The Mallee book by Adam McNicol, Ten Bag Press ready to launch
Take a sneak peek at some of the spectacular rural images captured in the new book, The Mallee: A journey through north-west Victoria, before it launches tomorrow.
IT WAS a project that writer Adam McNicol had dreamt about for years — making a book about Victoria’s Mallee.
It took a team of photographers and years of work, but the dream is finally a reality.
The scenery, towns, history and people of the Mallee have been captured by the team at Ten Bag Press — Mr McNicol, book designer Phil Campbell and photographers Andrew Chapman, Jaime Murcia, Melanie Faith Dove, Noel Butcher and Erin Jonasson — in The Mallee: A journey through north-west Victoria.
Adam, who grew up in Manangatang and describes the book as “unashamedly a nostalgia trip”, says he was “so passionate about the idea I wanted it to be perfect”.
“My original idea was to look at the small towns of northwest Victoria,” he says.
“It’s about 90 years since the last of the government schemes to bring people to the Mallee ended, and the idea being ‘let’s go out and see what’s left’.”
Each chapter uses the railway lines to trace a journey through the Mallee. While the book does capture decline, there is also regeneration stories, such as the Silo Art Trail and the tourism boom of Lake Tyrrell.
Noel made multiple trips north for the project and shot thousands of photos.
“The brief from Adam was great: photograph the Mallee, end of brief,” says Noel, whose dad, Tom Butcher OAM, grew up in Sea Lake during the depression.
“It was just lovely just being able to go to an area and photograph basically anything that took your fancy and there was no pressure to do something very, very specific.”
Ten Bag Press will officially launch the book tomorrow with a webinar live Q&A with the book’s team at 10.30am. Register for the event here.
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