Russell & Jean - Leonora

Self-described environmentalists, Jean and Russell salvage and repurpose what would otherwise end up at the tip. Between them they own five gophers (disability scooters) which they ride around town doing their shopping and running errands, because they’re more economical than a car.

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Wally - the Carnabys Cockatoo man

With a lifelong passion for both the birds and the bees, dating all the way back to his childhood growing up at Clontarf Boys’ Town, apiarist Wally Kerkoff is well respected in bird and conservation circles. He has spent over 30 years designing and constructing artificial logs for placement in the Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo breeding areas of Moora and Mogumber in WA. With the shortage of suitable natural nesting trees, this work has been essential in building numbers of the endangered Carnaby’s.⠀⠀⠀⠀

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Pancho and friends at K-Town, Exmouth

While we were all having coffee in town one morning, we were introduced to a bloke by the name of Pancho. Pancho had been a prawn boat skipper for MG Kailis back in the day, and had recently written a book about that and a lifetime of other adventures (including a riotous weekend on Rottnest with Bob Hawke before he was PM)…

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President of the Old Bastards

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…

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Roo shooter Peter in Carnarvon WA

“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”…

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Mick at his Blowholes shack

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.

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Dr Harry in Carnarvon

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.

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Wheatbelt father and son portraits

Now 77, Robin’s life has not always been easy but it’s been full of love. Emerging from the school principal’s office after getting “the cuts” for wolf-whistling at her, Robin first saw his “Princess”, Kaye as she walked across the schoolyard. “You know when you’ve seen an angel” he told me. Knowing he’d got a keeper, Robin asked her father if he could marry her six times before he gained approval…

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