Queensland campdrafts to quiet moments: readers share their station highlights

Jen Hoskins

Jen, 25, is an emergency nurse based in central Queensland. She also works as a rural photographer.

I’m a girl with very many loves. I grew up in a remote area and always knew I would return to the bush after going away for university. During my time on the east coast doing a nursing and midwifery degree, I would spend my days dreaming of life back out west. So that’s what I worked towards. I managed to score my final year placements in Mount Isa in north-west Queensland, which only cemented in my mind that this is where I belong.

Following graduation, I landed a job as a station hand and fell truly in love — with the work, the lifestyle and capturing the bush through my camera lens. Life in the bush is something else. It’s rough around the edges and brings you to your limits, to the point of breaking, and when you think it’s just too much, you’re immediately blessed with its sweet nectar.

The intense sunsets that stretch along the horizon, the first rain after you thought it would never come and the knock-off-time beers that taste like liquid gold.

These are the days we’ll be sitting around talking about in 80 years. Life out here is as sweet as it is sometimes bitter.

Nowadays, I balance my time between work in a rural hospital and documenting the stories of farming families, couples and rural businesses through my photography business, Coral and Country. I feel so lucky to be telling these stories, to be able to share the beauty of the bush, thorns and all, with the rest of the world. Australia is so beautiful, and the people who call it home make it even more so.

So that’s where you can find me, out in the paddock, camera in hand, determined to share the joy.

Rhianna O’Brien

A fifth-generation farmer, this 19-year-old grew up in Mallee country in rural Victoria on a mixed sheep and cropping farm, before pursuing a career working with livestock. You can follow her @rhianna_hope_photos.

When I was growing up, we always had dogs, pet lambs and other animals around. After finishing high school at 17, I made the decision to go ‘ringing’ in pursuit of my career goals. Since then, I’ve worked on stations in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland, returning home to Victoria each year at harvest time to drive a chaser bin for my dad.

Growing up on the farm is where my photography began. I was always trying to capture the landscape and our way of life. Our dogs were subject to many experimental photoshoots.

Since leaving home I’ve fallen in love with the untamed, raw spirit and the vastness of the bush.

Capturing snippets of the gritty, tough beauty of station life is my photography passion. Whether it be the striking colours or the finer details caught in black and white photographs, I constantly try to do justice to the country and its people.

Josie Golledge

This 20-year-old is currently based at Walhollow station in the Northern Territory. 

I’m originally from Scone, in the Upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales. I had lived there my whole life but decided to make the trip up north straight after Year 12, to pursue my passion in the agricultural industry. For two years I worked at Barkly Downs station in Queensland as a station hand and now I’m working at Walhollow, where I’m looking forward to documenting people and animals doing what they love. I’m quite new to photography, but I absolutely love it: taking photos of people doing something they love and sharing the end product with them.

Imogen Grech

Based in the Hawkesbury in New South Wales, Imogen, 20, is a leading farmhand at a thoroughbred stud. She shares photos @imogengrech.

I have always been a lover of animals and the outdoors. I left high school to study a Certificate III in Performance Horses and am currently working on a boutique thoroughbred stud. As well as horses, I am also passionate about training dogs. My best friend is my Australian shepherd named Sadie, and I hope to have her compete in a trial by the end of the year. 

My partner’s family owns four farms in the southern Riverina just outside of Barooga in New South Wales, where they produce wool, beef and crops. It has been in their family for four generations. Whenever we have the chance, we spend a couple of weeks helping out. We hope to move to the farm in the next few years to help run and restore it. 

I feel very grateful that I am able to capture such special moments to look back on through my camera.

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