A CHANCE entry into the V for Vivid photography competition run by 702 ABC radio Evening program has won Cabonne resident Carolyn Kohler and her husband a much-needed getaway to Sydney on the June long weekend.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The couple will fly to Sydney on June 6 to catch the end of the Vivid Festival, a festival celebrating light and light sculptures held in Sydney’s central business district each year.
They will stay at the Pullman Hotel near Hyde Park, with a Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb and music concert tickets included in the package.
Out of thousands of entries from photographers across the country, Mrs Kohler’s last-minute entry of a photograph of the striking dead tree that stands in the paddock next to her house won the competition.
Mrs Kohler said the weekend away was one of the few good things that had happened to the couple in the past year-and-a-half.
“I was involved in a car accident on the Mitchell Highway about 18 months ago,” Mrs Kohler said. “It’s completely changed my life; it’s hard to come to terms with sometimes.”
Mrs Kohler was travelling with her two sons, aged seven and nine at the time, on a school holiday trip to the Central Cost during the early hours of October 1, 2012, when a man travelling in the opposite direction fell asleep at the wheel and ploughed into the family car.
Mrs Kohler sustained six broken ribs, a broken pelvis, a ruptured spleen, and her scalp was degloved, while one of her sons broke his arm, and the other received lacerations to his liver.
The collision had a huge impact on the family and Mrs Kohler’s wearable fibre art business, which she said was just beginning to pick up momentum, with her newly-opened gallery Studio 66 having to be closed after the accident.
“We’ve been through so much lately, it’s just something nice that’s happened to us,” she said. “Just having the time to lie back and relax will be fantastic.”
The photography competition asked entrants to create an image that combined the letter V with the theme light, and Mrs Kohler said she decided to enter one of her many photos of the tree that she has taken over the past few years after hearing about it on the radio one evening.
“I just love that tree; it just moves me,” Mrs Kohler said. “I’m very excited and stunned. I’m shocked really. I didn’t expect to win at all.”