John Andersen
john.andersen@news.com.au
PHOTOGRAPHER Sally Batt grew up on a sheep station on the western plains south of Richmond. She was a bushie, born and bred to a life on the land. She went to boarding school at Blackheath Thornburgh College in Charters Towers, left in 1980 and returned home to station life where she worked on her brother’s shearing team.
She married in 1991 at the age of 27 and settled down on Ranmoor Station north of Richmond with husband,
Stephen. They had four children who are the light of their lives. They sold Ranmoor in 2010 and moved first to the Sunshine Coast and then to Victoria where they ran an import-wholesale company.
But, as so often happens, things change as lives go off in different directions. Sally and Stephen parted ways in 2016.
It was then that Sally struck out on her own in Melbourne as a photographer, specialising in weddings. Developing her own photographic style, this woman from the open plains of Richmond, created a life for herself behind the lens, turning what had been a hobby into a flourishing business. And more than that, she discovered something about herself.
She discovered she could cope and that she wasn’t afraid to fly solo into the headwinds of a challenging world. And now, with cameras slung over the shoulders, she has moved to Charters Towers where her parents live in retirement. In a way she has come home. This is her story:
It became very clear to me, over the course of the last few months of 2019, that I was in a decidedly privileged position. My kids were adult and independent, I did not have a partner, nor a home and I had a profession that allowed for complete freedom of movement. I came to realise that what had occurred as threatening and lonely at the start of the year was in fact a tremendous opportunity.
Completing my 26-year marriage and losing my financial security (one did not happen because of the other, they just both happened in the last 5 years) took the gas out of me, let me be straight about that. But, time has a way of rearranging one’s thought patterns, of diluting the fear. The saying “time is a great healer” is true. I am testament to that, and I am
grateful for the time that has passed and wonder at the capacity for a human being’s healing and resilience.
The remedial quality of the passing of time was expedited by the gift of having had the guts to establish myself as a professional photographer (the classic hobbyturns-into-a-profession story), which provided enormous comfort and purpose on those really nasty days and without which I would have stayed under the doona for probably two years!
As my kids grew up, I would bang on to them about finding something
COLLINSVILLE residents kicked in with $16,000 in bushfire funding. The coal town’s publicans, Nigel and Janet Lobegeier, distributed the money in the form of vouchers to people who lost their homes in the greater Bateman’s Bay area south of Sydney.
The money, raised from raffles in N Nigel and Janet’s Pit Pony Tavern, w was turned into $500 vouchers redeemable at IGA and Betta Electrical stores. The local Lions were presented with $1000 raised by the Lions in Collinsville. “We went to Malua Bay near Batemans Bay. This is where the pictures were taken of the people standing on the beach to escape the fires,“Janet said.
“At Lake Conjola they told us about fireballs coming out of the sky and hitting the houses. And they told us about huge clouds filled with lightning that rolled in front of the fires. This was in the middle of the day. Lightning was hitting power poles and houses. People were running away in front of it,” she said.
“They were so appreciative of what the people of Collinsville had done. But, that is what Collinsville is all about. It will always step up and help people,” Janet said.
Beware the shysters
COLLINSVILLE is about to become the centre of the universe as far as the great fossil fuel debate is concerned. This is where a coal-fired powered station could be built if a two year, $4 million Federal Government feasibility study gives it the tick. Will the economics stack up? This is what everyone is waiting to find out. It will be boom time for Collinsville if it does. Bowen-based Councillor Mike Brunker has been pushing for a coal fired power station at Collinsville for the past 20 years. He is ecstatic the Government has come up with the money for the feasibility study, but at the same time he’s not blowing the victory trumpet just yet. He doesn’t want people in Bowen and Collinsville to get ‘burned’ by con artists, shysters and other paid-up members of the white shoe brigade. “I’ve already had people saying they want to buy houses at Collinsville. This has happened before. They come in and buy houses, put the rents up so high the locals can’t afford to pay and then if nothing happens in the end, it all collapses. In the meantime, we’ve had older residents who have had to leave town to find cheaper rents.
“Everyone has to remember that even if the feasibility comes up trumps, an investor still has to be found to come up with $2 billion. What I’m saying is that it is very early days. Let’s take small steps, one at a time.”
Power station battle
THE power station, if it happens, will have enormous economic benefits for Collinsville and Bowen. Townsville and Mackay would get a boost as well. If you did a vox pop in the main streets of Bowen and Collinsville today, asking if the power station should go ahead, people would give it the thumbs up. My guesstimate is that 100pc would answer “yes” in Collinsville and 90pc would answer “yes” in Bowen. But, don’t forget the enormity of the politics at play. This would make the Adani protests look like Romper Room.