Perjalanan Darat dan Station Stays: Aaron Green

Q & A

What do you love most about a West Australian road trip?

The thing that I love most about road trips in Western Australia is the possibilities. You can be in Perth one moment and then you drive a couple of hours down the road and you're in an entirely different ecosystem. You're among incredible sprawling salt lakes, or you're on the coast with towering, towering cliffs above the water, and these amazing white beaches. There's just so much to see. You’ve got so much choice in Western Australia.

What makes your road trips unforgettable?

Something that, without fail, truly moves me every single time is the sunsets throughout the outback. When you look back in your rear vision mirror and the dust is kicking off in that sunlight of the sunset is hitting it… you're in awe at the countryside, and it's just such a simple moment that really gets me every time.  It's the big skies - you're traveling along, and there's just so much wide-open space that the sky looks massive. It lights with this incredible gradient from these lilacs down to your oranges and that in combination with the sunbeams coming through every time… it’s so special.

Telling that story of the vastness of WA is a challenge, but once you put the drone up and you look out across the horizon, the photos take themselves essentially - especially when you see the scale of the place with my Troopy or someone sort of standing there, you're in awe at the sheer size of the state.

That also plays into your love of Station Stays.

The thing that makes station stays so unique is it's such a varied place from the North West to the Coral Coast - it's all wildly different. So you can travel two hours from one station to another, and it'll be a completely different experience every time.

Do you have a particular road trip soundtrack?

Each individual area sort of encapsulates this different vibe. Down in the South West, you've got those deep forests and those sprawling, beautiful coastline, so you've got a lot of more chilled out stuff, like Bon Iver, and things like that. Into the Golden Outback, you've got more of a sort of bluesy rock sort of vibe, and that's more like Tame Impala and Lord Huron and things like that. Heading to the Coral Coast - it's a little bit more tropical inspired, maybe a little bit of French new wave, Polo & Pan, a lot of remixes that really sets the vibe well for those coastal towns. Then in the northwest, it's always a lot of old blues, and it seeps so well with that feel of that old Australian country.

You’ve travelled extensively around Western Australia – what is the one place that feels like a dream every time you visit?

Down past Israelite Bay, so right at the end of the southwest edge, if you head on a little bit past Esperance and you go down to Israelite Bay and push a little bit further past that, you get to a place called Bilbunya Dunes… these massive, towering mountainous dunes. That whole section of beach actually links up with the Great Australian Bight. You can actually camp on the beach, under the Bight and every time, without fail, the sunsets, the location and the drive in, the experience – always a dream.

One landscape that definitely surprised me when I starting out on my road trips were the salt likes. I got to the Golden Outback areas of Pithara and just up past Wongan Hills, and to see these multi-coloured salt lakes, every colour of the rainbow out there, that has to be my favourite spot - my favourite thing to take photos of.

What is a Dreamer?

A Dreamer it's someone who isn't afraid to do something outside of the norm. They have a dream and they just go after it - no matter what people think or no matter how it feels to them. For myself initially, I decided to get into a car because I had this dream of traveling around this beautiful state and this beautiful country, and it seemed so strange to a lot of my friends, my family, all of that. But I think when you go outside of these social norms, you really learn a lot about yourself and what you're capable of. To me, that's what a dreamer is - someone who is ready to learn the entirety of themselves and find out what they're capable of.

I've always believed that it's not so much about finding yourself when you go traveling. It's about creating yourself, and you find so many small pieces that resonate with you in tiny country towns and a little local pub.