One day last year, Alice Mabin went to take some photos of a large mob of cattle that had embarked on one of the biggest droving runs in Australian history.
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Little did she know that she would join the 18,000 head on the Brinkworth cattle drive for almost half a year.
It was an adventure that would take Alice over 2000km from Winton in Queensland down to Hay in NSW.
“I just went out one day for enjoyment to take some photos … then I went and joined them for five months on and off,” Alice said.
“It was really good, it was something I found myself lumped into but it was something I’d never done before and a big learning experience.
“I had to come and go from the mobs because I needed to keep earning some money to keep going back and take more photos.
The result has been a compilation of some 250 photographs published two weeks ago in her “coffee table book” The Drover which captures the landscape, livestock and characters on the route, including some shots of the Forbes region.
Alice said she had about five days in the Lachlan area and spent some time with Forbes drovers Reg and Bill Sutton.
In her photographs Alice tried to portray droving as it truly is, and found the task at times testing.
“Some of the people were very challenging because they didn’t talk much or didn’t want to talk about themselves,” she said.
But Alice said the drovers soon got used to her camera.
At the moment Alice is back on the road touring the Winton to Hay route again, this time promoting her book The Drover.
She has already passed through Forbes and her books can be found in both News on Rankin and Nocks Newsagency.
