When a group of rural photojournalists formed an Instagram account – Beauty in the Bush Collective – to inspire and motivate each other, the cascade of images and stories proved so powerful they needed a permanent home, somewhere tangible, forever. And so, Bush Journal was born.
A young Peter Ritter stood in the back paddock of his family’s Moree farm - neck craned as a gigantic Hercules aircraft blocked the sky above him. “It was a bit of a training ground for the military,” he recalls. “They’d fly down in fighter jets and have fake wars over the top of our property.”
Four-year-old Joe Chalker is slumped over an old chair next to a bale of wool. He’s gently sucking his thumb, oblivious to flurry of activity around him. It’s shearing time at Lach River Merino Stud near Cowra in central New South Wales, and that means all hands on deck, even little ones that still need an afternoon nap.
Burning cane has a unique smell: sweet, musty and smoky, all at once. When farmers still burned the tall crop before harvest, we danced outside in the dying light of the day, as black ash rained down on us.
“If you want to come back here, it’ll be yours, but if you don’t, then you’ll have to settle for less,” Dad informed a seven-year-old me at the dinner table one night.
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