Oldies Project, Portraits, Road trip Nic Duncan Oldies Project, Portraits, Road trip Nic Duncan

Bryan at Gascoyne Junction

While we were hanging out with Spags, we also met Bryan. Spags seems not to have a care in the world. His mate Bryan though has the weight of the world on his shoulders right now after losing everything in a fire a month ago. Bryan had been living in his caravan inside a big shed at Spags’ place. He was working out bush when he got a call from a mate to say the shed had burnt to the ground. “It was April Fool’s Day”, Bryan said “I thought they were pulling my leg.”

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Wheatbelt mother and son

Neighbours to Robin and Robert, Margaret Scally lives in Goodlands, on the northern edge of the Wheatbelt in Western Australia with her two sons. It’s not the easiest place to find but we spotted their ‘mailboxes’ next to the road sign bearing their name. Standing at her back door with views across to ‘the hills’, Mt Singleton and Mt Gibson, Margaret told us of her earliest memory - aged around five, being given the last rites by the priest when she had “the black measles”.

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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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Wilma at the Mukinbudin BP

Wilma Geraghty, 89, and her son Peter own the Mukinbudin BP. She still works five and a half days a week because “What else would I do?” As well as working in the office this diminutive lady whose skin belies her years told me “I pump fuel, do the gas cylinders but I gave up carrying the 20 litre drums quite some time ago though…I’m the dog’s body! I do everything and anything but I’m the master of none.”

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Lives Well Lived, Bruce Rock Part 3

When Veronica called Katrina to check she was home and there was no reply, she presumed her friend was having a sleep. We tried phoning again a little while later and discovered that Katrina, the oldest of the three friends at 91, was in her garden planting dozens of seedlings she’d been given and showing no sign of needing a nana nap.

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Annie and Lindsay at home in Lake Grace

Annie and her artist daughter Michelle were two of the first people we met when we came to do a recce in Lake Grace prior to our week long North of Us project almost a decade ago. They spent the day showing us around, and helped us find the perfect spot to set up camp. If you know of any lovely Oldies between Lake Grace and Bruce Rock (via Corrigin) we’ll be in the area for the next week or so and would love some suggestions :-)

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Lake Grace elders, Neil and Elsie

When I was asking around about who I should be trying to photograph in Lake Grace, Neil and Elsie’s name came up again and again. Jim has lived in Lake Grace all his life - his family were amongst the first to start farming here. Elsie, a retired nurse grew up down the road in a little town called Newdegate.

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Retired Lake Grace farmer, Jim

Jim, a retired farmer, was born and raised in Lake Grace. He described himself as deaf, with one bung eye and the other doesn’t work at all. Walking slowly now with his frame, he’s still living at home at 88. We arrived at his farm to find him sitting in his ute, door open, old sheepdog beside him on the passenger seat, Radio National playing full blast, and pleased to discover he had visitors.

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