ACE Camera Photography Magazine
Christopher Wright is the publisher of dpi,
Australia's online digital photography magazine		 postcard from Australia
From Sydney Harbour to Australian Country Town
I have moved house. Moved dramatically - from a Sydney Harbour-side suburb to a house outside of a country town 290 km from the sea. From a flat with Harbour Glimpses to a house perched on the top of a hill surrounded by 10 Hectares of wilderness. From a place where the only wildlife was a parrot in a gilded cage to a place where Kangaroos bound past my window and Frill Neck Lizards stalk across the lawn.


Sydney Harbor, Sydney, Australia

It is also a place where the limits of the Web and the SOHO concept will be tested thoroughly. Even having a second telephone line put in was a whole new experience. Instead of attaching the new cable to the junction box 3 metres from my front door, a complete new installation had to be hoisted almost a kilometre across the valley. The Telstra crew turning up with ladders long enough to scale Everest, a Cherry Picker, three four wheel drives and six men. The team spent eight hours in the driving rain doing the job, then a technician spent another day and a half connecting the new stuff to the house and installing the new socket. At $15 per 15 minutes I saw my bank balance plunging before my eyes but in fact the total cost to me was $212. Fantastic. More than anything it was a demonstration of what maintaining communications means in the Bush and an object lesson in why we need Telstra, our national telecommunications company, to remain largely in public ownership.
The town I've moved to is Mudgee. A Tidy Town with a population of 8,000. Mudgee is the centre of a prosperous and very photogenic wine growing area, and as wine comes second only to photography as one of my interests it's not too hard to figure out why the Wrights came to choose it.

8,000 People -- Two ISPs !
While it is not the centre of the electronic universe the town does have two ISPs. Both offer competitive rates and both have a clause in the fine print that may inhibit my efforts to keep in touch with the world. Paraphrased it says "turn off the computer and pull the modem connection from the phone socket during electrical storms". Commonplace, you say? Sure - but eight storms in one day? I'm assured that this was an unusual occurrence, but we've been here four weeks now and there have been eleven storms. Maybe the wine and photo opportunities weren't the only things to consider.
Christopher Wright is the publisher of dpi, Australia's online digital imaging magazine, now in its third year on the internet. A native of Sydney, Australia Wright spent almost eleven years in England returning to Australia 11 years ago. Last fall he left the city to live in one of Australia's fastest growing wine producing areas. A former professional photographer he branched into editorial in the late sixties and has edited and published magazines and books on photography and motorcycles. While dpi is supposed to be an activity for semi-retirement, Christopher admits he's probably never worked so hard in his life.


Aerial photograph of the Wright homestead

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Revised May 15, 1999