Life on the land, as captured by Graziher readers

Scott and his family run a sheep and cattle operation on 2023 hectares in Porters Retreat. Our daughters, Charlotte, five, Ellie, three, and Isabelle, three months old, are the fifth generation on the farm, Wrens Nest.
They spend most of their time outside helping with lamb marking, raising poddy lambs and calves, chasing chooks and riding our two horses.

I’m originally from a small country town called Warialda in north-west New South Wales and have been a farm kid my whole life. I grew up riding horses, usually bareback with just a halter, and always had animals, even raising joeys with my two younger sisters.

Ever since my parents gave me a camera for a school excursion when I was about seven years old, I’ve loved taking photos. I upgraded to a digital camera in high school, and my passion for photography blossomed. You would always find me out taking photos of the dogs, horses and landscapes. If I wasn’t riding my horse at local events, I was there with my camera.

Fast forward to 2015: I met my husband while I was living in Wagga and moved with him to the Oberon area in 2016. I am now a primary school teacher and when I’m not at school or doing mum things, I’m riding my horse Zion and taking photos.

What I really love about photography is that you can tell a story. I want to showcase rural Australia and what it’s like being a farming family, capturing those smaller details most people wouldn’t think twice about. The images above show parts of our life on the land and the beauty we get to witness each day.

I have lived in regional Queensland on both grazing and cropping properties. The photos I take are snapshots of the land and show what it’s like to live rurally. The border collie (in the image at the top of the page) is my brother’s first working dog, whom we took for an adventure to get him used to staying close to us and understanding the lay of the land. I have always loved living in a small country town — there are so many opportunities for amazing photos.

After seven years of living in Goondiwindi, my husband Matt and I decided to take the leap and move back to the bush in 2022. While I was looking at station jobs for us, I was given just one condition by Matt: find somewhere warm. Despite that, we found ourselves at the grid of Bargibal station in the New England region of New South Wales, where we currently make our home and have embraced our love of pure country living.

Transitioning from my profession as a nurse to the absolute chaos of raising three small humans has not been easy. Amid the whirlwind of having three babies in three-and-a-half years, I discovered the oh-so-sacred need for ‘me time’ breaks.

This is when I found my enjoyment of photography. I love showcasing the beauty in the imperfections of rural living, the side that often goes unnoticed. From surreal sunsets to bedtime stories, each snap of the shutter captures the lifestyle we have quickly grown to love.

I’m from a sheep-farming family, married to a shearer. We have two kids together and live in the Grampians. We run a few hundred sheep and are currently building our forever home completely off-grid. As well as being a mum, I’m setting up a photography and social media business, Grampians Social. The kids and I often visit the shearing sheds to take pictures for my husband’s business, Sheep Worx.

My husband Glenn has been in the shearing industry for over 20 years and is now a contractor with up to three teams going at a time. He also does seasonal ewe pregnancy scanning, marking, mulesing and crutching. Our little boy, Freddie (pictured) is two years old and loves being outside and going to visit Dad at work. Our daughter Bobby is five months old and is the perfect addition to our little family.