Goulburn Post's Darryl Fernance reflects on career

This was the start of my fascination with photography. I remember vividly images of my childhood. The bushfires in the nearby Royal National Park and my parents dousing the eves of the house across the road that were singed when I was only a little fellow, I think still in a pram.

Then there was the Buckinghams' building fire on Anzac Day, 1968. I watched this drama unfold from the window of the Australian Museum, wanting to photograph it but knowing the camera I had was unsuitable as it was only a basic fixed lens type.

Similarly, I had been on a Christmas harbour cruise with my parents on December 10, 1966, when an ABC helicopter had mechanical trouble and crashed near Goldfields House. We were returning to the Quay when I noticed the helicopter, which was nearly overhead. It did not sound right and suddenly its tail swung sharply left and right, then spiraled into a dive.

I came to Goulburn in 1977, transferring as an employment officer with the Commonwealth Employment Service.

By this stage I had progressed from using black and white film, processed by a local business to using 35mm colour transparencies in a single lens reflex (SLR) camera.

I joined the Goulburn Camera Club after some success in local photo competitions and eventually graduated to processing and printing my own black and white films.

I started taking publicity photos for the Mulwaree Support Rural Fire Service and State Emergency Service. Once I acquired a relatively cheap SLR camera that I could afford to have damaged by the work, I took it with me to fires and other jobs, recording the incidents.

I started submitting the accident photos and other RFS and SES photos to The Post for publication as they had no one at these jobs.

Prior to February 8, 1989, I was asked by The Goulburn Post editor John Thistleton if I could fill in on weekends for sport and other jobs. That first weekend I covered the Goulburn Rodeo and a couple of other jobs.

My first page one photograph was the result of a call by police to a fatal accident near Bishopthorpe where an XU1 Torana had crashed into a telegraph pole and split in three.

I was warned before I came that it was a particularly horrific scene and I should remember what Police forensic photographer, Detective John Goldie had told me about how to deal with these situations. I will always be grateful for the guidance I received from John and for being able to assist the police in some of their investigations.

I was eventually offered a job as the senior photographer with The Post working alongside then cadet Sandra Bensley, a particularly talented, artistic photographer who was very good at photographing young children. My job at the CES was becoming redundant, due to privatisation of the service.

Since taking the job in 1989 I have seen many changes. When I started, the company was owned, along with numerous other regional and rural newspapers and magazines by John Armati. I had to master the technique of printing halftone dot matrix screened prints for publication using high contrast filters.

We also had a part-time darkroom assistant who processed and printed photo sales, and a casual social photographer. We adapted processing techniques to suit a new high-quality Kodak film from the traditional Ilford films that had previously been used. This gave us a little more flexibility in our photography and saved some time too, cutting out mixing time and shortening the overall processing time.

In 1999 we started to work in colour negatives, getting them processed at the local mini lab. Weekends we still used monochrome because the lab shut at midday Saturday.

The paper’s move toward digital photography started with negative scanning and eventually they purchased digital cameras in 2000. These first cameras were virtually useless for sports action because of the time from pressing the button to when the image was recorded.

The next cameras were not much better as they did not have a telephoto lens conducive to good sports photos. It was a frustrating time for us photographers. The images were also fairly low resolution and nowhere near the quality of good film images.

In late 2003 I bought myself a Konica Minolta (not an SLR) camera with a reasonable zoom lens that enabled me to do sport and other photos. It was superior to the work cameras. I still have that camera today but it gets little use.

In 2004 I bought my first Pentax digital SLR, which also matched a couple of lenses I had acquired for my own personal film cameras.

Around the same time, The Goulburn Post got its first digital SLR camera, a Canon which also had a lens suitable for sport. I continued using my Pentax equipment.

With extra storage cards, extra batteries and a large flash gun I was able to handle most jobs that came our way.

Over my time at The Goulburn Post I have photographed and written about  a huge variety of subjects from rural news in Town and Country Magazine, to real estate in Domain, both local and national sport, arts, births marriages and tributes to people who have passed on.  

I have been fortunate to witness some major events and sporting victories like the AIS Women’s National Basketball League team winning the championship, the ACT side and the youngest team ever to claim that honour.

That team included Lauren Jackson who became recognised as the world’s best centre of her time. I was also photographing from under the basket when her Canberra Capitals team took the honour.

The job has afforded me opportunities to meet many famous people and those who have achieved high honours.

I have photographed and written about tragedies and triumphs, kindy kids' first day at school, people achieving academic honours, fires, floods and droughts, openings and closures, all part of our history as it happens, recorded for future generations.

I have been privileged to chronicle a small part of human history in and around the Goulburn district and sometimes further afield.

Though I am retiring I will still be photographing and recording history on my platform for sharing but I will be stepping back from the daily pressure of newspaper reporting to spend more time with my family.

Ultimately I would like to take a wider look at Australia and discover more about my links to history, travel to places I have only read about or seen through pictures of other people’s making.

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