Cheryl Poulson's eye.

I recently had Cheryl Poulson on a tour.  She called me from Governor’s Lodge wanting to go on a photographic tour.  My answer was, “of course”, if we could find at least one other person.  There are a minimum number of people on a tour to make it worthwhile.  We scheduled a tour date, didn’t find another taker, and went anyways.  I’m glad we did.  It was worth it to me for the experience.  I think Cheryl had a good time, too.

Cheryl is a professional photographer.  She had also been on Norfolk for six days, which meant she had already seen the usual and basic.  We talked about her interests, what subjects she wanted to shoot – birds in the National park, mostly, but she was open – and we took off. 

To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I don’t too often, photographers are different from the rest of us.  They see what we don’t and can spend a day being delighted with one thing after another.  One of the first places we visited was Aunt Amy’s, an uninhabited island home built sometime in the 1880s.  I wasn’t sure if it as an image was what she had in mind.  It fascinated her, from every angle and every lens. 

Aunt Amy's

Aunt Amy Christian was one of the Island’s first entrepreneurs, starting what was called the “Clothing Club” in the late 19^th- century.  A portion of the house was a shop and women would gather by horse-and-buggy to buy goods, exchange community information (usually about someone not present and always incorrect), and make clothes.  Then it would be a long ride back home.

Bloody Bridge from below.

If you’ve been a visitor to Norfolk, you no doubt have seen Bloody Bridge from the road.  (We’ll discuss how it got its name some other time because I don’t believe it’s true.)  Another view of Bloody Bridge is from the valley beneath as the stream empties a short distance into a stretch of coastline called Duffy’s Whale.  You have to straddle a low fence to get to the trails leading to the shore, and you’d want to follow a local the first time, but once you’re there you have a seldom-seen view of Nepean and Philip Islands in one direction and Gannett Point in another.  Es goodun fe lookorn.

Because a theme of my tour company is small group size and we travel in a van, we have the opportunity for conversation along the way.  It turns out Cheryl didn’t get into photography until she retired.  That was Day One and she’s since developed herself into a master.  One characteristic of that accomplishment, I think, is she’s able to anticipate her shot, to make her camera see what she does, and not have to delete so much.  (Just joking, but I imagine even masters on occasion delete with the same kind of puzzlement and relief as the rest of us.)

I’ll tell you now, after almost four hours, we never made it to the National Park.  I felt I had let her down a bit in not managing our time better.  But there was so much to do and see, and at each stop she would find an angle or focal length I would never have thought to use.   To wit, this is the best photo of the “other side” of St. Barnabas Chapel I have seen.

Back side of St. Barnabas Chapel - Poulson Photography

Like most of our visitors, Cheryl expects to return.  There’s definitely more for her to see.  I’ll take her to Monty’s, for one, near Crystal Pool, and perhaps to nearby Philip Island, where the vivid colours of the geology will make her hands tremble.  I hope to be able to feature her Norfolk photos on my website soon.

It was a great day.  I had a great time on my tour.  Thanks, Cheryl.