fires have already been lit for the hot plates, the camping chairs are out again and the picnic table is covered in deliciousness to go with the barbecue. No sign of The Photographer.
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| Chasing the shadow of the tree. © T-Rex Photography |
Lunch/afternoon tea/dinner is a delicious rolling feast of barbecued Australian meat with homemade salads and desserts. Unlike last year's end of seeding gathering (cold, raining, bees nest, dropped cake filled with smashed glass plate that it had been sitting on, windy), it was a lovely sunny warm day and, consequently, we all got up periodically and moved our chairs around a nearby tree, following its shadow.
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| Surrounded by beautiful salmon gum trees. © T-Rex Photography |
Our surroundings were beautiful – peaceful, off-road, miles away from anywhere, surrounded by beautiful centuries-old salmon gum trees and the occasional sighting of majestic birds of prey high in the sky or in the trees. Suffice to say, given our surroundings, I noticed several times during the afternoon that The Photographer was missing. I think I must be getting used to his disappearances because I didn't panic and worry so much about him today whenever we disappeared to take photos. I guess, seeing as we were in the middle of nowhere, he wouldn't go far and there's nothing out there to get him… except maybe a few brown snakes! Well, no, I think all the snakes are mostly 'asleep' – as I like to call it – at this time of year. Although, having lived in Western Australia for some time, I have learned that snakes don't actually hibernate like bears. They just sleep a lot and become less active during cold weather – it's called "torpor". This also means that, because it was a sunny autumn day, in my mind, there was a good chance that a snake or two would be out sunning itself, especially in the bush where we were!
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| Packing up in the fading autumn sun. © T-Rex Photography |
As the sun was getting low, The Photographer set off to try and get some more epic photographs. By this stage, however, it was getting late and old Dino doesn't have any headlights. Much to The Photographer's disappointment, this meant that we had to leave during daylight and before sunset, which of course, is when you get awesome colours and lighting for landscape photography.
I felt disappointed for him but I wasn't too worried either because I knew he would've got lots of awesome photographs that day anyway (he always does, regardless of the weather or colour of the sky). Plus, it means we get to go there again another time to watch the sunset together. Well, if I can bear another trip out across the roughest terrain ever to get there!
Nevertheless, The Photographer has confirmed that he intends head out there again so that he can take more beautiful photos to share with the world soon! Watch this space!
