I was somewhere in the wheatbelt of Western Australia, driving toward Wave Rock, when I stopped for a chat with a local cop. We got to talking, and before he left, he said, “Make sure you take the Tin Horse Highway.” No signs, no brochures—just a local tip, the kind you don’t ignore.
A few kilometres later, there it was: the first sculpture. Then another. Then a whole unofficial roadside gallery of handmade tin horses, each mounted along a stretch of farmland, facing the highway like folk art mascots. Some were pulling carts, some racing motorbikes, and this one? It was flying—launched into the sky like it had somewhere better to be.
This kind of discovery is what keeps me out on the road with a camera. You can’t plan it. You can’t stage it. You just happen upon it, shoot it, and move on—grateful that somebody took the time to weld a story out of scrap. That image became one of my favourite roadside captures, and it’s now available as a signed fine art print on my main site.
It also belongs to the Unique Photography Collection—a growing series of images I’ve taken from the less obvious side of travel, where creativity shows up in the wild, not in a gallery.
Funny enough, this reminded me of a mural I shot back in Dwight, Illinois—another piece of roadside storytelling, this time along Route 66. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the post on the Ambler Becker Station sign. Very different continent, same kind of handmade honesty.
