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Readers' exotic photographs
Jenny Galbraith
06Feb07
READING the Hills Shire Times in front of the Golden Temple in India must have attracted some strange looks from the locals, but it won the My Summer Times competition.
The Hills Shire Times travelled around the world and back again in the competition which asked readers to send us photos of themselves enjoying their summer holiday with their Hills Shire Times at hand.
It was extremely hard to choose the winner from the dozens of incredible photos sent in from our dedicated readers from all corners of the earth.
But it wasn't just exotic locations that impressed the judges, we received fantastic photos from our local area and even our readers' backyards.
Due to the high number entries we cannot publish them all, but we thank everyone for making the effort to enter the competition.
The winner was George Schwalbe from Castle Hill who took an amazing photo on his three week trip through India and Pakistan.
``It is from Amritsar in India, and the Golden Temple, the spiritual centre of the Sikhs. I am wearing the orange bandanna because everybody's head must be covered in the temple,'' Mr Schwalbe said.
His wife Beth told him about the competition before he left, and because his two passions are travel and photography, he was determined to win.
Mr Schwalbe won a Canon digital camera from Sydney Funtronics and Canon worth $700.
Runner-up was a daring photo sent in by Ellyse Bragg of her brother Chris enjoying the Hills Shire Times while water skiing on the Hawkesbury River which we published last week.
Highly commended were the Dean family who took numerous copies of the Hills Shire Times on their holiday to Thailand and even took a copy on an elephant.
The Mulder sisters on Bilgola Beach and the Hubbard family who sent in photos from Hong Kong, London and Paris were also highly commended.
Also worthy of mention was Colinda Warren from Baulkham Hills who just arrived back from a year in Sweden and sent in a photo of her reading the Hills Shire Times with her three dogs.
``It's great to catch up on the local happenings, reading the Hills Shire Times after spending some time overseas travelling through Europe and working in Sweden for the past twelve months,'' Ms Warren said.
``It is wonderful to be back in Australia and to spend My Summer Times relaxing by the pool and soaking up the glorious local sunshine at home with my family and three pets, Sooty, Teddy and Bobby. The snowflakes in Sweden
right now are beautiful but our sunshine here cannot be beaten.''
We thank everyone getting into the spirit of the competition, and hope everyone has recovered from their holidays and are looking forward to the new year.
