Visit the future of awildland

It all began here at our long-serving, hard working little blog page - a free, open access site detailing our many Australian adventures. But now...we are mixing things up a little and we have (finally) launched our own dedicated website with a changing gallery of never before seen images, new stories and even (possibly) prints and gifts - awildland.com.au. 

But we still love this blog page. It's not going anywhere. Our first blog was published here in 2012. Now the page boasts 137 posts detailing adventures from every state and territory in Australia. It has always been a place for us to hone our crafts and express our love of adventure, exploration and the Australian landscape. 

But, if you have been a regular visitor to this blog or followed our socials, you probably noticed that it all went really quiet in 2020.  

The lapse had many causes - changes in writing motivation and writing time were the main two. Even the simplest of blogs takes many hours of research, writing, and compilation but our commitment to spreading the word about adventure and nature also earnt us nothing. We have always kept this page ad-free and subscription free. And for the blog to continue, we felt we needed something to supplement or supercharge the motivation required to keep blogging. 

So we took a step back, enjoyed our adventures for a while, wrote and photographed for ourselves. Thinking all the time of how to mix things up.  

The end result is a new website! A fresh look and a slightly different approach. 

You can visit us at awildland.com.au

The website gives us greater flexibility and the chance to be more dynamic and varied as well as giving us a platform to promote our professional writing and photography. 

At awildland.com.au our plan is to make the photo gallery ever-changing; with the best on offer and not always tied to a story. We've started small, with themed galleries, but already it contains many never-before-published images. These images stand alone as things of beauty and exploration. The blog posts may be less frequent but still informative with a stronger focus on the story they have to tell, the histories in place and the things we can all do to ensure nature thrives into the future. 

awildland.blogspot.com.au will continue to exist as an archive, as long as blogspot exists. We may move some of the more relevant pieces to the new website and all new blogs will appear there rather than here. 

The idea is to evolve - us and this site; for the blog to evolve with nature and its voice.

Capturing the Ephemeral - mist and fog in the Australian landscape

This is an old, but strong, memory: Caz and I standing on the edge of an extinct volcano at dawn. Mist, settled in the valley below. In the distance, the volcanoes remnant central vent, Wollumbin (Mt Warning), and 600m below my feet lush farmland now covering the ancient crater. We are at Pinnacle Lookout in Border Ranges National Park, entranced and awestruck by the day’s first casting of shadows. 

The sun’s morning light is soft and golden. Birds are calling in the rainforest behind me. The metal lookout fence is cold beneath my arms. The sky is clear. And, the mist is making this moment magic. It has thrown a thin veil over the landscape below. The trees, the paddocks, the farmhouses and dams are a mosaic of light and dark - long rays of shadow streak across the hills like the strands of a fine and delicate tapestry still being woven.

Across Oz - cycle touring Australia, Coast to Coast

Most nights we just pushed our bikes off the road, into the scrub and pitched the tent. At one point we couldn't wash our cycling shorts for 10 days. Across the Nullarbor, we cycled Australia's longest section of  road without a bend - 146.6km over two days. Our legs got sunburnt, our stamina was tested, and the wind was a constant battle. This, is the story of one of our most challenging and memorable adventures yet.

The plan was to ride our bicycles coast to coast, more than 4,200 km across Australia from City Beach in Perth to Nobby’s Beach in Newcastle. There was to be no fundraising for charity, no-one sponsored us, we didn’t raise awareness for a particular cause, or visit public schools along the way. It was to be our first major adventure holiday together as a couple. Pure, selfish adventure.

A salt lake somewhere - South Australia

It's a nine-shooter night lying out on the hard crust of the desert's lake. Where the sky and salt meet is difficult to tell. The stars are in both. If the future were this landscape then it would be endless and yet confined to its own reflection. Lying back in our sleeping bags, waiting for the next shooting star,  the thrill of being in such a strange and rare place makes Caz declare: "When I grow up I want to be an explorer."

Learning our ABC - Flinders Ranges National Park

After plans A and B are thwarted we come up with plan C and ironically, or naturally, it leads us to the ABC range, one of the lesser, but integral sections of Flinders Ranges National Park in South Australia.

A is for Aroona

We arrive at the Koolamon Campground in the Aroona Valley mid morning, then pitch the tent and head for the hills. We are aiming for the top of a small but impressive looking peak, marked on the National Parks walking map as The Three Sisters and part of the long, stretch of the ABC Range. It is 548m in elevation and we start walking at about 350m, so it's a good steep pinch to the top. Heading south from the campground, there is an unnamed, dry creek that cuts through the hills. We cross its sandy bed and from here begin veering upwards, sticking to the hills rocky edge, with the creek below us. There is no marked track to follow but the terrain is open and so easy to navigate.