I spotted this snappy-dressed gent, tapping away on his iPhone, as I drove down the main street of Boulder in the Goldfields recently…

…I supposed he’d meet some interesting characters in his line of work. He agreed, “I’ve had a gun pointed at me a few times! One time I even came away three grand better off”…

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.⠀⠀⠀⠀

Most of the characters I’ve photographed along the way have been discovered after we’ve arrived somewhere. Lazy Les was someone we’d heard about over the years and we had our fingers crossed that he’d be around when we visited gold prospecting friends of ours near Leonora.