Dated: 23 January 2025

I have been pondering the best manner in which to highlight to all and sundry the extraordinary experience on two (thus-far) tours with Julie Fletcher. The difficulty I have is that it would be too easy to throw the words “brilliant”, “extraordinary”, “mind-blowing”, “surprising”, “exhilarating”, “challenging”, “fun” etc. around like cheap confetti at a bogan’s wedding but that just seems so… well just plain understating the experience.

Perhaps rather than those usual platitudes I could look at the outcomes; I am after all an engineer and client capabilityoutcomes are the way we tend to measure project performance. The Flinders Ranges tour in 2016 produced three images I have on my walls at homewhich (still) solicit a calming smile when I gaze at them. Whatever other words I may use to describe the trip (brilliant, extraordinary, mind-blowing, surprising, exhilarating…) the success for me really rests on those prints hanging on the wall which I have no plans in removing anytime soon. To me this is an extraordinary measure of the tour success in all its dimensions that I just could not state in better terms.

To get to that point required some extraordinary coaching and mentoring – using both a carrot & stick, me not being the cleverest of people so need to be beaten a few times to get the message by Julie. By the end of the 5 days I was starting to ‘get it’ and translate my previous tolerable-but-not-competent photographic expertise into the landscape environment. Having thoroughly enjoyed/laughed through the tour and newly upskilled, when it was finished I just wanted to repeat the experience. I would have immediately shouted ‘Hell-Yes’ if Jules said how about we just do it all again.

The recent Red Centre tour just overwhelmed in every respect, so much more than I thought possible.I have some photos being currently mounted and looking forward to them gracing my walls very soon. The shear serenity and ‘awesomeness’ of the experience I hope is conveyed through those images and I anticipate many calming smiles long into the future as I wander about my house. I simply cant find better words that could possibly describe the experience… well perhaps an almost-equal is a quaint expression from my humble country upbringing used only for extraordinary occasions; that the tour was the “chook’s tit”.

So, would I recommend a Julie Fletcher tour to anyone who has a DSLR and knows where the knobs for ISO, aperture and shutter are… HELL YES!