About the Collaboration

For over twenty years, OBE Organic® has been supplying wholesalers and retailers around the world, certified organic beef, sourced from family farmers in the pure heart of Australia. It’s a very distinctive location. There is nowhere like it on the planet. It’s why our beef is said to be ‘Seasoned by Nature®’. We are Australia’s oldest organic beef exporting company, founded in the 1990s by a group of far-sighted outback families dedicated to the production of organic beef.

Living in this part of the world, we take many things for granted: dust, searing summer heat and very occasionally, bursts of flooding rain. When the rains come, the few of us lucky enough to call this part of Australia home have the best seat in the house for one of nature’s greatest spectacles: the flooding of the great desert river systems. Our fourth collaboration is a very deliberate partnership with Helen Commens, from Windorah in Western Queensland. Helen’s images capture the transformation of the countryside from a harsh landscape into a thriving ecosystem of grasses and forbs and wildflowers.

Through her lens, we can literally see the floodwaters creeping down the ancient water channels before spilling across the countryside as it bursts into life. When the waters flow, they still go where nature intended; filling waterholes and creating vast inland seas. This attracts birdlife from thousands of kilometres away to breed on wetlands brimming with plant and insect life.

We hope this collaboration brings joy, as the brilliant purples, yellows and reds of the forbs and wildflowers and sand dunes and channels come to life, in your social media feeds.

Banner Photo Credit: Opalheart Media

About Helen Commens

I have lived on Ourdel Station Windorah with my husband James (Dude) for over 20 years. We have a 10 year old son named Charlie. I was a teaching Principal in Windorah for 8 years, before doing supply teaching and working at the local Tourist Information Centre.

I started taking photos with a film SLR camera and loved capturing memories and landscape photos of such a special area of Western Queensland. I enjoy landscape, aerial, animal and livestock photography and am inspired by the rich colours, beautiful golden hour light and amazing patterns in nature, namely the intricate channel patterns created in flood times. I love capturing the beauty and strength yet fragility of the channel country and the amazing response after rain and flooding.

These free flowing rivers and fertile floodplains are like nothing else on Earth. The natural boom and bust of the landscape is what makes our channel country so precious for wildlife and Outback families.

Every flood is unique and every flood is absolutely welcomed. Photographing the floods creates a record for landholders and inspiration and hope during dry times.

Photography has the ability to not only record and capture a moment in time, but also initiate thought and memory. Some photos can stay with you for a moment and others stay with you for a lifetime.

helen commens
Patterns
‘I started taking photos with a film SLR camera and loved capturing…
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Corrugated Iron
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Shoeing
Basic shoeing of a horse includes trimming the hoof itself. The sole…
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Spinifex Storm
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Putting the boats away
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The dunes
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Sunrise
Water brings life to our country and our towns. The Channel Country…
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Power
‘I started taking photos with a film SLR camera and loved capturing…
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Wildflowers delight!
The Channel Country is home to many of Australia’s rare and threatened…
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Simpson & his donkey
‘The story of the soldier who rescued wounded men on Gallipoli with…
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Strength
The Channel Country is renowned for the amazing fattening ability in cattle…
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The rains are ‘ere!
“Growing up in Birdsville… I took many things for granted: dust, searing…
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Charlie in the trough
When the trough is broken and needs fixing and it is 45…
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The muster
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Mile Sandhill
From fertile floodplains to red arid dunes, the Channel Country is home…
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Man’s best friend
You make some cute friends along the way in the Channel Country.
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Red-tailed black cockatoo
A sign of something more… The rivers, floodplains, dunes and gibber plains…
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Charlie on the sandhill
Sunset on the sandhills. The western sun illuminates the Windorah sandhills creating…
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The view from above
The Georgina and Diamantina Rivers and the Cooper Creek are among the…
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Closing the Gates
Closing gates is not an arduous task with this view. We love…
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Mates at sunset
“The boom and bust cycle is something locals have not just adapted…
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Bridge under (un)troubled waters
“There was clover on the Cooper in the days when we were…
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Golden Dewdrops
“After the rain comes the Sunshine” – and the glorious, Australian native…
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Far Horizons
From Core of My Heart by Dorothy Mackellar   “I love a…
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Nature’s Playground
The largest kid’s sandpit! Charlie and children alike love playing on the…
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About Helen Commens
I have lived on Ourdel Station Windorah with my husband James (Dude)…
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