My favourite images from my road trip around central and eastern Java, Indonesia, including the ancient temples of the Yogyakarta area and the spectacular otherworldly volcanoes of Mt Bromo and Mt Ijen
View new images in Southeast Asia gallery.
My favourite images from my road trip around central and eastern Java, Indonesia, including the ancient temples of the Yogyakarta area and the spectacular otherworldly volcanoes of Mt Bromo and Mt Ijen
View new images in Southeast Asia gallery.
My favourite images from my cruise to the Falkland Islands and South Georgia are now in the gallery. The amount of wildlife on these islands was breathtaking.
View new images in South Georgia and the Falkland Islands gallery.On the weekend I went for a drive around Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, stopping frequently to take pictures of great views and to hike down some short tracks near the road. It’s amazing how far out in the bush the park can feel even though it is still within the Sydney metropolitan area. Towards the end of the day, we came across a Wallaby near West Head lookout – the first wild wallaby I have seen in the Sydney area. We then saw a nice sunset over the Hawkesbury River near West Head Road
All my favourite images from my holiday in South America two years ago – including Iguazu Falls, Rio de Janeiro, and hikes around Patagonia – are now in the South America gallery.
View new images in South America gallery.Having been away travelling on New Year’s eve for the past couple of years, it was nice to be home in Sydney to watch the fireworks display. I was fortunate to win some tickets to watch the midnight fireworks on the Cahill Expressway. However, as we weren’t able to to access the viewing area until 10:30pm, we decided to watch the 9pm fireworks at Observatory Hill.
Arriving at the observatory around 6:30pm, we had limited choices for seats, and ended up low down on the hill. We had a great view of one of the fireworks barges, but were unable to see much of the harbour water and didn’t have a great view of the bridge – fortunately for us, the bridge wasn’t used at all for these fireworks! Surprisingly, the crowd was very relaxed, with no one standing up during the fireworks!
Afterwards, we quickly made our way to the entrance of the Cahill Expressway, and were several hundred people back in the queue. Despite this, we were still able to get a good front row position for viewing the Harbour Bridge. While more packed than Observatory Hill, it was still much more relaxing than my experiences in other public areas around the harbour in previous years, and the views for the midnight fireworks were brilliant.
Below are some of my favourite photos of the night. And of course, Happy New Year!
After visiting the dam, we went on a pleasant 45 minute drive south to Burragorang lookout, which gives a high vantage point over part of the lake formed by the dam. The view was well worth the trip, and would be a nice place to catch sunset.
At the end of last year I went to Thailand and Cambodia with a few friends. My favourite photos from that holiday – from the beaches and cliffs of Southern Thailand, the elaborately decorated temples of Bangkok and the incredible ruins of the Angkor civilisation in Siem Reap – are now in the South-east Asia Gallery.
View new images in Southeast Asia gallery.My favourite photos from the Coober Pedy area can be found in the Outback Australia Collection.
Coober Pedy, in central South Australia, is famous in Australia for being the home of Opal mining, and for the searing summer temperatures that have resulted in a large percentage of the population living in underground homes. During a short visit this year, I discovered that this quirky and remote outback town is nearby some beautiful, and remarkably relatively unknown, natural landscapes. My journey to Coober Pedy started at the main Adelaide bus station, where I boarded a Greyhound coach for a long overnight 11 hour drive. After draining my laptop and phone batteries, I tried to get some sleep by lying down across two seats – given how narrow bus seats are, this was pretty uncomfortable. Finally, the bus arrived at 5am, but being a small country town, nothing was open, so I had a further three hours of sitting outside waiting for my hotel’s reception to open for the day. Forgetting to pack a book didn’t help time pass, though I did see a nice sunrise.True to the nature of the town, most hotels are underground. I stayed at the Lookout Cave Motel, built into the side of one of the larger hills in the town. The hotel itself was pleasant, and the underground rooms meant the temperature stayed warm over the cold winter night.
The Moon Plains are bisected by a part of the Dingo Fence, a 5,600km fence running from Queensland To South Australia. Described as the world’s longest fence, it was built to keep Dingoes separated from the sheep stations in Southeastern Australia.
One of the most prominent features of the Breakaways is the locally named Salt and Pepper formation; striking for the contrast between a starkly white hill and an adjoining orange hill. After this, I went up to the main lookouts to view a spectacular sunset over the entire reserve.
The dusty road the Painted Desert traverses some of the most featureless and barren landscape I have ever seen, only broken by occasional winding lines of greenery that surround dry river beds. After making a few photo stops entering the Painted Desert area, we headed to the Mt Batterbee lookout for an amazing view over the plains and multi-coloured hills. After a picnic lunch, we headed climbed one of the mesas for another brilliant view.
Other places to see in the town in the various underground churches, the many opal shops along the main street, a kangaroo orphanage that cares for some very cute baby kangaroos, and some quirky pieces of film paraphernalia dotted around the town. Additionally, being located in a very sparsely populated area of Australia, it is worth driving a few minutes away from the town and enjoying the star filled sky.
Not wanting to have another 11 hour bus ride, I decided to end my enjoyable journey into the South Australian Outback by catching the Rex flight back to Adelaide.
A couple of years ago I went on a three week expedition cruise to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. My favourite photos from the Antarctic Peninsula, and nearby islands and seas are now in the Antarctica gallery. Blue icebergs, vast penguin colonies, seals, glaciers and ice covered landscapes are some of the amazing sights of the pristine wilderness of the Antarctic Peninsula.
View new images in Antarctica gallery.New images from the Outback, including Lake Eyre, the multi-coloured hills of Outback South Australia (the Breakaways, the Painted Hills and the Painted Desert), the Flinders Ranges, the Pinnacles of Western Australia and the night sky are now in the gallery.
View new images in Outback Australia gallery.