Travel in the outback was never on the to-do list. Yet now, looking back, photographer Lainey Foster can’t understand why it wasn’t at the very top.
Photo essay and words Lainey Foster
WE live in the Melbourne bayside suburb of Mordialloc, aka Mordy, in converted horse stables that were built in the 1920s. (It was home to the 1935 Melbourne Cup winner, Marabou, but that’s another story.) Its exposed beams and soaring ceilings remind us of its humble beginnings. I have wondered if our stable-in-the-suburbs is the very thing that propels us to faraway places that have plenty of stories and few walls.
One day, our little family packed up and set out for a place that could scarcely be further from home: a cave in central Australia. After an attempted car break-in at Port Augusta and an eye-opening encounter with an emu at Erldunda, we arrived in Coober Pedy, in the blasted northern desert of South Australia. (For a moment, I honestly thought the emu had pecked my eye out its socket, before I realised it was pecking at its reflection in my camera lens. Terrifying and, only later, hilarious.)
