Bruce Williams Photography

Day 8 / Saturday (Lawrence – Sydney, 639km, 397miles)

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:41:11 +0000

The longest day of all.
Totally over the driving by this stage, but had one hell of a great week!
Never thought I’d say this, but it was actually nice to get back to Sydney!

Take me to: <- Day 7

Day 7 / (Inverell – Lawrence, 258km, 160miles)

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:38:27 +0000

Breakfast in the motel room, then south to the little town of Tingha and then another 10km south to Green Valley Farm.
The owners of this place have done an amazing job of creating a “theme park on a farm”. There’s a heap of different rides, plus animal petting and a great museum of Australian memorabilia.
We spent close to 3 hours there.
Then, it was on the road to Glen Innes and on to Grafton.
Along the way, we found Border Falls, where we stopped for about an hour to shoot some photos.
We got to Lawrence around 4:30.

Take me to: <- Day 6 | Day 8 ->

Day 6 / (Lightning Ridge – Inverell, 405km, 251miles)

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:37:50 +0000

In fact, those baths were so good, we went back for another hour before we left Lightning Ridge this morning.
Then, it was back on the road for the 4 hour drive to Inverell, another mining town. This time, it’s sapphires.
Along the way, we passed through such must-see destinations as Collarenebri, Moree, and Warialda. Oh yeah baby, New York and Paris got nothin’ on this roadtrip!
We rolled into Inverell around 3:30 in the afternoon. We got into our motel room, Max switched on the TV and found WWE and hasn’t moved since.
Me… I’m enjoying having wireless internet access for the laptop, so have caught up on FB, and on writing this blog post.
Tomorrow morning, we’re going to check out Green Valley Farm which is a tourist attraction for the kids before we head off for Lawrence, our final pre-Sydney destination.

Take me to: <- Day 5 | Day 7 ->

Day 5 / Wednesday (Bourke – Lightning Ridge, 309km, 192miles)

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:37:20 +0000

We decided to sleep in this morning, and it proved to be a good decision. Sunrise was a bit of a non-event (I sneaked a peak out the window around 7am).
We grabbed some breakky and hit the road early for the trip to Lightning Ridge, Australia’s opal capital.
We got into Lightning Ridge about lunch time and went straight to the tourist info centre. I figured after 5 days on the road, Max needed some play time.
We booked in for an underground tour for 3pm, but went for a self-guided tour around town by ourselves first.
I took Max up to the Artesian Baths to show him what they were all about, and confirm that we would indeed come up for a dip after dinner. For those who are not aware, the Great Artesian Basin is a huge body of fresh water which lies underneath 30 per cent of the Australian mainland. It holds an incomprehensible 8,700 million MEGAlitres of water! That’s 8.7 x one million x one million! That’s a helluva lot of water!
It’s very heavily laden with minerals, so you wouldn’t drink it, but it makes a great source of water for livestock and crops in the outback.
And it’s so hot when it comes up out of the ground, that they have to COOL IT DOWN for the baths! They keep it at a constant 40 degree Celsius year round.
Anyway, enough of the history lesson.
We did the underground tour and learned all about opal mining (and the fact that Australia produces 96% of the world’s opal!).
We had dinner, then went to the baths and spent about 90 minutes soaking in the warmth. It was absolutely gorgeous!

Take me to: <- Day 4 | Day 6 ->

Day 4 / Tuesday (Tibooburra – Bourke, 359km, 223miles)

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:36:48 +0000

Up at dawn again, and headed back up to Sunset Hill, which contrary to what you might suspect, was actually a great spot for viewing sunrise as well, due to its 360 degree view.
However, much to our disgust, the clouds were sitting on the horizon preventing a colourful start to the day.
Again, frozen stiff, we headed back into town to grab some breakfast, have a shower, pack the car, and hit the track.
And ‘track’ it was! The first 40km or so was quite rocky, and rough going. After that, the road got marginally better and we were able to pick up a bit of pace.
The first leg of today’s journey was the 260km to Wannaring.
We were doing quite nicely, until about 50km out of Wannaring, a suicidal emu decided to pit his chances against a solid object travelling at 120km/hr. I saw him coming and hit the brakes, but I had too much momentum and he was too stupid to turn. Instead, he just ploughed into the right front panel and completely knocked the driver’s side mirror off the car.
Just great.
A bloke in a 4wd travelling about 5km behind me stopped and Scotch-taped it back on.
I can’t see out of it, but at least it will keep up appearances until I get back to Sydney.
After a counter lunch at the Wannaring Hotel, we hit the road for the second leg…. Wannaring to Bourke, another 192km.
We rolled into town with no accommodation lined up, having spent the last 2 days totally “off-the-air”… no mobile phone, no internet.
We got turned away from the first 3 motels we enquired at.
The fourth one was able to give us their very last room, just as the local tourism office was ringing them asking them about availability!
Talk about ‘close call’.

Take me to: <- Day 3 | Day 5 ->

Day 3 / Monday (Wilcannia – Tibooburra, 359km, 223miles)

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:34:50 +0000

We got up early and headed out of town to the north. We didn’t have to go far.
About 1km out of town, we found this great layer of fog laying across the landscape, so we decided that that would suffice as our ‘foreground interest’ for the morning.
Having frozen our butts off for an hour, and captured some frames, we headed back into town to grab some breakfast before hitting the road.
After breakky and a shower, we hit the road for White Cliffs.
Once we arrived there and found what a great little spot it was, I was wishing I had skipped Wilcannia altogether and driven the extra 93km!
After spending an hour or so in White Cliffs, we grabbed some sandwiches from the local takeaway for lunch, and hit the road again.
The dirt road from White Cliffs tot he Silver City Highway was actually smoother than the Silver City Highway itself!
We got into Tibooburra (the most north-western town in New South Wales) around 4:30 in the afternoon. We checked into our hotel room, and headed out to check out the area. We found ourselves up on the appropriately-named Sunset Hill, talking to an older couple who were also touring. We stood there together, freezing cold, waiting for a sunset which failed to materialize.
We headed back into town and hit the main bar of the pub (no 18+ rules out here!) for a drink while we waited for the pub’s kitchen to open at 6:30.
After dinner, we hit the sack early ready for another sunrise in the morning.

Take me to: <- Day 2 | Day 4 ->

Day 2 / Sunday (Nyngan – Wilcannia, 392km, 243 miles)

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:32:08 +0000

We got up early n the freezing cold and headed out in search of a good spot to shoot the sunrise.
Unfortunately, not knowing the area made it a bit difficult to know where to go, so we ended up on a dirt road just north of town.
The sunrise was gorgeous, and we shot what we could from where we were.
Unfortunately, as we were heading back into town an hour later, we passed a dam which had steam rising off it, which would have made for great foreground interest.
Note to self: try and scout out a good sunrise location before the sun goes down.
We got on the road and headed for Cobar, a mining town about 30km from Nyngan.
At Cobar, I had mobile coverage and decided to exploit that to book accommodation for tomorrow night in Tibooburra. Little did I know it at the time, but this decision was to prove itself a wise one.
After a half hour break for Max to have a run around and explore the old mining equipment on display in the park, we hit the road for the long haul to Wilcannia. 260km and no towns in between.
Well, if I thought Nyngan had little to offer, then what is there to say about Wilcannia?
We got to Wilcannia around 2 o’clock in the afternoon to find that nothing was open save the Shell Roadhouse.
Oh, and there was no mobile phone coverage, and only one place in town had internet access and that was the bank…. which was not open on a Sunday, of course!
Upon checking in to the motel, I was informed that the club is shut on Sundays, so the only place in town where we would be able to get a meal this evening would be the roadhouse, but we’d have to “let ‘em know in advance, or they’ll knock off early and go home”.
Right.
So mid-afternoon, we dropped in to the roadhouse and asked if we would be able to get an evening meal there.
I was told the “cooker goes off at 6:30, so you’d need to be here by 6:15 at the latest”.
So, what do you do in a rockin’ joint like this, after you’ve driven up and down all 16 blocks and seen every humpy in town?
And you’ve been down to the river and gazed upon it’s still, muddy visage?
And you’ve exhausted the excitement of looking at your ever-so-tiny motel room walls?
Why, you jump in the car and go for a drive out into the never never, that’s what!
Max and I headed out along a couple of the roads out of town, hoping to find a potential shooting location for tomorrow’s sunrise. Sad to say, we didn’t find anything even remotely interesting.
Guess we just have to hope the sunrise is a corker.
Tomorrow, we head north to the mining town of White Cliffs, then west to meet up with the Silver City Highway, then north to Tibooburra.

Take me to: <- Day 1 | Day 3 ->

Day 1 / Saturday (Sydney – Nyngan, 534km/331 miles)

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:31:08 +0000

Max and I left home, and stopped within 5 mins to fill up with fuel for the first day on the road.
While we were there, I got a call from Cath advising us that it had rained up in Grafton last night, which meant that there would definitely be no cane firing tonight.
Mmmm.
Didn’t count on that.
So, given that the likelihood of witnessing cane firing tonight was precisely zero, I made the decision to reverse the direction of our trip. That will bring us to Grafton toward the end of the week.
No guarantee of cane firing then either, but our chances can’t be worse than what we’ve got today.
So, we hit the road west, aiming for Dubbo.
We got there by about 3:30 in the afternoon.
I gave Max a choice.
Tomorrow night, we aim to be in Wilcannia.
If we stay here (Dubbo), we’ll be on the road for about 6.5 hours tomorrow.
Or, we do another 2 hours tonight, which would get us to Nyngan, and then we have a short day of 4.5 hours on the road tomorrow.
Max voted for the latter option, so we pushed on.
And so here I am sitting in the last motel room available in town (there’s a local race meeting on apparently) writing this blog entry.
The motel room is very basic, but it’ll do the job for the night.

Take me to: Day 2 ->

Sydney photographer’s meetup #3

admin — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 07:20:35 +0000

Easter Saturday saw myself and 8 other photographers braving the elements to head down (with a couple of models in tow)…… to the old tram sheds in Glebe.
We got there about 2 mins before the heavens opened up.
However, the ceiling is in about the same condition as the rest of the place, so we had to stash all our photography gear into the end of one of the trams.
Once that was done, we were able to set about grabbing some shots.
I’d like to thank Davo Hardy and Julie Towers for their tireless efforts as models.
I’d imagine modelling could be tiring with a photographer wanting “more of this, more of that” all day long, but having 8 of them at once?
So, thanks guys!
I know all the photographers involved had a great time, too.
Now to organise a venue for next month!

ARN Solutions

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:11:23 +0000

Last week, the guys in the Solutions Department came to me and asked if I could shoot some silly portraits.No notice.
“Can we do it now?”
Uh, yeah, ok.
So, these were done on the spur of the moment, with one flash and a reflector used as a backdrop.
The concept was to show them all doing anything OTHER than actually working!