Destinations · Reef, Outback & Wet Tropics
Australia
An island continent that ran a separate evolutionary experiment.
Anchor
Great Barrier Reef
Coordinates
18.29° S, 147.70° E
Season
May – Oct (dry), Nov – Feb (turtle nesting)
Species profiled
4
Endemism at a rate found almost nowhere else — and a reef under measurable stress.
Long isolation produced lineages with no equivalent anywhere: monotremes, a marsupial radiation filling every mammalian role, and birds whose songs shaped the global evolution of birdsong.
The reef work is documentary now as much as aesthetic. Successive bleaching events are the story, and photographing them honestly means photographing loss without making it beautiful enough to dismiss.
Frames from Australia
The Return
Raine Island — thirty years to this beach.
