Princess Royal Station

TenPastTen agency brought us up to Burra to photograph a cattle station in South Australia’s Mid North, and I drove up there thinking about scale. It’s one of the largest in the state. You can cross it for hours and still be on it. I had a mental list of the big stuff — country, weather, feedlots, machinery.

What really stood out was the people on the farm. The characters, the family and a community all nested in one. 

Part of the job was also a recruitment film — staff talking to camera about what it’s actually like to work there. Fair question. Also a hard one to answer out loud without sounding like a brochure.

It had already been answered before anyone sat down. The homesteads are on the property. There are children around the farm. In half these frames there’s more than one generation standing in the same paddock, and I didn’t put any of them there. We were fortunate enough to be welcomed to the business and farm by the owners, the Rowe family and given an insight into the scope and size of the impressive business. 

You can usually tell when a group has been assembled for the occasion. This wasn’t that. Mostly I stayed out of the way and tried to be quick about it. 

Most of the images had to become something else eventually — brochures, ads, a banner with a headline across the top. 

Shot alongside Kris Jenkinson, who ran film while I ran stills.