Gary Moloney was 13 when he first climbed Mt Barney and was inspired to take up photography.
Nearly six decades later he has self-published his first book, titled The Mount Barney Collection, filled with photos from 1965 to 1987.
The photos, which he mostly captured on Kodachrome film, tell tales of local connections, adventure and simple times with good friends.
Gary, now 71, features in one photo taken on South East Ridge in August 1998 by his then girlfriend Bernadette Reilly, who had talked him into doing one last climb.
Across the decades, Gary climbed the mountain about 25 times, creating memories with fellow locals and using his precious film to capture select moments on camera.
In his author’s note, the Palen Creek resident said his connections with Mt Barney and photography went hand in hand.
“Right from the start Mt Barney motivated me to take photos. My first camera was a small Pentona rangefinder with manual controls and a fuzzy viewfinder. In 1970 I replaced that with a Minolta SRT 101 SLR which I used for all subsequent climbs.”
With funding support from the Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF). Gary printed 100 copies of his book and when he spoke with the Beaudesert Bulletin had already sold 63.
Gary, who is a Beaudesert Camera Club member and is the Beaudesert Show Photography Steward, said being in the Scenic Rim Writers’ Group helped him gain publishing insights about ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers), barcodes and submitting copies to libraries.
In stark contrast to the full-to-the-brim digital camera rolls of today, Gary selected just 46 of his favourite images from Mt Barney, paired with evocative captions about his experiences, for the book.
“It can be a formidable mountain, if you strike bad weather and particularly if you’re in cloud, it’s hard to navigate when you’re up there because the tracks are not well-formed, or at least they weren’t when I was climbing it,” he said.
“If readers of my book have climbed Mt Barney, they can see what it was like some years ago and if they haven’t climbed it they’ll get a bit of an idea what they’re in for I suppose.”
