It’s unlikely that any one person would have been better known – or at least, recognised - around rural NSW in the latter half of last century than The Land’s veteran photographer, Neale “Ned” Edwards.
Edwards, who died in August aged 81, spent 45 years of his working life travelling the state for The Land, recording its changing scenes, triumphs, disasters, customs and personalities.
In the process he became something of a legend himself, a fount of wisdom about the bush and its people, an expert at his chosen craft, a raconteur of renown and a valued ambassador for his newspaper.
His knockabout manner, terry-towelling hat and gruff exterior concealed an inner man of sensitivity, wide ranging interests and a keen understanding of human nature.
Much of Edwards’ success as a rural photographer stemmed from his ready rapport with people and his ability to assess intuitively a farming family’s personal situation.
When he landed on a farm, at random, as his work required him to do in search of weekly “action” pictures, he would always make it his business to have a yarn before reaching for his camera.
Having grown up in a rural community himself, at outback Ivanhoe, he identified readily with country folk, talked their language and understood their problems.
His visits to farms, especially remote ones, were long remembered by the farmers concerned, as much for the sage advice he tendered to them as for the photographs he took.
Although his assignments covered all levels of farming society, he instinctively empathised with those he recognised as “battlers”, and his photographs reflected this insight.
After a stint in the Air Force under the national service program in 1954, he headed for Sydney and joined the Daily Telegraph as a cadet reporter, before moving to The Land in 1955.
When The Land’s longtime (and first) full-time photographer, Angus Spence, retired in 1962 after 31 years’ service, Edwards stepped into his shoes as chief photographer.
He remained in that position until his retirement in 2000 – a working life that spanned the evolution of photographic equipment from cumbersome single-plate negative cameras to digital technology.
As The Land expanded and appointed more young people to train as photo-journalists, Edwards became a mentor and tutor to many, as well as a source of worldly enlightenment for those assigned to take an extended trip with him.
In the early days, when The Land was based in Sydney’s Regent Street and had few country-based reporters, Edwards spent much of his time covering country shows, travelling mostly by train.
He told the story of being on Crookwell rail station late at night with snow falling.
Cars came later, along with a widening brief of covering all manner of rural activities, from farmer association meetings to field days, livestock sales, social gatherings and on-farm seasonal happenings.
Few assignments were more arduous, in earlier times, than the big farm machinery field days, necessitating long hours of trudging up and down lanes of exhibitors’ stands lugging a bag full of the heavy camera gear of the era – an annual ordeal on which Edwards in later years blamed his failing knees.
Another annual challenge was the Sydney Royal Show where Edwards (and other photographers after him) had the perennial problem of trying to be on hand – often at widely scattered show-rings - to capture brief moments of triumph before animals and their keepers dispersed.
Edwards covered 45 Sydney Royal Shows for The Land, a record that resulted in him – along with other former The Land stalwarts, Bob Arnold and Jac Cullen (both now deceased) – receiving life memberships from the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW.
Like many others of his era, he never welcomed the show’s move in 1998 from Moore Park – with its familiar and iconic landmarks - to its present location at Homebush Bay.
As he once wrote, “Fresh from Ivanhoe in 1945, I saw my first Sydney Royal Show in 1946 and I couldn’t believe my eyes at the Commemorative Pavilion!”
Nowhere was Edwards more warmly welcomed than at the annual conference, usually in a rural location, of the Country Women’s Association where he enjoyed something of a cult following.
As with his on-farm pictures of men throwing fleeces or filling seed bins, his photographs of CWA ladies holding their cookery competition entries would reveal an empathy with his subject that went well beyond the click of a shutter.
When freed from the demands of these routine annual assignments, Edwards enjoyed heading for the more remote corners of the state (and beyond) to capture images of what he regarded as the “true” bush.
For him, this was generally either the outback, or the Snowy Mountains, and some of his more memorable photographic series (like the High Country cattle muster) are drawn from these locations.
Fishing had been a lifelong love affair for Edwards, and in the early 1990s he bought a cabin at Anglers Reach on the shores of Lake Eucumbene to which he regularly retreated.
After retirement he spent much of his time at the cabin, often in the company of friends out of his past who loved to visit and share his passions for fishing, conversation and fireside wine.
An avid surfer (and lifesaver) in his younger years, Edwards once explained his changing environmental tastes thus: “I enjoyed my Ivanhoe childhood; flat and dry are my abiding memories, so it’s no wonder my preferences now are for high, wet and salty places.”
Like many men whose work took them away from home for extended periods, Edwards always regretted in later life not having spent enough time with his family – a deficiency he sought to remedy in retirement by being a doting Pa to his five grandsons.
Apart from them, he is survived by his wife, Liz, and daughter, Megan. His son, Christopher, predeceased him.
