If you’re heading to Wooleen Station, the sunset tour running several days a week is a must-do. Informative, educational and fun with a cheeky wine as you watch the sun going down.

Hugging the horizon, 60 kilometres off the Western Australian coast, the low-lying Abrolhos Islands are home to cray-fishing and, more recently pearl-farming families. With only minimal, low-vegetation, these islands are windswept, and tough underfoot with feet-cutting coral. Without access to mains supplies, the island dwellers use rainwater collected from their shack roofs, and power generated from solar and wind. These islands are not for the faint hearted.

It’s promoted as a rodeo, music and camping festival and it more than lived up to its name, and its reputation for being a great weekend!

In 2003, to mark the Perth International Arts Festival’s 50th anniversary, renowned artist Antony Gormley created 51 sculptures which were installed on Lake Ballard. I’d read a lot about it at the time and dreamt of seeing them for myself, but an hour or two north of Kalgoorlie, Lake Ballard isn’t really on the way to anywhere else…you really have to make an effort to get there.

I finally got to Lake Ballard in 2010 and walking out onto the salt lake, I had that feeling that I was meeting people for the first time that I’d heard so much about from a mutual friend.

Nallan Station was the perfect base when we explored Cue and the surrounding district in early September. While we were there we took photographs for Cath and Dave for their website, social media and printed material, creating their very own unique stock library of images…

Grocery shopping in Cue is an altogether different experience. Bell’s Emporium opened in 1904 and is still operating from the same premises all these decades later…

We’ve passed through Meekatharra a few times now on long road trips north and south. I’d been hoping that we’d get to spend a few days last month…unfortunately that wasn’t to be. In the meantime I’ve added a few photos to my growing collection on Meeka’s main street, and I’ve moved it way up my list of places to stop for a while next time we’re in that part of the world.

Johnny doesn’t want a roof over his head - he’s happy in Western Australia’s out of the way places, sleeping under the stars.

We discovered this awesome bush camp north of Newman. We’d been trying to get to another one we’d heard about but found this one on the way! Running water in the Pilbara is a rare find so it was blissful to have fresh water next to our camp. The only sounds were frogs, cicadas, the ‘babbling brook’, and the breeze through the trees…that was until the helicopter appeared, passing overhead several times one morning, locating cattle during the annual muster.

Marble Bar is officially Australia’s hottest town, holding the record with 161 consecutive days over 37.8C (100F). Fortunately it was a very manageable 32 degrees when we were there recently. This outback town is named for its jasper which the early explorers believed to be marble. There’s more photos of the jasper patterns and colours in an earlier blog post.

With a rich history of gold mining, Marble Bar still draws gold prospectors from far and wide, hoping to find their fortune.

Early explorers in the Pilbara mistook the jasper outcrops for marble, and called the new town Marble Bar. The colours in the rocks around Marble Bar Pool are unbelievable, especially if you pour a little water over them to bring out their vibrancy.

…As a portrait photographer it was always going to be about the people. What the rodeo was also about was vibrant shirts and fancy belt buckles and, more importantly, family and community. Families had travelled into Broome especially from remote stations and communities for miles around - they set up their chairs and rugs, and settled in for the evening…

Exploring the far north-east of Western Australia was always in our minds when we left our home in Denmark on the south coast of WA back in March…

…Parts of the Kimberley may have their resorts and wealth, diamonds and pearls, but Wyndham is the hidden gem. 

A friend to both Pixie and Honest John, Bushy is another Wyndham local adding colour to this small town. Honest John took me to meet Bushy at his home which still shows many signs of its past life as the Post Office.

…Physically petite with a big personality, Pixie has that quick witted, dry humoured, fast-tongued way about her that film-goers around the world hoped all outback Aussies would be like back after watching Crocodile Dundee back in the early eighties…

If you ever find yourself in Derby in the Kimberley region of WA, it’s surely only a matter of time before you discover the Norval Gallery. It is crammed full of artist Mark Norval’s work, past and present, along with artwork by other local artists and it’s a feast for the eyes.

We spent a few days camping at Port Smith on our way up to Broome. A time of mud maps in red dust, and footprints on pristine white beaches; lagoons and mangroves and the feeling that we'd arrived in crocodile country; low, low tides and sand patterns; and so many brolgas.