On my recent Mallee Routes photo trip I returned to sites in the eastern Mt Lofty Ranges that I had briefly photographed in  during the 1980s.   I spent a bit of the on the road time walking around the area on the Tungkillo  to Palmer  section of the Randall Rd, which runs from Mt Pleasant to Walker Flat.

Whilst I was taking some scoping snaps with my digital camera I remembered some of the photos that I’d made in the 1980s in this general location. The image below is one of the images that I remembered making using a Linhof Technika 70:

I recalled that in the 1980s I was visually attracted by the bareness of this landscape. It was a stripped, overgrazed landscape with just the odd tree hanging on. There was very little in the way of replanting or Landcare.

I did try to find this location on my return visit in the limited time that I had available but I couldn’t. I guess that I must have walked a fair way into the private land in the 1980s.

In the 1980s I only ventured away from the Mt Lofty Ranges to the Murraylands below the Ranges to occasionally visit friends at Mantung in the Murray Mallee. Only I didn’t know that it was the Mallee in the 1980s. I saw it as dry, limestone country, and I wondered how anyone could ever grow crops there, or would even want to live there. I basically recoiled from the Murray Mallee. Now I am photographing it.