This small collection is a nostalgic throwback to the episode when, for several weeks in late 1975, I worked as a geologist's field assistant in the remote Gulf of Carpentaria region of the Northern Territory of Australia. Usually the geologist and I camped out under the stars, on the sprawling cattle stations (a.k.a ranches).

At Mallapunyah Station we rented a cabin for a few nights and would join in the communal evening dinner. It felt rather like an extended family gathering, and now I've discovered that Mallapunyah was indeed owned and operated by the Darcy family who first settled the land in the 1920s. ABC Television featured this story in a 1981 documentary in the series A Big Country.

Since that time some of the cattle stations have reverted to aboriginal (indigenous) ownership, and the McArthur River lead zinc mine has been developed. We knew at the time that significant deposits had been found; our task, as I recall, was to seek out any possible extension of the orebodies that had not yet been staked out by other interests.

Later that year I flew north to Darwin again to support a second geologist, logging the core which emerged from a diamond drilling rig in the Adelaide River and Daly River districts of the 'Top End'. I only wish I'd captured shots of the larger-than-life characters who operated the drilling rig.