Like most people born on the Eastern seaboard of the continent I had little real understanding of rural Australia and tended to think of graziers who grow wool as a cohesive group with no individuality.

A recent assignment shooting for a new Website I am constructing, made me realise that there are as many different types of wool growers as there are wool properties. Each property I visited was different to any of the others and the owners of the properties were also unique.

The basic premise that one can make a living by breeding sheep and shearing them for the wool is attractive. The reality today is a far cry from a Seventies documentary I once watched in which the grazier's wife was bemoaning the fact that "the second aircraft has got to go," while a brace of Rolls Royce saloons stood beside an immaculately manicured croquet pitch.

These days the vehicle is likely to be a battered Suzuki Stockman ute, while the airstrip was long ago ploughed for a crop of rape seed and the rabbits have devastated the croquet lawn. The property owner is likely to be his own wool classer, presser and roustabout while his wife works in the town to help keep them afloat.

When I first moved to Mudgee an English friend of mine asked why, writing, "that you've no connection with the land and I can't imagine you outside of the (London's) West End."

It wasn't true. My grandfather had been a farmer and I guess he instilled in me the desire to own a piece of land in the bush. It took me over forty years but eventually I made it, to find that the Australian myth of the bushman does possess a modicum of truth and that "workin' the land" is as much a vocation as the priesthood and that many of the same qualities are needed. Self-reliance, devotion, resourcefulness, and, perhaps, a touch of madness.

Aerial photograph of the Wright homestead

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