“My earliest memories are of the bush, the smell of horses, eucalyptus, kerosene and woodsmoke,” Jerusha McDowell tells DAVID TURNBULL, who says her photographs are like a work of alchemy, poetry that combines history, legend and myth.

When Jerusha McDowell looks through the eyepiece of her Sony a7rV camera she does not just see a man on a horse in the high country.

She sees – more accurately feels – a lot more than that.

The photographs she takes are like a work of alchemy, poetry that combines history, legend and myth.

Her stills of horses in isolation seem to capture the very spirit of the animal. 

And stepping into her gallery at The Malbon in Bungendore takes you back in time… the pounding of hooves as horsemen dodge the tussocks on the high plains in pursuit of stray cattle or brumbies.

“I grew up in a remote and rugged part of the New England gorge country,” Jerusha says.

“I’ve always had a strong connection to horses, and the wildness. It’s just in my blood, I guess.”

Before Jerusha was born her mother and father joined two friends to purchase a few hundred hectares of remote, wild country in the New England gorges.

It was the mid/late ’70s, but the two couples weren’t really caught up in the hippy thing; they just had a love of nature, and a passion to live as self-sufficiently as possible. And if that sounds tough, it was. 

No power, no refrigeration, kero lanterns for lighting, clothes and people washed in the stream, and drinking water from the tank measured out carefully.

The two couples built their house with blood, sweat and tears, and that was the wild, free world Jerusha was born into in 1979 and the imprint it left on her is as clear today as the water in a mountain stream.

“Even then we had horses,” Jerusha says. “There’s family snaps of me as a baby near the horses as my dad was saddling up.

“My earliest memories are of the bush, the smell of horses, eucalyptus, kerosene and woodsmoke. I was at a very special place.”

‘We moved around, but the love of horses and the bush remained’

Jerusha lived in that wild, free world until she was six when family breakdown brough this chapter to an abrupt end.

“I was pretty young when my dad left, and mum decided to go to my grandparents’ home in Sydney,” she says.

Jerusha’s mother supported the young family from that time on, moving around to balance the demands of work and schooling for Jerusha and her brother. They lived in Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the NSW north coast and Newcastle. 

“We moved around a lot when I was a kid, but the love of horses and the bush remained.”

Jerusha had ponies and rode whenever she could, but nothing was constant.

Attending a number of schools over the years, including a Steiner school in the Blue Mountains, Jerusha finished high school at Newcastle Grammar School.

“In my final years of school I was obsessed with music; that was going to be my future,” she says.

“I worked at this underage nightclub called the Boiler Shop that gave kids a chance to help with ‘live’ music and I was hooked.”

Jerusha finished her final exam for HSC and headed to Melbourne and the music industry the next day. She soon found herself helping out on small gigs, and eventually for performers such as John Farnham, James Reyne and Kylie Minogue.

“As an 18, 19-year-old girl it was amazing to be involved in tours and shows like that,” she says. 

 “But when I got interested in music videos I knew I would need specific skills, so I enrolled for a communications and digital media degree at UNSW.”

More than a decade working in defence and intelligence

Jerusha studied film and photography at university, but was just finding herself, and soon expanded her studies to include history, philosophy and politics. By her last year, she found herself courted by government agencies and a very different career in national security began.

Jerusha worked in defence and intelligence for more than a decade, including overseas, and while she staunchly refuses to reveal the details the timeline makes Iraq and Afghanistan a reasonable guess.

Over the course of her career, Jerusha worked in counter terrorism and strategic policy roles as well as in parliament as an adviser to the shadow minister for defence personnel.

“I loved my work, and the people I worked with, but I was starting to get tired, a bit burned out,” she says. 

‘I had horses again, I began to reconnect’

Jerusha married Darren, an English carpenter, in 2014 and moved to Bungendore, where they still live, work and homeschool their two daughters. 

“I had horses again, I began to reconnect with the things I had put aside… horses, music, art and photography. I realised I needed those things in my life to be the best version of myself,” she says.

In 2022 she resigned from Defence, and a year later opened her gallery – a venture that gave her the chance to exhibit and sell her work in a way that sat comfortably with a happy home life.

Jerusha’s current project is a unique collaboration with high country horseman and friend Mark Swan tracing the old stock and bridal tracks in the NSW and Victorian high country. It’s part documentary, part art, celebrating the legacy of mountain horsemanship.

And Jerusha does it very much her own way.

She has one simple rule: never fake it.

She refuses to set shots up, getting the rider and horse positioned in a particular way. She lets the composition unfold naturally.

And it doesn’t always happen easily.

Slowing down to blend in with the environment

“Sometimes I come home from a trip with hardly any photos I’m in love with,” she says. “But other times, it just happens.

“I’ve learnt that some of what I do comes from slowing down enough to blend in with the environment, to hear and feel what is around me.

“What do I see? I don’t know.

“It’s a combination of things. The harmony between horse and rider and landscape are central, I guess. The history, the isolation, the space, the struggle. 

“It’s all wrapped up together and I often don’t become fully aware of it until I see the print.

“As an artist I’m attracted to stories that help me understand my own.”

www.rushephotography.com

Journalist David Turnbull is writing a series of profiles about interesting Canberrans. Do you know someone who deserves a shot in the spotlight? Share the name and a number in an email to David via editor@citynews.com.au