Back in March volunteers with the organisation Rural Aid worked a week of magic around Barraba, painting, repairing, fencing and gardening. They camped at the Showground and were greeted warmly by locals.
After Rural Aid left town, the dust had barely settled when they announced a photographic competition to find pictures for their 2022 calendar. Their Spirit of the Bush 2022 competition called for photos in twelve categories: one for each month of the calendar.
Incredible images flooded in from all states and territories of Australia and were showcased on the Rural Aid website and their facebook page. Some members of Barraba’s Shutterbugs Photography Club entered the competition and had some of their photos selected to advertise the photography competition in the media.
Long after their entries were submitted and the competition forgotten about Barraba’s Sue Retschlag and Brenda McColl were both notified that their photographs had won a position on the 2022 Rural Aid calendar. Sue won the Small Towns category with her black and white photo of Gulgong and Brenda won the Man’s Best Friend category with a photo of her husband’s old dog Morty, titled “Old Mate”. Both Paula and Brenda are very excited to be selected from over 700 competition entries.
