I was cruising my friend Nick Rains FB timeline when I came across his Ceduna post accompanied by a beautiful shot of the nearby sand dunes just up the road at Fowler’s Bay. Nick was lamenting Ceduna’s accommodation conditions, TV & fridge not working, dirty shower…

Well at least it had those “amenities”. Sounds like Ceduna has improved a tad since I hitch-hiked through there on my way from Brisbane to Perth back in Jan ‘72. We slept in a wheat bin with just a tarp for covering (quite comfy), and I was too busy over the next 4 days trying to get a lift across 360 miles of unsealed Nullabor road to find or shoot anything as beautiful as Nick’s dune. But I’m reminded of my trip to China some years ago with similar experiences, and it’s a good excuse to show some images…

Mystic Grand CanyonMystic Grand Canyon in the Tianshan Mountains, Asku, Xinjiang Province, China. Like Australia, China has vast open desert spaces that make you aware of how far from anywhere you actually are. The light paints the surrounding mountains in an ever-changing palette of colours.

I was a guest of the China Photographic Society with 39 other international photographers. We stayed in a motel at Mystic “Grand” Canyon in Xinjiang province which had no head on the shower (I had to bounce the water off the opposite wall), only COLD water, no fridge or any cold beer, and the bed was just planks that were so hard I was up before dawn. This proved a blessing in disguise as it got me outdoors to find this beautiful image of the canyon rim (above). The lesson? There’s a photo opportunity in every experience if you look for it. Here’s some more of my favourites from that trip.