Well, I'm camped in the kitchen and mess room of the shearer's quarters on Pernatty Station, having camped in better and camped in worse.
What more could an outback adventurer and photographer want than a satisfactory shelter from the wind, rain and cold? There's a table and chair and space for my stretcher, mattress and sleeping bag. The roof doesn't leak, all the doors and windows are in place and the water tank is brimming full. Apart from a coating of outback, red dust, it's fairly clean.
Having cooked with the gas ring for a couple of days, today I dragged a few sticks of firewood up from the creek with the quadbike, cooking a simple roast of veggies for tea and baking a loaf of bread to last a couple of days, on the hot coals of mulga firewood. Nothing like cooking in the camp oven!
Gum Woolshed, the Pernatty shearing shed, is built near Whittata Creek. Whittata Creek supports Mulga Timber.
A few hundred metres downstream is Gum Waterhole which has been dug out and banked up to form a good dam.
A kilometre or so upstream from Gum Woolshed, a gum creek enters Whitta Creek. It's just a side creek, reasonably steep and looks like it would carry a good bit of water from the nearby hill in a rain event. I guess Gum Woolshed and Gum Waterhole are named after the stunted redgums that grow in the creek bed and along the banks.
Depending on your photographic style and subject matter, just before sunset and just after sunrise are often the best times of day for landscape photography with the soft light and warm toned colour.
The creeks around Gum Woolshed have great subject matter for my photographic style. Here I can express the personality that makes me who I am.
Whether or not you like me, whether or not you like my art, I hope you can appreciate the self revelation in these images, reflect a little on life and maybe incorporate a lesson into your own graphic, self expression.
