Photograph copyright: DAVID McMAHON
Last Friday I had to make a quick trip up to the bush, for work. The drive there and back was a 200-kilometre round trip, but I was on an extremely tight schedule. Accordingly, I made the deliberate decision not to take my camera with me, so that I wouldn’t be tempted to pull over and take photographs during the drive into the Outback.
Yes, you read that correctly. I decided NOT to take my camera. Not enough time, you see. Didn’t need any distractions while I drove.
Yes, this is the bloke who always has his camera with him.
About two or three minutes before I reached my destination, there was a beautiful field of canola, a rippling sea of gold with a red farmhouse in the background. Tough. No time to stop, remember.
Then on my way back I spotted a dead gum tree, skeletal and ghostly white, against a clear blue sky. But wait, there’s more. The tree had a huge hollow in its thick trunk, with the cornflower-blue sky vivid through the gap in the wood.
Yes, you’re right. I was gripping the steering wheel a bit tighter than I had to. Concentrating, you see. Trying to justify why I hadn't brought my camera.
Then I saw an animal on the dead-straight track in front of me. I slowed down and waited for its form to emerge through the heat haze. I had dropped my speed for 100km/h to about 40km/h when I realised what the animal was.
Of all things, it was a koala. Let me put this in perspective for you. When you see a koala, it’s a) asleep or b) semi-asleep and c) always clinging tightly to the branches of a eucalyptus tree. They are not (generally speaking) the most animated inhabitants of the animal kingdom.
So the one day when I see one gallivanting down a bush road, I don't have my camera with me. This shot, taken at Dadswell's Bridge, home of The Giant Koala, will have to suffice.
Postscript: When I told one of the Authorbloglets the unfortunate story of my camera-less encounter with the koala, he just shook his head and said: "You DID have your phone with you. And you could have used that perfectly good camera.)
Wish I'd had his presence of mind.
So do forgive me while go off and I sulk in a corner and simply grind my teeth instead.
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