118 Australian Geographic
nearby shearing shed that served as a makeshift bar. All
this was run, independently of any formal organisation,
to raise money for the RFDS whose services provide a
critical lifeline in remote Australian towns like Copley.
The golfers raise more than $10,000 each time they hold
this event.
Local communities are the lifeblood of any society
and, like all social mechanisms, need individual work
and commitment to keep them functioning well.
Shared effort is the vital community ‘glue’, but it helps
enormously if there is also a common goal or theme
to work towards, whether it be that small-scale desert
golf day or a huge undertaking such as the Deni
(Deniliquin) Ute Muster. That annual festival in out-
back New South Wales began in 1999 and has grown
in popularity. In 2018 it hosted 7093 utes and more
than 20,000 visitors.
I decided to expand the original SA project into a
celebratory book about Australia’s community events
large and small, and it became as much a logistical exer-
cise as a creative one. The dates of the bigger events are
obviously fixed well ahead of time, which is a good
thing. But working out an itinerary that allowed me to
visit as many significant events as possible in a limited
time frame proved to be tricky and I had to miss out on
a few of the bigger, more widely known ones such as
the Birdsville Races.
However, it was the smaller events that proved the
most challenging – not photographing them, but findingout about them in the first place. There are probably
hundreds of small community events that you’ll never
hear about unless you’re a local. BaconFest, in the
southern Queensland agricultural town of Kingaroy,
is a good example. I found out about this new festival
while photographing a farmer carefully brushing his
prize bull at the Ekka (Queensland’s largest agricultural
show), in Brisbane. When he found out why I was
there taking photos he told me about the upcoming
and inaugural BaconFest 2018 in his home town. How
could I resist such a neat bit of serendipity!
I shot the images for the book during a 15-month
per iod – creat ing 30,0 0 0 i m ages in a l l. They were wh it-
tled down to about 2000 before the design work, and
we ended up with about 300 in the book.
My Australian Geographic work has always been
about photographing people and places. This project
was all about people – the most challenging of all pho-
tographic subjects, but also the most fascinating.BARUNGA
FESTIVALBarunga
(80km east of Katherine), NT
Three days on the Queen’s
birthday long weekend in June.
Annually.
barungafestival.com.au
Established 1985.DarwinThis Indigenous celebration is
a frenetic showcase of music,
sport and culture in the Top End.
Dozens of local and not-so-local
communities send groups to
Barunga to take part in the Bungul –
traditional dance displays
(see AG 149).HEART OF
AUSTR ALIA
To win a copy of Nick
Rains’s new book
Heart of Australia:
A Celebration of
Our Communities,
see page 33.Checking out the competition before
entering the Barunga dance area.AG