Under the young cattleman's rough exterior, photographer Paul J Ryan saw a fragile beauty in his green eyes and melancholy expression.
"It's simply the untouchable smile, it's like Mona Lisa," Ryan told AAP.
"There's sadness behind it but at the same time there's hope and a sort of connection and recognition."
Ryan spent more than a decade travelling across Queensland, the Northern Territory and WA in the 1980s, taking 20,000 photographs at cattle stations, country shows and in remote communities.
Having shot centrefolds for Cleo magazine and interviewed surfers and counterculture icons for Tracks surf magazine throughout the 1970s, Ryan felt a profound pull toward different subjects when he turned 30.
Paul J Ryan spent years shooting thousands of images of outback Queensland. (Paul J Ryan/AAP PHOTOS)
Many of his friends were dying at the height of the AIDS crisis, so he yearned for a life as far removed from the city as possible.
"I just bolted, I needed to escape the hedonist life of Sydney and I wanted to sink my teeth into something big," Ryan said.
"I was playing around with an idea of the interior being part of the national identity.
"We claim the outback is part of our consciousness but in fact ... we all live within 50 km of the coast."
So he worked at an abattoir in Rockhampton, in central Queensland, to fund his photography and approached farming organisations and philanthropists for support.
Ryan captured life on the land and followed bumpy highways and dirt tracks wherever they led him.
"Sometimes I'd go 2000 km to some bush turnout that I'd only heard about, like a tattooist saying, 'this is happening on a full moon in July'.
"You'd watch the magic of a big nowhere turn into an interesting day or two."
One such event was a small Queensland country show, where he captured a sashed and sparkly showgirl posing next to a man wildly belting a punching bag.
From bumpy highways to country shows, Ryan captured it all during more than a decade on the road. (Paul J Ryan/AAP PHOTOS)
The photograph was set up in front of a Hall of Mirrors and shot in the hazy glow of twilight.
"That's when the magic is dancing around us," Ryan said.
A handful of photographs - including the baby-faced cowboy and the country show couple - will be on display at the Head On Photo Festival at Bondi Beach throughout November.
His series will be among 34 free exhibitions on the beachfront, with the works of more than 600 photographers blindly selected from thousands of entries.
Many of Ryan's images have never been seen, after what he describes as resistance from the art world and homophobia in some rural areas.
A small 2017 exhibition, called North & West, was the first time he began to feel re-connected with his work.
For a former surf photographer turned outback observer, having his photographs displayed at Bondi is something of a homecoming.
"It's a bit of an epic story.
"It's been 40 years in the making and re-making."
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