Living self-sufficiently in a metal tube is much like #vanlife. Everything needs to be strapped down or it will fly around while you are travelling.

Australia has the longest national highway in the world and it is a never-ending loop around a remote ancient red desert landscape.

NASA could save a fortune training Mars astronauts by sending them down under in a kaleidoscope of kombis.

I think this one was eyeing up the blue stripes on the side of my van.

I am now at Armidale State Forest which is full of mountain bike trails where I can recreate the Endor speeder chase with the whirring sound the old motor makes on my solar powered bike.

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

To attach the panel to the van, I learned from the experiences of the solar teams on the BWSC. The easy way would be to glue the panel to a sheet of plywood and attach that to the sidewalls. As well as adding weight high up, this approach also stops the panel from dispersing heat from the sun. This increases it’s electrical resistance and reduces the power from the panel. To avoid this I made a curved internal keel to take the weight and attached the panel around the edges to minimise weight and maximise cooling. The solar panel effectively doubles as the ceiling and the structural strength comes from the sidewalls. Like me, the old van has a bit of sag and the new roof strengthens the existing roof replacement wood frame from the original conversion and straightens the vans back.

During the lockdown, I have been converting my van from a disintegrating pop-top to a sturdy hard-top. The new roof is designed to improve my sustainability and productivity. A second solar panel increases my photon collection from 150 to 500watts. It has a gentle slope and curve to allow for rainwater collection. The six eye-level portholes which open inwards and silently are perfect for photographing wildlife. It is a big improvement on the old zips which scared off many birds before I could snap a shot.

My electric mountain bike has been invaluable this year. I finally got an inverter so it can be recharged off grid. Each sunny day I pick a direction and cycle about 10km stopping frequently to shoot. Even if it is rough dirt tracks and steep hills the 10 year old bike battery still has enough juice for a 20km round trip anywhere. By the time I get back to the van its 150watt solar panel has collected just enough sunshine to recharge the bike.

On rainy days I planned to process images but at the moment I am having so much fun flying up and down hills there is almost no power left for the laptop. The upside is in 2020 I have travelled more miles using renewables than with fossil fuels. In 2019 I drove so much the van battery could be topped up with the alternator. Now I am travelling slowly I need the power from the sun more than ever. I plan to add a 350watt solar panel to the van so I will no longer have to ration laptop time to a few hrs per month. Hopefully increasing the output of fossil free photos from photons.

I realised the reason I am getting so much enjoyment from this bike is because it is the first time I have ridden a mountain bike on a real mountain. The tough design is great for going downhill on any terrain and because it is electric it is happy going uphill too.

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

One way I will reduce my carbon footprint this year is to use altitude instead of latitude to avoid the summer heat. I am currently above the height of Snowdon in the UK (the highest mountain in Wales). In 2018 & 2019 I travelled South in the summer and North in the winter to stay in the comfortable zone which increases the number of shooting days I can do and makes #vanlife more enjoyable. This year the fires to the East and dust storms to the West will also affect my trajectory.

My next restock will be in Bathurst after the Elton John gig which sounds like it could cause traffic chaos for days.

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

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.

Marree is a frontier town and the last petrol stop before embarking on the Birdsville, Oonadatta or Strzelecki Track. From here dirt roads stretch out hundreds of miles into South Australia’s remote corners. The place has a Mad Max feel. Beefed up 4WD’s adorned with equipment and stacked high with water and petrol cans prepare to take on the expanse. From here I went North until the road ended at the foot of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre.

When I first visited Australia in my gap year over 20 years ago a fellow traveller told me this quote by Samuel Johnson “The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are” So it is with Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre. Internet articles predicting the rains earlier this year in Queensland and The Northern Territory would cause a once in a lifetime event were greatly exaggerated. I suspect they were written by someone with an interest in the tourism industry. It is true that the rivers here are untamed but industry and agriculture still take bore water from the Great Artesian Basin. This reduces the chance of the lake ever filling again like it did in 1974. It is a sobering thought that since it last filled the global human population has doubled and the wildlife population has halved. Another part of travel these days seems to be seeing things before they are gone forever.

From here I will go west across the Nullarbor Plain to revisit the location of my best selling photo in Kalgoorlie.

I had been waiting for good weather and low tide to coincide for a couple of weeks. Finally, I decided to risk it with a wet morning which had a forecast for a mostly clear afternoon. There are many warning signs advising you not to attempt it in the wet as it is essentially a climb. Imagine steep slabs of rock covered with rivulets and very little to hold on to.

I was reminded of my first off-piste skiing attempt when I discovered, regardless of posture, every mountain surface has an angle which, if you lose your grip, accelerates you towards a cliff.

After covering myself with cuts and scrapes I finally reached the top with a couple of English lads who shared their bananas with me while we waited for the mist to clear. After an hour of sitting in the clouds, they started back down. I told them if it gets better they can pull my image from this blog. email benzworldblog@gmail.com if you would like high res.

I am going into Hobart this evening to get some night shots of the city for my Australian Skylines Collection.

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