Collecting votes in a remote Australian village

The Australian Election Commission (AEC) set up 10 temporary booths over a 393,473 square km stretch in the state of New South Wales to make sure voters in the region could cast their ballots.

One of the booths was in Enngonia, a tiny village located some 860 km northwest of Sydney and home to a small number of indigenous people. Around 30 voters submitted their ballots when AEC officials installed a temporary booth there on June 22.

Enngonia, however, is also home to more kangaroos than humans. In the picture, a dead kangaroo is seen as AEC officials drive their car towards the village to assemble a polling station.

After reaching Enngonia, AEC officials Kelly-Anne Mackay and Heather McInerney were busy assembling the voting station.

In Australia, voting is mandatory. More than 15 million people will cast their votes like Enngonia’s aboriginal women already did.

Not only voters, but also this dog visited the polling station.

AEC officials were in Enngonia for four hours. Then they returned to a nearby town called Bourke with the ballot boxes containing the votes. Later, a courier picked up the sealed boxes and took them to the capital Canberra for the official counting.

Some voters in the region could not vote due to road closures caused by heavy rains. The inclement weather also left one AEC team stuck in a town for four days.