30 YEARS OF AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC
Ever y pict ure
tells a story
Hidden behind the lens, AG’s skilled
photographers have travelled the length and
breadth of the nation seeking out the best vantage
points from which to capture images that will
best illuminate the stories we love to tell. For our
anniversary edition, we invited them to nominate
their favourites and tell us why.
IT WAS SUMMER on the Birdsville Track and the
temperature was 52ºC. At Mungerannie station, near
Marree in SA, there was a radio message waiting for
writer Paul Mann and me from the police at Leigh
Creek south – there was a man walking alone on the
track. He’d packed up his swag and walked out of the
cattle station that morning with only 1L of water.
He was wearing a bright red felt hat, which we easily
spotted a couple of kilometres along in the flat desert
landscape. Paul was driving and I asked him to pull up
short and allow me to jump out. The man in the red hat
looked back briefly and I signalled him to keep going as
I took the photo that would become a signature image
for AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC for many years.
The man was Graham Childs, a quiet, gentle
stockman from a cattle station at Turkey Creek in the
Kimberley. He’d walked and hitch-hiked down the
Tanami and Birdsville tracks to visit his mother, who
lived in Cessnock, in the Hunter Valley. When I asked
him how he enjoyed the visit, he replied, “Only stayed
two days, couldn’t stand the big smoke.”
He camped with us that night and showed us how
to find wild yams and berries and elusive water soaks.
He explained how he had learnt to survive in the desert
while living for three years with an Aboriginal commu-
nity near Turkey Creek.Colin Beard The man from Turkey Creek AG 12, 1988
January. February 85