Ten Experiences Captured Only via Drawings
A Month In Australia With A Camera, But Some Experiences Just Can’t Be Photographed.
During my month-long stay in Australia, Diana and I experienced many things that could not be captured on camera. One day while taking a long haul bus in WA, I randomly started drawing as I needed to learn to sketch (digitally) better. I hope you enjoy the stories, if not the sketches and photo supplements. The titles are for the TLDR crowd.
1. LITTLE PENGUIN PARADE LANDING AT PHILLIP ISLAND
2 hours west of Melbourne, penguins come home every night to Phillip Island. At sunset, hundreds of penguins arrive home together in groups, and you can observe their homecoming nightly as part of a spectacle called the Penguin Parade. Once ashore, the penguins go their individual ways to nests spread throughout the island. Photography is no longer allowed because the penguins’ eyes are sensitive to flash and the few dummies that couldn’t figure out how to turn it off ruined things for the rest of us. The island is also home to wild wallabies (mini kangaroos), geese, and bandicoots.
On my particular winter visit to Phillip Island, it rained sideways. I had a rain jacket on, and decided to layer a poncho on top of that because of how cold, windy, and wet it was. We walked on an elevated platform to an exposed seating area and waited until the penguins showed up. When the moment did come, we saw hundreds of little penguins waddling ashore! The best part was that we could sometimes follow them all the way back to nests located by the elevated platform. Awesome experience, despite our terrible luck with the weather.
2. SWIMMING WITH WHALE SHARKS IN THE OCEAN
In Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef, whale shark season runs from March to August. We booked a tour to swim with these giant sea creatures, which generally works like this. A plane spots the whale shark and signals the direction to the boat. The boat drops you off in the whale shark’s path, and you’re positioned in a line of 10 swimmers to the right of the whale shark’s path until it swims by. Then you swim after it for a few minutes, until the boat picks you up and repositions you off in front of the whale shark again. The whale shark we swam with was 11 meters long, but they can grow up to 20 meters. Technically, I had a camera on me, but the conditions did not allow me the opportunity to capture the scale of the largest fish in the sea in my photos. At any given point you are to stay at least 5 meters from the shark. Whale sharks swim fast and water visibility isn’t all that good. Everyone in the group is trying to swim as fast as they can to keep pace so with the shark, and you’re swimming next to its tail the majority of the time. There was no way to get into position in front of the shark, with another swimmer close to its head to show how massive these giant, gentle creatures are.
3. NAVY PIER DAVE IN EXMOUTH
During my stay in Western Australia, Diana and I received our open water diving certifications (Thanks Benat), which qualifies us to dive down to 18 meters. We’d heard that Exmouth’s Navy Pier — a naval radar site built by the U.S. during WWII— is a world-renown dive site. It is still an active military base, but the pier structure is rarely used, and therefore life has flourished below the surface. We met a couple (Adam & Emily) who did this unique dive 3 times during their week in Exmouth.
I had purchased a DJI Action camera for this trip. At the time of purchase, there was no underwater housing case available, but the camera is rated for up to 11 meters in depth, while the average depth for the Navy Pier dive is only 10 meters. I was about to jump in with it in hand until our dive guide, Kate, told me that she’s seen many GoPros break. I ended up being glad that I didn’t bring the camera with me as it was very difficult to maneuver through the diagonal cross beams of the pier structure underwater, and I ended up going down to a max depth of 13 meters during the dive. Under the water, we encountered a large school of barracudas swimming above us, a Big Friendly Groper (about the size of a person but rounder), an 8-meter nurse shark, sea snakes, octopuses, a white tip reef shark, and a wobbegong shark. We should have gone to the Pier twice.
4. MY HAT’S SOLO TRIP FROM KARIJINI TO PERTH
From Exmouth, I traveled to Karijini National Park on an 8-hour long bus ride with Integrity Coach Lines. Along the way, I saw a beautiful sunset behind thousands of termite mounds. Also, our driver pointed out many kangaroo sightings, as the grass is often greener near the side of the road during dry years. Sad to know that it is common for bus drivers to hit multiple kangaroos in a month.
Because it was dark by the time I got off the bus, I accidentally left my hat on the bus. We reached out to the bus company, who couldn’t find it at first, but were later able to locate it exactly where I left it, and arrange for a reunion in Perth. By staying on the bus, my hat had made its way all the way up north to Broome and back down south to Perth (4000 km / 2500 miles) by the time I picked it up, meaning my hat has probably seen more of western Australia than I ever will.
5. SPIDER WALK OF KARIJINI
Karijini is a beautiful park. In many ways, it’s like Zion National Park in Utah. One of the trails requires water shoes and hiking between tight canyons and crevasses, with water flowing in between. There’s a segment within the Hancock Gorge where you have to do the spider walk to get across to the canyon on the other side. I had Diana pose for me in one of the images. What would have been more impressive than my image is if someone had taken a picture of me taking a picture of her. To take the photo, I had to brace myself at an elevated position between the walls, with my backpack on and camera in hand. Needless to say, it was quite a workout.
Later inside the gorge, I had to swim across a freezing pond while holding my Nikon SLR camera. As I went in, it was slippery and the bottom was nowhere to be found. When my head went under the water, I held my SLR camera as high as I could and started to kick as hard as I could. Later people told me that my camera was an inch from hitting the water.
6. KIWI WILDBOY AT ULURU / KATA TJUTA NATIONAL PARK
In Uluru, I watched the sunset (and timelapsed it) at Kata Tjuta with Diana and her sister (who decided to tag along for 2 weeks). The park is huge and it takes an hour drive at 100km (62mph) to get to the sunset location. Because all the sitting areas had obstructed views, we basically camped out for sunset by an opening on the trail. Those visiting will need to know that there are tons of “friendly” but harmless flies everywhere. At any given time, there could be two dozen resting on your clothes, hair, and backpack. Sometimes they even fly into your face. Around 20 minutes before sunset, hundreds of people showed up. Someone even set up a table with champagne…
Out of nowhere, a guy covered in red sand (Uluru is famously red) came biking down the trail behind us, doing a few zig-zags around people and kicking up sand. His bike was filled with gear and attached to a small trailer full of supplies. When he arrived at the sunset location, he probably realized that the view was better where we were, so he came back around a few minutes later. That got me wondering if many people bike in the park as he was the first I’d seen. I overheard that he was 25 and was biking across Australia. He said he might have to camp in the park (not technically permitted but awesome stargazing). I never got a photo of him as that was extremely random and wasn’t why I was at the park.
A month later in Waitomo, New Zealand, Diana and I were on a repelling tour to explore a cave called the Lost World. During our many conversations with our guide, he mentioned that there was a famous ADHD Kiwi kid named Brando Yelavich who was currently biking across Australia, having first come to prominence by walking the entire New Zealand coast. He then wrote a book and became a successful motivational speaker. Diana and I both realized that must’ve been the guy we’d seen at Uluru. Later that night, we read on Brando’s blog that the reason he had to camp in the park is because his trailer had broken off. What a way to conclude that experience a month later in a different country.
Here is Brando’s post about the day. I hope he reads what I wrote someday.
7. ABANDONED BY TOUR AT THE FIELD OF LIGHT
We signed up for the 8:15 pm tour of the Field of Light in Uluru, an installation by artist Bruce Munro comprised of 50,000 spindles of fiber optic lights. A 50 person bus picks up visitors at their respective hotels and drives 5 km through complete darkness to the site of the installation. The tour specifically said to that we should be back around 9:25 as the bus will leave at exactly 9:30. Being a photographer, I wanted capture moment for as long as I could so we stayed a late as we could. We got to the waiting area at 9:26 with two security officers who were on their way to tell the bus that the field was clear of guests, and they could take off. To our surprise, we saw the bus pull away at 9:27, when we were still 20 meters away from it. The security people waved and even flashed their torches at the bus to no avail. Thankfully, the guards were nice and offered us a ride back, because we otherwise would have been left to find our way by foot in the dark. We got to stay a bit longer and enjoy the lights and the milky way above us. And to be totally honest, I think I enjoyed that experience more; as a bonus, we even arrived back before the bus, and before 10 (when the bar closes). We went straight to the bar where we polished off a few drinks to cap off our time in the outback.
8. DOLPHIN BALLET AT HERVEY BAY
Hervey Bay is where you go to see humpback whales or Fraser Island. After an afternoon out at sea seeing two humpbacks swim right up to our boat, the tour shuttled us back to our hotel. On the way back, there was a beautiful yellow sunset that stretched all through the sky. The road is parallel to the beach so the entire ride was just trees, beach, and ocean to the right. I was sitting on the left side of the bus and while looking through the breaks between trees, I saw something relatively big jumping out of the water. It looked like it was dancing. Our bus driver noticed too, and called out that there were at least three dolphins as he pulled over for an unexpected pitstop. By the time the group all got off the bus and onto the beach, the dolphins had swum further away, but it was still a worthwhile stop. The sunset was beautiful, and this was the first time I saw dolphins perform acrobatics in the wild.
9. FINDING NEMO, BUT MISSING BRUCE
At the Great Barrier Reef, we joined a tour that would allow us to snorkel at three different sites on Opal Reef. The diversity and expanse of the corals were overwhelming. It is hard to imagine that the reef spans 2,300 km (1,400 miles). Throughout the day, we did not get to see any large sea mammals, but we saw many colorful, giant sea clams (which we’d never seen anywhere else) and smaller fishes. Also, this was another chance for me to search for clownfish (like Nemo) and their cousins, the anemonefish, all of which hide in sea anemone and are very difficult to spot. We saw clownfish early in the day, but I couldn’t photograph them well so I wanted a second attempt. While the group looked very hard in every crevasse, a large shark passed right beneath us. We didn’t even know a shark had passed below us until another snorkeler (who’d been observing it) asked if we’d seen it since pass right below us — clearly, she had! We totally missed it, but I guess there might be next time.
10. HIKING ON A BURNING TRAIL
When we finally got to Sydney on the last 3 days of our month-long trip in Australia, we were pretty natured out. We spent two days just walking around the city and enjoyed the abundant food choices. The selection was such a contrast to all the other places we had visited in Australia. On day three, we decided that we would go on one of Sydney’s famed coastal walks. Diana had picked out a 3-hour hike 20 minutes away from Sydney in a town called Manly. We were feeling lazy and decided to get an Uber to drop us off at a viewpoint 1-hour from the Manly wharf, so we could do a shorter version of the hike. As we were on the Uber, our driver explained that what we’d mistaken for cloud cover was actually smoke and residue from that day’s controlled bush burn, a frequent winter activity to prevent wildfires in the summer. We had no idea that we were heading right into the burn zone until our driver drove by a couple of fire trucks, and dropped us off near a clearing in the bush right past them. We could smell the burnt wood, and see falling ash and small sparks of fire next to black char everywhere as we started our hike, wondering why the area hadn’t been fenced off if there was a planned burn. The visibility was low, but a few minutes of walking, we were back on a part of the trail that had burnt out early that morning. ½ an hour later, it was back to normal and we even saw a wild wallaby hiding in the bush. I can officially say, I have walked through a bush fire.
EXTRAS: THE DRAWING PROCESS
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