Dara Kretschmer Photo

BORDERLANDS

“Way out West Where the Rain don’t fall…”
The Dingoes (Mushroom Records, 1973)

The region between Winton and Longreach, Queensland, Australia, lies 22 degrees south of the equator astride the Landsborough Highway. It sits atop the Great Artesian Basin, a vast aquifer of ancient ground water, that arrives at the surface boiling hot, blue tinged with minerals and stinking of sulphur dioxide. This is what passes for a reliable water in these latitudes.

Water (or more to the point the absence of it), informs every activity in this region. While climate change has been at the centre of public debate only in recent times, in the margin rainfall areas of western Queensland like Winton and Longreach, weather has played a central role in the rural economy since the times of European settlement. While the cycle of long periods of drought with the once in a decade flood, is commonplace in this region, 124 years of Bureau of Meteorology data (since 1884), show a land that: averages only 14 to 16 inches of rainfall per annum; has an average December temperature of 38 degrees C; and registers only 31 days per year where rainfall greater than 1 mm is recorded. This region is truly the borderland; a borderland between those regions where grazing can be supported and those where -- other than in the best of years -- it can be a marginal economic activity.

Like in many of these borderland areas around Australia, pastoral activities have been in retreat as nature reasserts its control over man’s efforts to earn an economic rent from the land. Lorraine Station that features in this exhibit has not been exempt from these seemingly irresistible forces.

The images in this series were taken on Lorraine Station; a cattle-grazing property located in the Winton district. They were taken as part of a photo study of the far west regions of Queensland conducted in 1995.

In 1995, Lorraine Station operated as an autonomous cattle station; but even then climate necessitated the need to lessen the reliance on beef production. During that period, the property was, in part, reliant upon the farm stay trade in order to aid in its on-going viability as a business enterprise. Then, as now, climate played a vital part in its economic success or otherwise.

Thirteen years on, Lorraine Station is a very different place. As climate reasserts its’ hold on the land, certain adjustments had to be made to the management of the land and in the activities of the station itself. Ownership has passed to others, the farm stay venture no longer forms part of the activities of the station and even the boundaries of the station itself have been re-drawn: the station has been combined with two neighbouring stations to form a substantially enlarged entity. Notwithstanding its already vast acreage, enlargement was necessary to ensure its on-going viability. In a land of long-term average rainfall of 14 to 16 inches, scale in acreage becomes a simple economic necessity.

These images record the one of the central activities of the station; the mustering of stock to the cattle yards on the property and in turn, their loading onto road-trains for transfer to the cattle markets of the central Queensland coast.

These images were originally shot in 35 ml. film (Ilford 100 Delta) using a Canon AE-1.