Masks washed up on Lord Howe Island, NSW. Disposable face masks from the APL England cargo ship container spill. As a result, more than 1000 face masks were collected from Lord Howe Island beaches when the island was in lockdown.

A murmuration of budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) at a waterhole outside Alice Springs. Flocks usually range from 3–100 birds, but this year conditions were particularly favourable for budgies. This boom-bust species experienced population explosions throughout interior Australia following widespread rain that led to the setting of seeds across thousands of arid hectares.

Ecologist Nathan McQuoid wanders among an impressive stand of sunset-hued royal hakea (Hakea victoria) endemic to WA. About 2-hours drive west of Esperance, Fitzgerald River NP is a hotspot for this spectacular and bizarre plant.

An Australasian gannet (Morus serrator) was found entangled and drowned in a Bureau of Meteorology radiosonde (weather balloon) on Brighton Beach, Victoria. Found entangled with another gannet that had not yet drowned, it would have literally been acting as a dead weight, while the other struggled to survive.

During a property raid a senior investigator from the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) examines reptiles that have been found in a garage.

A Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) Port Phillip wildlife officer measures one of several blue-tongue lizards (Tiliqua scincoides) that were discovered at a Melbourne postage sorting facility, bound and stuffed inside electronic devices.

‘Skywhalepapa’, a hot air balloon made by sculptor Patricia Piccinini, floating above Canberra.

The distinctively coloured Stemonitis axifera can often be found clustered on dead logs in the wet forest habitat preferred by many slime mould species.

In NZ waters, southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) are mostly caught by surface longlining. Once pulled from the ocean by hand, each fish is killed quickly, bled, gutted and trimmed, and treated with the utmost care until it is sold for several thousand dollars at a Japanese fish market.

In Port Lincoln, SA, divers Brandon Williams and Blake Staunton check tuna for disease and tuna pens for damage.

A dingo sniffs the air to locate burnt prey a few days after fires swept though an area off the Northern Road near the Valley of the Giants on K’gari (Fraser Island), Qld.

Aerial view of the Finke River cutting through the red sandstone of the James Ranges, NT.

Walers carried thousands of Allied soldiers safely across the scarred battlefields of World War I.

Sunset looking over the Barwon River at Brewarrina is a special time of day, with the (estimated) 40,000-year-old Aboriginal fish traps in the distance and the more modern weir in the foreground reflecting the river’s mix of Indigenous and European history. The Barwon joins with the Culgoa River just downstream to form one of Australia’s most famous waterways: the Darling River.

A juvenile short-headed seahorse (Hippocampus breviceps) clinging to a seagrass blade.

Venom expert Dr Christina Zdenek carefully milks a deadly coastal taipan (Oxyuranus scutellatus) in the garage of her home in Brisbane.

An Australian giant cuttlefish (Sepia apama) during its spectacular annual breeding aggregation off the SA coast.

Bell Gorge on Wilinggin country on the north Kimberley plateau, WA.

An endangered brush-tailed rock-wallaby (Petrogale penicillata) with joey perches on a rocky outcrop of the Mt Rothwell Biodiversity Interpretation Centre, Little River, VIC.

Bean the brahminy kite (Haliastur indus) returns to the wild at Pottsville, northern NSW, after he was found floating in the ocean the week before.

A blanket of fog covers the valley of the upper Dargo River in Victoria’s high country. The mountains around Mt Hotham ski resort are in the background.