This is one of my favourite photos, taken by my husband in 2006 less than a year after we moved to Baranduda. It shows the beauty and the spareness of the landscape, piercing afternoon light, the dry brown grass short and sparse, and trees scattered in the paddocks, lining the old roads and clothing the hills around Wodonga.
It feels as if I can see across the whole country, the horizon sharp and defined, no haze, dust or smoke to cloud the view. The sky blends from the intense white radiance of the late afternoon sun to a pure azure wash from one side of the panorama to the other. It looks beautiful. But it is also harsh.
It was the height of the millenium drought, which started in the late 1990’s but extended through to 2010, with 2006 being the driest year on record ever in the Albury-Wodonga region. Native animals and vegetation suffered, dams were dry, farms went bust and metropolitan areas struggled for water where previously they thought they would always have plenty. In Baranduda and Wodonga there was limited watering of gardens, only by hand at prescribed times. I remember struggling carrying buckets of water from our shower out to the fruit trees to help keep them alive. We wondered if it would end and what state the area would be in once it did. Even the winter was dry and unseasonally warm, gloriously sunny weather, but not what I would call a winter.
So what I love about this photo is the light, the story of the land as it is laid out in front of me – and the story is there if you know where to look – and the fact that the locals and the land survived, although we were all changed in some way. Drought is a part of this land but I experienced this one from up close, in a way that you don’t experience it when you live in a city. You see resiliences that you didn’t realise were there, and limits that you know can only be pushed so far. This was a one in 1,000 year drought, except that now they’re expected to happen more often than that. So this photo signifies many things, light, drought, survival, change. And beauty. It’s a reminder not to take what we have for granted and to always look beyond the surface for the story beneath.