There’s no grey nomads, individual TV satellite dishes or nighties hanging on the communal washing line here…Gnaraloo is not for the faint-hearted…

It turns out you don’t need to be old to be an Old Bastard. We’d been told that John Wheelock has been the president of Carnarvon’s Old Bastards since its inception in 1982. A quick google revealed that the Australasian Order of the Old Bastards is an Australia-wide organisation, far less organised than the Rotary Club or the Lions, but just as effective where fund-raising is concerned…

I met up with Ray and Macca at the Yacht Club for the Sunday Session, and they decided I need to meet Irish too. “He looks like a leprechaun” they told me.

“Karl Brandenberg, Carnarvon’s Shire President, dobbed his mate Peter in as a local, colourful character I ought to photograph. Karl told me that Peter was the roo shooter for the district for years. “He’s a laugh a minute…and tough. Cheeky as they bloody come”…

A morning spent with the senior citizens in Carnarvon, WA

Before any photographs were taken I sat down to enjoy a home-grown mango smoothie and a chat at the kitchen table with Carnarvon grower Rick Skender and his mum, Zarka…

Now in his 80s, Mick has spent a huge part of his life living in the beach shack his father built back in 1959, just north of Carnarvon. In fact he still spends a large part of each year there - having arrived in January he has no plans of heading back south until August. When I visit Mick, his mate Faye is there for a few weeks too.

It seems the whole of Carnarvon knows Dr Harry Sneddon. For many years he was the town’s vet treating creatures great and small. A quietly spoken, gentle man - a gentleman in its truest sense - it’s not hard to imagine him tenderly handling someone’s fur child at his practice in town, or horse whispering out on a cattle station. More recently he’s owned and operated the general store just out of the town centre to keep himself busy in his retirement.