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His name is Ivan, he was a Ship Photographer

15 April 2006, around 10.48am... Ivan leans his tall and lean 70-something frame against the newly installed walkway at Mungo National Park. Standing a metre or two away from the gungho tour guide, Ivan smiles, entertained by his own thoughts against the hum of the well-rehearsed tour commentary.

Glancing questioningly from face-to-face of the small tour group semi-circle, Ivan shifts self-consciously, rubs his hands and pulls his Kalgoorlie-bought $1 XXXX straw hat further down on his head. “It’s a bit like Harry Butler isn’t it?” Ivan says with a good-natured mumble to the group watching the guide draw pictures into the sand.

The group – a single-mum and her early-teen son, the Lake Cullulleraine grandmother with her son and grandson, and the hung-over and quiet 20-something couple from Albury-Wodonga – quietly laugh at the out-of-the-blue joke.

The mix-band group wanders from wombat bones (a highlight for the grandson), to the aboriginal outdoor kitchen, to the surreal white sand-hills. Ivan holds his wife’s hand on the walk down the steep sand-dune back to the tour's mini van.

“Stand over there Judles so I can take a picture of you,” Ivan says as he directs his wife towards a weather-riveted sand-pile.

“The first thing I said to her when we met was ‘who are you then?’” he says, the twinkle of smitten still in his eyes. His rosey and still-pretty “Judles” responds with mock indignation and girlish warmth. “I was accustomed to being introduced!”

Ivan-from-Somerset and Judy – he at the time in his late 20s, her in her early 20s - met in the very early 1960s aboard The Canberra while sailing from Sydney to London. “I had photographed 1,000s of women but none before Judy had ever caught my eye,” says the one-time Ship Photographer.

“Before Judy met me she was burning the candles at both ends,” Ivan says, reassuring a recently separated and still-sad 30-something woman in the tour group. “By the time she met me she was ready to settle down with someone solid and reliable like me. I’m her rock.” Ivan pats the still-sad woman on the arm, and promises: “don’t you worry - your rock is out there”.

Ivan and nurse Judy returned to Sydney three years later with two kids in tow. They have lived on a pretty 2-3 acre property in a place called Colo Vale in northern NSW for most of their 42-year marriage. “We’ve got four kids and nine grandchildren,” Ivan says with a contented and toothy smile.

Each year Judy leaves her beloved Colo Vale gardens behind to delightfully follow her husband on yet another well-planned travel adventure. “We hit an emu on the way here from Kalgoorlie-Boulder,” he says with a frown of frustration as he boards the mini bus. “It blew a headlight so we can now only drive during the day.”

A few minutes down the road Ivan calls to brill-creamed driver to stop the bus. “Where’s Judy?” he asks, not expecting a reply. “She’s done this many times to us while travelling overseas. When it’s been critical that we make some transport, she goes missing… ”

Judy is casually standing by the fence when the bus pulls back in the Mungo Lodge carpark. “I’m very sorry,” sheepish Judy says as she slips into the single seat in front of her husband. Ivan responds to her with a mock-angry scowl, pats her shoulder, and sits back to listen to the driver’s commentary.

“Those white Cyprus pines out there were used to build the old Mungo Woolshed,” the driver says over the faint hum of country-and-western. “They termite resistant.”

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