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1 Year In Oz - Photography
Will these 12 reasons be enough to get you on a plane to Australia?!
1 Year In Oz - Photo Book ☀
So its been 12 whole months since we left the UK, the time really hasn't gone fast at all.. In fact its gone quite slow!! This past year has felt like a lifetime in Australia, but that's what happens when you change your routine all the time. We have had 4 different jobs in that time and are just about to start new ones, travelled to beautiful islands, partook in a cannabis festival, took shelter for two days while a massive storm destroyed the camp ground we were staying at, hitch hiked up the east coast, watched whales migrate to warmer seas, spent Christmas on a isolated desert island, jumped out of a plane and so much more!!
So here we are, our 12 most favourite snaps that capture the journey we have been on so far! Enjoy!
1 - Port Stephens, a small area home to the largest sand dune system in Australia! We really did feel like we had just been dropped off in the middle of a desert..
2 - Crystal Falls near the old fashioned town of Bellingen, we went on a trek into the local rainforest filled with views like this!
3 - We worked for a month at a beach resort in a small beach town called Bargara, the views of the milky way were spectacular! Another shot taken on a bloomin GoPro!!
4 - Second year visa farm work in Australia ain't all bad, we landed WWOOFing positions on a small macadamia farm in the middle of know where. This photo was taken during one of the forest burns we took part in (That was Hannah's 4x4)
5 - The storms over our farm house! We spent hours just sitting out on the balcony watching the lightning and listening to the thunder. We also had to run out into and get wet :P
6 - This haunting photo was taken just after sunset on our GoPro in the town of 1770. You can even see a few stars starting to shine in the sky!
7 - After working on the farm we headed to Fraser Island to do some paid work at a camp ground. Over the course of the 2 months we spent there we spotted so much wildlife, this is one of the native Dingos patrolling the beach.
8 - This is Fraser Islands west coast, none of the tours go to this side of the island, which made it such a peaceful experience. Fraser truly is a beautiful place!
9 - The Whitsunday Islands, home to the famous Whitehaven Beach. We got dropped of by a small boat and spent 2 nights camping on the island, during the day the beach was full of day trippers, but in the evening we were the only people on the island..
10 - Sunset on Whitehaven beach, an empty beach and a warm beer (next time we will take a cool box) perfection! We had so much fun here that we would recommend it to anyone travelling in Oz.
11 - Cape Hillsborough, a small area near Airlie Beach. If you go to the beach in the early hours of the morning just as the sun is rising, you will be greeted by a group of kangaroos and wallabies! They all seem to love the attention and pose for the camera like professionals.
12 - Finally we have Noosa, our current base. An up and coming beach town with a beautiful river system running around it (also great views of the mountains as you can see above).
The year ahead will be quite different, as we head up to the rainforest's of Cairns, then into the dusty red outback. We can't wait to see the real and raw Australia!
Thanks for joining us on this epic adventure!! ✌
Cheers for reading!
Hannah and Taran here. We hail from Southern England, where we met online and are now realizing our mutual passion for travel here at NomaderHowFar. We discuss Nomadic Living, Simplifying your Life and Long-term Travel, to empower, motivate and inspire our readers. Get to know us here!
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![Beauty Of Whitehaven [Photography]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/535a8b5ee4b00a1a8a7975e6/1463710245921-SQIECQ2KDV2QQIZHZA27/IMG_0311.JPG)
Beauty Of Whitehaven [Photography]
2 days was enough for the island to show its beauty, but left us wanting more!
Beauty Of Whitehaven - Photography
We only had a short stay on Whitehaven Beach, 2 nights camping a few feet off the actual beach, but this was enough time to see the beauty that it had to offer!
Above is one end of the beach, and also where we camped ✌ We spotted stingrays and hundreds of fish while snorkelling around those rocks!
This was one of the only objects escaping the tree line, the beach was incredibly pure and clean.
No words can put into detail just how clear the water was here... So just look at that picture again :)
Wondering down the beach on the first evening I came across a small shrub attempting to rise from the white silica sands..
Something about this photo really grabs me, and I'm still not sure what it is.. But that is Hannah down in the water while one of the many tour boats stopped briefly at the beach.
Just after sunset on our second evening the sky turned an awesome salmon pink, the silhouette of the tree made an awesome picture so I just had to snap it!
Read more about our time on Whitehaven or check out some more awesome photography!
Which is your favourite photo?!
Let me know in the comments below :D
Thanks for reading!
Taran here, one half of NomaderHowFar. I'm fond of psychedelic rock, photography & videography, forcing Hannah to do crazy things, and I'm also partial to the odd gaming session. Oh and I love to travel :P Get to know us here!
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We Found Heaven on Earth (Whitehaven and the Whitsundays)
Camping on Whitehaven beach was a privilege and an amazing experience; we never wanted to leave!
We Found Heaven on Earth:Whitehaven and the Whitsunday's
There are corners of this world where the beauty is so pure and breathtaking, you find your anxieties, fears and your entire reality, disintegrate.
They're just too perfect, too natural and real, for any of your everyday concerns to matter. One corner that has had this affect upon us is Whitehaven Beach, the Whitsunday Islands.
Soft white silica sands, and a haven in every sense of the word, this sun-soaked azure paradise was somewhere we really wanted to visit before arriving in Australia.
Famous for the crystal waters, abundant with turtles, dolphins and other sea-life, if you only have a short time in Australia, it is a must-see.
We may have only just returned from a stunning island (Fraser, lower down the Queensland coast) but we knew this one would be special, so we headed here as soon as we could.
There are the usual backpacker tours that run all around the Whitsundays, most of which involve 2 days of island-hopping, with everyone crammed onto a boat, unable to experience anywhere for too long.
We got pursued by one of the tour salespeople whilst walking along Airlie Beach main street, vying for our business. He tried to say that you couldn't camp on Whitehaven, but we just smiled and walked off, knowing that the next morning we were booked onto a boat bound for the island, and the permits were all in place. Ignorant or just trying to fool us into handing over cash for the easy option of a backpacker tour, we were so glad that we had done our research into this place.
Getting the independence to camp on the beach seemed pretty amazing compared to spending $500 to share a tiny boat with 12 others, and only getting to spend around an hour at each destination.
We used a water taxi to get to Whitehaven (we used Scamper, who arranged permits for us, which cost $155 for a return trip, plus $40 for a camp kit which has everything 2 people might need, plus $15 for stinger suits) and pitched up for two nights in the small camping ground. By camp-ground I mean the patch of land set back only a few steps from the waters edge, with space for very few tents, sheltered by a smattering of trees, and frequently visited by guana's and wallabies.
The site itself is $5.50 per night, a standard permit cost in a national park in Australia, which is super reasonable considering you get the privilege of sleeping, eating, drinking (and using a relatively luxurious long-drop toilet) on one of the most pristine stretches of beach in the whole of Australia.
Some curious guanna's made their presence known straight away, trampling around the site to see what goodies we had brought.
During the day we snorkelled and just revelled in the beautiful warm ocean. At one point a boat which was anchored just off the shore, was also providing shelter to hundreds of little fish, all of whom went crazy for the fish feed that was thrown overboard at us!
We truly were away from it all, wrapped up in the quiet sounds of mother-nature, the gentle lapping of the ocean, an expanse so clear it doesn't feel real.
Hannah with a fish for a head!
In fact it feels so smooth and clean to swim in, it's a struggle to get out. Although you wear a full-body stinger suit if your going to swim out properly, as this area is notorious for the Irukanji, a deadly jellyfish. It may look a bit daft but the last thing you want on an island is sting!
I know its probably odd to bring a laptop to a deserted island, but I knew once the dark evening descended I'd probably feel inspired to talk about it all!
We were 3 of only 5 people in the camp-ground, and thus the only people on the whole island overnight, bar a few boats moored just off the shoreline, the only things punctuating the landscape with their lights and engine noise.
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DAY 2
On our second day we did a 2hr walk along the beach to reach the end point, a famous expanse of shallow waters often seen on postcards and mostly photographed from Hill Inlet. We didn't fancy the mountainous climb in our flip-flops so we just did a pleasant flat walk, followed up by more snorkelling.
We saw lots of stingrays but they are so flighty we could never get too close. We also saw some tiny sharks! Tiny as in the size of large fish as opposed to the size of a boat...
We both got a bit burnt on the walk back, the sun beating against our backs. We decided to brave a quick swim without our stinger suits and its just ridiculous how water can feel so smooth and soft.
That night after dark we walked again down to the edge of the sand, dipped our toes in the dark gentle waters, and just marvelled at the beauty around us. I even got a bit teary-eyed. It is simply stunning beyond what I could of expected or what I can get across. You really have to experience it to understand that its more than just a pretty beach.
So I guess you could say we quite liked Whitehaven, just a bit.... it truly has stolen our senses and given us some peace, if only for two days, but we'll probably think about it forever. It will be the happy place we go to in our minds when we're on another 13 hour coach ride (we travelled from Rainbow to Airlie overnight and our feet are still swollen from the long trip).
It truly is the most beautiful place we have seen in Australia, alongside the Blue Mountains and Port Stephens.
Thanks for reading!
Hannah and Taran here. We hail from Southern England, where we met online and are now realizing our mutual passion for travel here at NomaderHowFar. We discuss Nomadic Living, Simplifying your Life and Long-term Travel, to empower, motivate and inspire our readers. Get to know us here!
WANT MORE?
Taran & Makoto here, together we form Nomader How Far photography.
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