TRACEY Kruger has never stopped being amazed at the interest in the community for her shearing pictures.
At Sheepvention, Mrs Kruger launched and sold every one of the first 200 copies of her book Shearing In Victoria's Western District.
The rural photography enthusiast unknowingly started the venture at her family's property at Lake Linlithgow, near Penshurst.
"I was getting keener and keener in the past few years on rural photography, and at our shearing in 2011, I took a heap of photos and put them on Facebook, and everybody loved them," she said.
"It planted the idea that what I had access to was something not everybody else did, and it just took off from there."
In the next 2.5 years she dropped in on more than 160 shearing sheds in the Western District to capture the stories of each board, before embarking on the onerous task of collating the pictures.
"All the sheds have their own stories … I could just keep going out to wool sheds for the rest of my life and keep taking pictures," Mrs Kruger said.
But it wasn't a walk in the park – ensuring she had the facts straight on each shed's history before it was immortalised in print meant several months sitting at the computer.
"I'm so thankful to all the farmers and everybody who let me come to their places, because that's a privilege for me as well."
And the ex-teacher is already planning her next venture – a series of children's books for youngsters in the country.
"I'm passionate about keeping our farming children interested and involved," she said.