Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times

Range photographer Colin Beard has one of his outback images in thousands of new Australian passports. The image is of a stockman from the Victorian high plains bringing cattle down to the Kiewa valley for the winter.
Colin says he took the image from horseback in 1980. It seems the designer of the Australian passport saw the image in the book, ‘The Mountain Men’ written by James Cowan and illustrated by Colin.
Colin says he was flown to Melbourne to view the factory that produces passports and our Australian currency notes. He was impressed by the 23 individual counterfeit security measures built into passport printing.
Colin’s iconic image is one of several hundred of outback themes on display at the Stockman’s Hall of Fame at Longreach.