Our guest speaker on Monday night was a guest of fellow Rotarian and Club member Bede Burke and is currently Tamworth visiting from Toowoomba. Alice Mabin is a very well known and established professional photographer who has published 5 books.

Alice grew up on farm in NZ and early in her career advised she used to work in corporate agriculture in Australia in animal health with an interest in working with diseases of cattle.  This was until she bought a camera in 2013 with a view to look to setting up a photography business.

An opportunity to ride on the Brinkworth Cattle Drive from Winton to Hay in June 2013 where 18000 head of cattle were walked in 9 mobs of 2000 over traditional stock routes gave Alice the opportunity to photograph her journey.  This inspired her first book The Drover which tells the story of the journey and captures the drovers, the cattle and the scenery.

Alice then explained how after she was hit by truck in her car (thankfully not injured) she was inspired to spend 18 months on the road learning about trucks and the road transport industry.  She covered over 130,000 km which led to her second book The Driver: Australia and NZ on the back of a truck.

When large scale corporate entity Nutrien Ag Solutions asked if Alice could produce a book about what Australia grow and how each sector contributes to the national and global economy.  This ended up being such big project that Alice explained she ended up with material for the creation of two books being published in 2018:

. The Grower: The Heartbeat of Australia (focusing on livestock); and

. The Grower: The Roots of Australia (focusing on cropping)

In 2019 she then published her fifth book, The Winding Road: Secrets of an Outback Entrepreneur.

In Covid when travel was limited Alice explained she was regularly asked to take photos.  She saw an opportunity to fill a gap in the market and started a online library, Al Mabin Australian Agricultural Image Library, to enable businesses like e.g The Land Newspaper to quality rural photos and imagery.

Alice's current project has now involved producing a documentary series taking city people who have no idea or understanding about farming or where their food or fibre comes from on a new journey. They meet and have dinner with the farmer and then have the opportunity to visit the farm see how the produce is grown.  The series leverages off the fact that the rural industry historically has not been great at communicating with the consumer about the origin of the products they produce. The first series covers 8 industries including cotton, beef, eggs, a feedlot, broadacre cropping and a piggery and includes three Tamworth based enterprises.  Once the series are filmed Alice will market them to the Networks like ABC and SBS e.g. to purchase and broadcast to the public.

What an amazing artist and great passion for agriculture and outback storytelling.  We thank Alice for meeting and presenting to our members tonight.  If you are interested in finding out more you can visit the link to her Al Mabin Website link https://almabin.com/