The history of horses in Australia could fill volumes. From our first settlers, to the mounts of the Light Horse to Phar Lap, we are a culture that loves our nags, even if it just means having a flutter once a year on the Melbourne Cup. But the love affair that grew out of a [...]
Iconic Australian artists. The phrase makes me think of idyllic portrayals of pastoralism, of golden fleeces suffused with sunlight, frontier settlers framed by eucalypt trees and the blue haze of a never-ending landscape. There are also the confronting depictions rendered by more contemporary artists. Of men and women, their communities, and their profound connection to [...]
Famous for being famously superb, the shilling ram was the name given to Uardry 0.1. A merino ram of such style and class that on the 29th June 1932, the Sydney Mail announced that Uardry was, ‘generally acknowledged to be one of the most magnificent Merinos ever seen in Sydney.’ Uardry had for competition 366 [...]
He was the son of a Welsh convict and a mother driven from Ireland by the potato famine, but the man who would change his name from Arthur Hoey Davis to Steele Rudd, began life as one of thirteen children at Drayton, near Toowoomba,Queensland. Whether he was interested or not in a formal education, the need [...]
Founded by the Spaniards in 1528 and marked by centuries of geographical isolation, San Cristobal de las Casas is a beautiful town of sleepy colonial grandeur in Southern Mexico. It is such an extraordinary mix of people and customs. Free open-air concerts are held in the palace square and the local indigenous peoples travel from [...]
I can't imagine these would be good eating laying on the creek bank in this heat. But freshwater mussels of the inland river and creek variety are pretty tasty if you're lucky enough to find some in a good season. They certainly aren't as prolific as in previous years. Changes to waterways, chemical run-off and [...]
Sunrise and sunset. These are my favourite times of the day, when the sun is near the horizon straddling the rim of the earth, as it either embarks on bringing us a new day or dwindles towards nightfall. The best photos are taken at this time when sunlight travels through a greater depth of atmosphere, [...]
Mexico Mexico’s arid north adjoins the US border. A 3,140 km line that has come to symbolize a complex and unstable relationship, one that has fixated attention on a country known as much for its drugs, beaches and safety concerns, as its extraordinary archaeological sites. This might be a place of tequila and sombreros, Spanish [...]
Hill End. An abandoned goldrush town. Home to the ghosts of pan-shackled miners, some who won big and others who lost. In 1872 it was NSW’s largest inland settlement. Incorrectly named Forbes before Hill End was chosen and the town gazetted, it is a place that carries the memory of the wily antics of the estimated [...]
Coffee-break Quick-Pick: The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton. Jaxie dreads going home. His mother's dead, the old man beats him without mercy, and he doesn't know how much more he can take. Then, in one terrible moment of violence, the life he's known ends - forcing Jaxie to flee his sleepy hometown. He's not just [...]
