Still morning reflection

The best thing about camping on the Fortescue is the colours in the morning. You can't always see the sunrise, but once it's up it casts an absolutely beautiful golden light over everything for about an hour. It truly is the golden hour.

To cap it off, the water is still and the birds are many. The colours of the red contrast beautifully with the blue of the sky and the green of the foliage, so much so that even in the dryest of seasons, like this season, you still have some sense of oasis.

Following a mud map to 'Chocolate Topped Mountains'

I published this first on ABC Open, again under the Pic of the Week project. If you have time, check out ABC Open, it is a collection of stories from regional Australia.

Gathering family together for a camping trip produces bonding, mateship, friendship and all kinds of good stuff among the stresses of heat, flies, spinifex and the close proximity of a tent.

In a place like Karratha, where few have spent their lives and live with family generations, your friends become your family. Connecting with people through workplaces, clubs, churches and hobbies is paramount to staying sane so far from home.

We organised a church camp to bring the congregation together - combining 'Pilbara family' and hobbies. To give people time to connect with those they wouldn't normally connect with. The thing about the Pilbara is that most people are transient - here for many reasons but connected by a commitment to the place for a time. A camping trip is one way to give people one weekend of family fun - to know they have friends and a network even when most of us come from so far away.

We are blessed in our church members, to have some community strongholds who have been here for a lot longer than most. The true locals who have seen this town grow and change, but can bring us back to the reality of the landscape that just goes through cycles. These people shared with us the camping spot on their station, provided us with directions on a 'mud map' to find the best camping spot for fun that had easy access.

We followed a dirt road, spied the 'chocolate topped mountains' as they have been described by a dear friend, turned off the road to a grassed area by a waterhole. The sun had taken more than its fair share of the water, but the mud, the water, the walking, the photos and the stillness still had attraction enough to inspire people and help them connect.

JRR Tolkein once said through his writings: "The road goes ever on and on. Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the road has gone and I must follow if I can". Follow the road, follow the mud map, you may be surprised where it takes you - friendship, connection, love, acceptance and family away from home.

Fields of Mulla Mulla

Mulla mulla are everywhere in the Pilbara. They are the wildflower that connects pretty much the entire region. That's probably why it is the official flower of the Pilbara.

We organised a church camp a while back.

Photos from this camp are bittersweet for me. As I write, my camera, Betsy, is in the mail, destined for the Canon service centre and she literally stopped working overnight on this camp. I am truly devastated but secretly hoping she may be beyond repair and I can upgrade....is that wrong?

Anyway, hopefully by the time this is published she will either be back in my hands and I will have taken more photos or I will have a new camera, all without a bump in photos on the blog.

So, on this camp one morning I got up to take photos of the mulla mulla. These guys, standing tall in the morning sun are glorious and epitomize what the Pilbara looks like. If only you could feel the wind, smell the spinafex, hear the rocks as well and you would know what this harsh landscape has in store for you and you too will never leave.