Australian Outback - New South Wales

[simonpg]

I have just started to go through my outback trip images which I think will take a few days to complete.

I've mentioned before that I have inspected the 6x6 C41 and E6 images under a a loupe as well as the XPan slide films. These are very encouraging!

But for now, and for those interested, I have attached 2 photos that might set the scene before I start posting my favorites from the trip.

The 6x6 is of a long long long outback road - a road to nowhere - we drove in a straight line for about 2 hours and never saw another human and the road remained dead straight.

The colours are real! The dirt road can be tricky - if it get just a little wet it turns into slippery glue like soft mush - the authorities close the roads and you can get stuck in there for days and days.

On some stretched there is a lot of surface rock - every stone is sharp enough to cut almost anything - near new tyres are important to have on the wheels.

The Xpan image shows my friend's vehicle which he uses regularly around our continent nation regularly. It is about the only vehicle that will not self destruct after just a couple of thousand miles.

The first (6x6) image was shot in a lower sun and with the sun behind me.
The second (XPan) shot was shot into the light thus causing lower contrast and colour strength.

Stay tuned and I hope you enjoy the next images I post soon.

 

[ulrik]

Hi Simon,
thanks for sharing the pictures. I am eagerly waiting for the rest to come. I have never yet managed to cut my tyres with rocks though I tried hard. But roads in civilization with screws, lost tools etc. have resulted in flat tyres several times.

Ulrik

 

[dneyhard]

Hi Simon-

Great and colorful shots. Looking forward to seeing more. I guess that you just have to be lucky on some roads not to have flats. I once had a rock puncture a tire on a brand new Nissan Armada rental car while driving an unpaved road in Death Valley. Had to dig around to find the manual just to locate the jack. Not much fun in Death Valley mid day heat(thankfully it was only in Mid May).
Also, thanks for the nice report in another thread regarding the 667 folder and Cosina M lenses.

Don

 

[jotloob]

Hello Simon

Obviously that road does not lead into hell because there is too much green left and right .
That must have been an exciting trip you made . Great .
Thank you for posting .
While your summer will arrive soon , we have the first snowfall here and it is rather cold . Too cold for the time of the year .
Looking forward to more outback images .
Best regards Jürgen

 

[terrydent]

Can't wait to see more of your shots, Simon!

Terry

 

[simonpg]

Emus on the run!

Many thanks gentlemen.

It is remarkable that in the far outback that we can have such gorgeous colours and signs of life rather than bleak desolate "nothingness" - although I do have some images of "nothingness" .

My friend has a life long love of the Aussie outback and has accumulated enormous knowledge of the geography, wild-life and climate. In fact over the past 30 years or so he has only owned one type of car - the Toyota Landcruiser - each model built in which he'd run up as many as 100,000km a year. This was developed by Toyota here in collaboration with the Aussie army.

It's a well known truism that you should never risk mechanical breakdown; running out of fuel, insufficient spare tyres or water because it can be some days between seeing human life.

On this occasion - like Jurgen pointed out - it hardly looked like a remote arid region because the region we covered had some rainfall in the past 2 weeks. In a few hours of driving colours and some life return. In most parts of the remote outback there are numerous species of flora that thrive. On that road we had something like 1/2 an hour driving when we passed nothing but very low ground cover, rocks and dust; 1/2 an hour of scrub and low level bushes punctuated with herds of cattle and sheep (yes here we are good at livestock farming in arid regions); 1/2 an hour of spindly bush and thin trees punctuated with kangaroos and emus (not to mention the range of reptiles).

For some hours the soil was a tan clay colour and other hours of deep orange / red earth. Then we'd pass thousands of acres of wheat crops, only to start seeing dust and rock for miles to come! The sky was lovely most days because of quite unique air jet streams that brought very fresh clear air - temp in the sun was usually 28 but the air was quite cool. The skies were crystal clear most days - except for 2 major dust storms that picked up thousands of tons of red earth and blew it about 1,000kms down to Sydney which cause it chaos for days (visibility down to feet).

So, here is one picture (my apologies that it is not a hasselblad image - please forgive me! ) I took through the windscreen (so it is not very sharp) while in a national park 3 hours from the nearest town, while driving along the track.

The family of emus appeared from nowhere and the mum and dad occasionally would drop back and give the kids a hurry along! They were so funny as they are quite stupid animals and took ages to think of running into the scrub! .



Stay tuned for the Hassy images.

 

[Analog6]

That's a great shot too, you could put all sorts of funny captions on that one. What was your route on this 'safari'?

 

[simonpg]

Yes you could. It was so funny at the time!

It was 10 minutes after we realised that a 2m long Black Snake was slithering out of a billabong towards our feet while we were photographing a female Wedged Tail Eagle.

She was standing on the side of her huge nest keeping guard over her eggs which will have probably hatched by now.

Our trek was west/ north west via Wilcannia from Newcastle with the objective of reaching Cameron's Corner via Hungerford and the Dog Proof Fence - longest fence on the planet. But severe dust storms and earlier 20ml of rain (turns the red earth in to a soft glue type of substance which no vehicle can travel through) closed key roads so we diverted up at Bourke. Then in a v route we headed home down through Lightning Ridge, Walgett and Coonabarabran covering a bit over 3,000 kms.