It seems this area is dangerous for me. Last time I visited, 23 years ago I had another near-death experience when we lost our car after a short evening walk in the Cape Range National Park. We had to use the moon and stars to navigate halfway across the peninsula and rejoin the main road. At least I had the excuse of being young and stupid then. My recent experience proves I can be old and stupid too.

When snorkelling on my first visit I had never seen coral or swam with fish before. The experience forced me to redefine how intense colour could be. 18 years later I would be employed to process over 1 million images for the Global Reef Record.

Underwater photography has some unique challenges. Colour temperature changes with depth and distance. In addition, the blue shift is so extreme a cameras auto white balance will not work. The only way to colour balance underwater is by eye. Your brain does it automatically so you see a kaleidoscope of colours in the reef and fish but a camera will just see shades of blue. To create digital images with the range of colours you perceive requires heavy processing of the RAW camera file to get the colours looking right. My only reference point was this one memory of coral and fish when I was half my age. I used to half-jokingly ask my boss for a field trip to remind myself of the colours of coral.

I was interested on many levels to see Ningaloo Reef again. I started at Point Quobba were I first swam with the fishes. There were still colourful fish but the coral was in bad shape. To find some living coral required travelling an extra 100km of dirt roads to Gnaraloo. Once you get there the fringing reef is very accessible, only a few meters from the shore. I found the most impressive coral structures at Nature Bay but spent most of my time swimming in 3-mile lagoon as it was only 100 meters from the camp and a clean gas-heated bore water shower. I recommend a visit if you are in the area.

I am following the west coast up to Darwin for the start of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge on the 13th October. I will then follow the race to Adelaide.

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

Tasmania experienced exceptional fires across the state at the start of 2019. It was leading news during the ferry journey so every screen was repeating the worst of the fire footage for the 10hrs crossing. It appeared as if everyone had accidentally booked the boat to Hades. There has been some rain since then but a few persistent fires remain. One such fire was on my route after detouring to Hobart to get a replacement Canon 5D mark ii. I spent a few days parked next to the fire station in Ellendale waiting for the forecast rain to put out a fire near Maydena on my way to Lake Pedder.

When the road reopened I drove through a fire-scorched landscape only to find all accessible campsites had been closed. I searched WikiCamps for sites with wildlife and scenery and found Trial Harbour far from any remaining fires. The west of the country consists of cold rain soaked mountains dotted with sheep. I am surprised the colonists did not call it New North Wales. I am currently in the old silver city of Zeehan. I am going to investigate some of the mining heritage before restocking and exploring the east of the island.

The beach here is 98.7% silica which makes it both unique and a mystery as the local rocks are the wrong composition to produce it. The silica is so fine it feels soft but after a few hours of walking in it, you realise you have lost most of the skin from the soles of your feet. Its purity and grain size make it blindingly white and apparently of interest to NASA. Although there are substantial fines for removing this finite resource it is claimed an exception was made to build the Hubble Space Telescope.

After freezing inland during a month-long photography tour of the Bowen Basin mining area it is nice to get back to the stable temperatures of the coast. After I visit the Australian Institute of Marine Science on Friday I will resupply in Townsville before continuing North while it is still possible in this Southern hemisphere winter.

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

Today Australia is in the opposite position. The continent is still moving north which is magnifying the effect of global warming.

This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.

In 2012 Australia took a big step forward in creating the worlds largest marine park. Unfortunately this protection is under threat. In 2017 the federal government announced draft plans to allow long-line fishing and damaging seafloor trawling to take place in large areas of Queenslands Coral Sea and the waters off the coast of Western Australia, New South Wales and the Northern Territory.

The director of the Centre for Marine Futures at the University of WA said “The proposed protection zones for the Coral sea ignores all the science about what is needed to ensure we have healthy oceans and also ignores the government’s own risk assessments on what activities are compatible with conservation,”

These images are a result of a collaboration between Panedia, Google, The Ocean Agency and the XL Catlin Seaview Survey. This project takes up most of my working week, although I don’t do the Photography, I have a lot of fun working on these beautiful images in Photoshop.

This is one of 6 dives from the waters around Taiwan which I have been working on recently to get into Google Streetview. These images are a result of a collaboration between Panedia, The Ocean Agency and the XL Catlin Seaview Survey. Although I don’t do the Photography I always enjoy working on these beautiful images in Photoshop.