I saw your comment on this photo in ''about'' rubric, so I decided to give a try at this photo and lighten it up a bit. So I opened my photoshop CS3 and made some changes with shadows/highlights tool, I slightly moved the levels sliders, added some contrast, made some selective coloring and sharpened it with a Neat Image. It really isn't nothing complicated to do, and I hope you'll like the result:
Hey, Jowie, I know this area extremely well. I live near here. Before I was married, my parents owned a farm, here, with 1km of river frontage. We used to drive down the fire trail, which ran through our property, to go down to the river for BBQ's, campovers and swimming. This brings back some very happy memories.
We lost everything in the 79 bushfires...fencing and some stock etc.