On the road in red dirt country

The first two weeks of June I spent on the road travelling the vast distances of far west NSW. Broken Hill was my base for a week of photography with Adam Edwards of adamedwards.com.au. There were three of us on the workshop and my two travel companions, who were keen bird photographers, were easy company. Being a small group we had a lot of flexibility on photography locations.

As the rain cleared in the afternoon on the first day of the workshop we set out for Olary, an abandoned town in South Australia, across the border from Broken Hill. There the sky favoured us with a beautiful sunset lighting up the old buildings and bringing magic to the ruins. There are a few of these abandoned towns in South Australia where settlers thought they could make a living before finding the conditions too harsh and the soil infertile.

After a couple of days in Broken Hill we headed out on the red-dirt highway, travelling over 300 kilometres to granite country and the small town of Tibooburra way up in the far north-west corner of the state. There’s not much in Tibooburra itself – just a roadhouse, a couple of pubs and a motel where we stayed but the countryside has some amazing rock formations which pleased my fellow photographers. I preferred wandering through the back lanes of the town photographing old tin sheds, rusty fences and random chairs sitting in an empty paddock.

Granite country at Tibooburra

From Tibooburra we pressed on even further west to Cameron’s Corner where the three states of Queensland, South Australia and NSW all meet at one point. If there’s not much in Tibooburra, there’s even less at Cameron’s Corner. A small roadhouse and, bizarrely, a rudimentary golf course. It’s a strange feeling being so far from any town and on the edge of the desert that stretches off into the horizon and across so much of this ancient continent.

As I had the luxury of someone else driving on this trip I could indulge in taking what I call “car photos” using my phone camera and a couple of apps to take images from the moving vehicle. I like the randomness of these captures. There are no telegraph poles or road signs to interrupt the scene and I can make some interesting impressionist photographs. Once I have some shots I like I use an app called PhotoSplit or Snapseed to make multiple exposures of the images and then use the DistressedFX app to add some texture. It’s all a bit of fun and makes the time pass quickly on long journeys.

Let me know if you’ve made an interesting road trip and what you like to photograph.