2025 – My Top 10 Photos

We did a lot of travel in 2025. It wasn’t particularly planned at the start of the year, but it just worked out that way. We dipped a toe in every State and Territory of Australia with the exception of Western Australia.

So, here’s my top 10 photos from this year, and a little about each one.

Flinders Island

This image was taken at Trousers Point Beach on a quiet morning. I just love the colours in this picture – that azure blue of the water, reflecting the moody sky above. Trousers Point was my favourite beach on the island for swimming. Lying back floating in the crystal-clear water, looking up above at the silver granite of Mount Strzelecki – bliss! I do love a swim with a view, particularly if you get the place largely to yourself. Shh – let’s not tell too many people that paradise lies on this little island down in Bass Strait.

Mt Kaputar

Our first time visiting Mt Kaputar, in the Narrabri region of northern NSW. The view from the summit is really cool, with the area formed by an ancient volcano, so you look out over the caldera and beyond to the flat plains in the distance. Lights from a few small towns twinkle like land stars on the horizon. We spent a few nights camping here, and on the final morning my pre-dawn scamper to the summit was rewarded with this amazing sunrise. Lentincular clouds were forming, catching the light of the rising sun in the most spectacular fashion.

Kosciuszko National Park

It was the middle of the winter school holidays. No leave plans. Everyone was getting a bit stir crazy. At short notice, I took a day off work and we headed down to play in the snow. This was one of those scenes that I wasn’t particularly looking for – I just wandered a little way from the snowball fight after issuing the ‘we’ll head off soon’ warning. The little stream caught my eye, leading to an old snowgum, silhouetted in the dense fog, surrounded by sweet little tufts of snow grass.

Mt Buffalo

Another effort to stave off the winter blues and burn-out, we spent a few days based in Porepunkah exploring the snow-covered surrounds. This image taken on Mt Buffalo is one of my favourites, as the light started to hit the clusters of boulders to the east of my vantage point. While the early starts are a pain, I do love making the effort for a sunrise photography shoot – primarily because I so often get the solitude I crave. It’s a chance to observe the stirring of nature and truly enjoy the sounds and sights uninterrupted. This image is also one tinged with sadness, as it was about a week later that tragic events unfolded in Porepunkah, seeing Mt Buffalo closed while police scoured the place for a gunman.

Ikara-Flinders Ranges

Another blue hour sunrise photo, this time from Ikara-Flinders Ranges in South Australia. The reason this one makes my top list, is because of the story it tells. The tree, which sits upon a hill beside the Heysen Trail, has two wooden plaques in remembrance of Simon and Harry. My assumption is that they are father and son, who lived on the property surrounding the national park. Having grown up on a farm and knowing how much my father loved his piece of rural Australia, this scene really spoke to me of the connection between humans and country. I also like the way the light catches the ridges of the rocky escarpment in the background, which would have been a place of shelter, food and spirituality for the indigenous Adnyamathanha people who have held a connection to this country for thousands of years.

Andu – Yellow Footed Rock Wallaby

This was my second trip to Ikara-Flinders Ranges, but the first time Brachina Gorge had been closed until our final day, and we did not spot any yellow-footed rock wallabies (known as ‘Andu’ in the indigenous language). I was thrilled to see them this trip. We were able to watch a small group hopping around the rocks for quite a while, which was amazing. They are super cute, and it’s great to see conservation efforts seem to be going well.

Anna Creek Painted Hills

Our big ticket treat for this year was a scenic flight from William Creek, landing in Anna Creek Painted Hills before viewing Kati Thanda Lake Eyre. Anna Creek is a huge station in outback South Australia, and the current owners have allowed Wrights Air to land at the Painted Hills, which was an absolutely amazing place to see up close. The colours are vivid and the geology is really cool. It was an absolute highlight.

Kati Thanda – Lake Eyre

Seeing Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in flood has been a dream for my partner and I for years. I remember watching documentaries about the amazing phenomenon that happens on average once every 10 years, where this dry salt lake fills with water that flows down from Queensland’s channel country, and the seemingly barren desert comes to life. While I have quite a collection of images from the flight, this one makes my top list because it captures both the textural ripples in the water, as well as a flock of pelicans around silcrete island. The fact that birds know when the lake is in flood, and travel thousands of kilometres across the country is truly amazing to witness.

Kata Tjuta

Visiting Uluru and Kata Tjuta national park was a late addition to our outback trip. We added an extra two weeks of leave to our plans and ventured ‘just a little bit further’ north to central Australia. I’d been here 15 years ago, so I was wanting to experience the park beyond the iconic sunset and sunrise views of the glowing rocks. I took this image on the first morning, having made the deliberate choice not to go to the sunrise vantage point, but instead to head to the Kata Tjuta sunset viewing area and thus avoid the crowds. Apart from gazillions of flies that insisted on crawling all over my face, I had a pleasant morning trying to make compositions out of the silhouettes of these ancient rocks. However, it was as I was walking back to the car that I noticed this delightfully shapely tree, and it was perfect timing with the sun peeking through its leaves and lighting up the white flowers of the vegetation in the foreground. I’ve left it as colour for now, as I like the golden hue, but this is also a great black and white image.

Cheeky Monkeys

Look, I take a lot of photos of my kids. I have some lovely ones where somehow I managed to get them looking almost angelic. But it’s images like this one that I love the most. Our boys. Loud, wild and bringers of chaos to our lives. That’s probably why we get out and about so much – we need the wild open spaces to roam free.

And that’s a wrap on 2025.