The Fund asked Ecopix to photograph its new and very remote acquisition, but there was a catch - the pictures were needed for the imminent national newsletter and promotions before Fund staff had even arrived. I bargained with Charlotte Grimshaw, in charge of fund raising and publicity for Bush Heritage, over the phone to their base in Hobart. Working back from her deadline, with travel, postage of film to Brisbane for processing and return, editing, captioning and delivery, I figured I had two days to shoot the 17 regional ecosystems (habitat types) scattered through those 60 000 rugged hectares! "Well, good luck", Charlotte finished, " I guess I'll just hope I'll get an Express Post parcel on Monday!"

Ordering film, packing and tying up loose ends took too long and I drove west through the night. A call from a lonely country town to Tony Warring, station manager, decided the route. "It's only 200km from the highway, and the first 30km are bitumen". Great, I thought, so what about the other 170km? Tony obviously loved the place, and remarked "I've been here 12 years, and I'm still finding new things in this country". So what hope did I have in two days? I mused.

Gear overload

My plan was to stay mobile, shooting 35mm and plenty of it (I brought two 100ft rolls). My gear was a day-pack with two lightweight Nikon FM2 bodies, one with Velvia and one with Sensia II. There are trickier cameras than the all-manual FM2, but I need at least one plain vanilla, battery-independent camera body in the bush, and using two different cameras can be confusing when you are in a hurry. No time for mistakes on this shoot. Lenses were simple, too: Nikkor 24mm, 55mm Micro, 105mm 2.5, 180mm 2.8ED, each with polarising and warming filters, and a 400mm 3.5ED. Though none are exotic, each lens is a real "honey" which can extract all the potential from the small format with a sharp, fine film like Velvia. Image quality is paramount in wilderness photography. A 1.4 converter, extension tubes, reflector, Metz 45 with tele-flash fresnel, and the trusty old Manfrotto 055 with a Slick ball-joint head rounded out the kit, and filled out the day pack!

The road in was rough, real rough, but I was to learn that rough was the norm in these parts. I provisioned at Morven in the morning and spent most of the day driving in to Carnarvon. Clouds of billowing bull dust concealed bone-jarring potholes between sand drifts. But it passed through fascinating country and I tarried to photograph the bush and bush clearing - massive bulldozers grinding the Brigalow into cow pasture. Which is, of course, why Bush Heritage wanted to buy and save Carnarvon Station!

The light was fantastic as I drove in through Carnarvon just before sundown. A big roan coloured Wallaroo posed for the 400mm beside the track, and further on I paused to photograph a bull bogged in a dam. It was high drought here and weakened cattle loitered about the dams in hope of bales of fodder.

A ute bounced down the track toward me and Tony's smiling face greeted me. "Can't stop, gotta get this beast out". He drove down to the helpless bull, threw a chain around its horns, and dragged it head first and belly dragging out of the mud with the 4wd ute. "Shoulda dragged it back to the yards like that!". Thus was my introduction to life on Carnarvon Station.

 I couldn't stop either - there would be time to catch up for a yarn later. I passed the stock yards in the magic minutes before sunset. Clint, Tony's son, was working cattle there and I asked him how to get to the nearest high point (while shooting the rustic scene with the 24mm - one learns to shoot and talk at the same time).

I drove off into the wilderness with no idea how to tackle the enormous task, and with very rough directions just headed for the hills. I caught the wilderness vista at dusk from the side of Mount Gobble Goobla, an isolated basalt pinnacle, then sat in the silence to just "tune in" to this powerful landscape. In the morning, I would scale the mountain before dawn.

There followed two days of busily exploring by vehicle and on foot - climbing the hills, scrambling along the creek lines, relying on the rough but accurate station map drawn for me by Clint. The time was punctuated by magic moments - witnessing the play of light on the wilderness, encountering the wildlife - shy wallabies, swaggering goannas, proud, snorting brumbies. I drove between quarters of the station at night to leave the day for photography, including a night drive to The White Stallion mysteriously marked on Clint's map. Passing the homestead, I asked Thea, Tony's wife, how I would find this strange thing. "Well, its kinda obvious" she said with a straight face. I bivouacked at the end of the track and in my usual pre-dawn start the huge pale sandstone pillar glowed in the piccaninny daylight, towering 100m above the forest canopy. I had to laugh at my foolish question the night before.

I climbed through monsoon vine forest to a cave in a remote mountain-top cliff line, and ventured tentatively inside. It was created by the shattering of fine-grained volcanic rock, and jagged splinters formed a confused supporting structure for the massive slump block making the roof and one side of the cave. It looked like the mounting forces of strain had suddenly snapped the rock in an explosive splintering hundreds or perhaps thousands of years ago. I placed my foot on the first huge shard and it began to sing. A high-pitched whine filled the cave. I took my foot of it, but the singing continued. Not for me thanks - I retreated to safety. It might only take the weight of an itinerant photographer to set off the incredible compression forces that had been building up in those rocks for eons. And no-one would find my remote and lonely rocky grave.

The Aussie bush isn't easy to photograph. Details are okay, but to capture the general scene is a constant struggle with contrast and confusion. Days were clear and bright, shadows dark and unyielding. Drought made details look desiccated. I gradually collected latent images of the landscape, its vegetation and its wildlife, hoping to capture examples of the interplay between these facets of Carnarvon Station, and fill Charlotte's order - a two page list of plant and animal species, and endangered ecosystems. I was ready to send the first dozen rolls away with the mail man, as pre-arranged, for processing, so it was time to emerge from the bush. Days were running out to get the film back, edited, captioned, and delivered to Tassie by the deadline.

I normally break droughts when I'm on assignment, though I didn't guarantee rain on drought-stricken Carnarvon Station. But the next morning dawned dark and stormy, and by 8am it was raining hard. I hightailed it out of the high country, back to the homestead to meet Toney's ute slipping and sliding in the mud as well. He was smiling widely but he confirmed my fears - the mail man wouldn't come in the rain. I would have to drive out. "You've got 4wd, haven't you? You'll be right!". He laughed as his ute skidded away. "Haven't locked in the front hubs. I'll be right!".

I pulled in to Morven in a vehicle that looked more like a mud cake, arriving just before the Post Office closed. Now for the anguished wait for the film to be couriered to and from F-stop Film Laboratories in Brisbane for processing. They arrived back 12 noon on the Friday before the Monday deadline. I set up my light table in the local park and did a frantic edit, mount and caption of 48 slides in 2 hours, then ran them up to the Post Office for the Express service to Tasmania just in time. "Do they work over the weekend?" I asked Lynne the Postie. "They never stop - with any luck at all it will be there on Monday."

[CQ29.7e] When the drought broke, the light show was spectacular.

Two happy endings to this story: Charlotte got the pictures in time to slot them in to the national newsletter. So all of Bush Heritage's many supporters got an eyewitness experience of their new reserve-to-be, so important for their much needed financial support.

And Tony got the rain he had been praying for. I returned to Carnarvon Station for two more weeks shooting aerials, working the area with larger format cameras and sharing the many special places with video cameraman Geoff Spanner. We witnessed a transformation of the wilderness now flowing with precious life-giving water. During that time Tony's gaunt stock, which he had arranged to be trucked off the property and sold, grew visibly fatter with the increasing greening of the landscape.

Without the constant pressure of stock grazing, and with the good season, Carnarvon will recover to be the crown jewel of The Australian Bush Heritage Fund's conservation lands, a priceless heritage for our nation and its children.

Text and pictures copyright Wayne Lawler/Ecopix. Available for publication, pease enquire.