Gas Stations and Pregnancy Tests

A wild adventure turns into a very reflective and quiet personal story as I accept my new journey into motherhood.

When I prepared my car for the 4,000 kilometer road trip to Bloomfield, Far North Queensland, I did not load up on pregnancy tests, in fact I bought enough tampons to last me two months. I was leaving Melbourne to travel to a remote rainforest in the tropics of Queensland to work on a documentary story about a vanilla bean farmer. I love driving and thought a solo adventure would be therapeutic seeing as we had been in lockdown for over 100 days. My partner and I had casually been trying for a baby, but when I started to feel sick on my drive my first thought was maybe I had a cold or even covid. Pregnancy was maybe my last guess. Pulling into a gas station after a 10 hour drive, I saw they were selling pregnancy tests and I decided to buy a pack and peed on a stick in the gas station bathroom. Positive. Fucking positive. The rest of the drive was very emotional, crying out of happiness, then crying out of fear. Face-timing my partner, face-timing my entire family. I felt like I was drowning in feelings. I cherish those long drives alone now. It might have been the last time I was truly on my own.

Latest Projects

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Stay in the loop


We will send you weekly news on contemporary photography. You can change your mind at any time. We will treat your data with respect. For more information please visit our privacy policy. By ticking here, you agree that we may process your information in accordance with them. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.