There’s always one day when you leave your camera on the wrong setting, and today was that day.
We were travelling along the back road from Winton to Jundah. Doc and I came this way on our trip to the Cape and we loved it, so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane, but with a better camera (hahahaha!). I was quite excited (awww).
This is one of those roads that everybody should travel. The scenery changes constantly, from scrubby ti tree, to rocky channel country, open grasslands, jump up country, and (sometimes) magnificent gum trees along creek beds.
Last time I came along here with Doc we stopped for lunch under the only tree to be seen, by a windmill pumping water up to a dam and a water trough for the cattle. While we were having our lunch two kangaroos came down to the water trough for a drink. One of them had a joey in its pouch. It was truly incredible to sit and watch it all.
There really is something in what my mother always tells me – you can’t go back. I found that tree again. The scrub had been removed from the dam, there were three new water tanks built by the windmill, and the whole thing had been fenced in with holding yards added. It wasn’t the same.
The rest of the drive however was.
The big difference this time was that I was driving. It meant I didn’t have as much time to look around, but it also meant that whenever I found something interesting I could stop and take a photo (sob).
And I did. I took photos of the sandy road curving through scrubby ti-tree. I took photos of the channel country, where the water cuts through solid rock and even in drought there’s still water in some of the deepest waterholes. I took photos of the most amazing gum trees that looked like they’d been painted silver and pink. I took photos of the emus and kangaroos that we saw along the way. I took photo after photo of the changing scenery and the colours of the road, from white sand through gravel to deep red.
And on each and every one I had the setting wrong so the white is blue – as is just about everything in the photo.
But then, when we’d finished the drive and set up our camp and I spied red grasses glistening in the setting sunlight I finally noticed and fixed the camera. Just in time for the sunset and the most beautiful starry sky you’ve ever seen reflecting in the still waters of the Johnson River.
Oh well, even bad photos can’t dim the memories. I guess it just means I’ll have to do that road again. Doc? When can we get away again????
