In the mid-1980s, the green and golden bell frog (Litoria aurea) was so common it was used for classroom vivisection and fed to pet snakes. Since then it has declined in more than 80 per cent of its range and breeding populations are rare. Efforts to save it gathered pace when a breeding population was discovered in 1993 at the Sydney Olympic Park construction site. At stake is a never-to-be-repeated work of nature. It is seen here stretched out to its full body and leg length – about 16 cm – ready to be measured by an unseen researcher’s hand.

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“This one new telephone; this one good story for us,” said Tom Noytuna. “When kids get sick, we telephone clinic, they send truck with medicine.” During three decades, Penny Tweedie made three extended visits to Arnhem Land to document the Yolngu people and her photographs are a testament to rapidly changing lives and times.

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At 1060 sq. km, Namadgi National Park makes up about 45 per cent of the ACT and supports a dense population of eastern grey kangaroos. The best place to see them is the former grazing country
surrounding the 140-year-old Orroral Homestead. The area was declared a national park in 1994.

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The white-bellied sea eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) was a natural subject for Jonathan Poyner when he moved to Dalmeny, on the NSW south coast. The area around his home on Lake Mummuga is a favoured hunting ground for these majestic creatures and their proximity to home provided him with ample opportunity to observe their behaviour, a vital prerequisite of successful wildlife photography.

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With a swag, a sack with a few provisions, a water bottle and his shadow for company, the man in the red at, Graham Childs, steps along the legendary Birdsville Track. Graham is a fair dinkum Australian bushie
who likes horses, prefers the old ways and can live off the land. But where’d he get that mug-lair hat? “Turkey Creek roadhouse, Western Australia,” he told writer Paul Mann. “Cost me 50 bucks.”

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With hoofs thundering and manes flying brumbies (Equus caballu) gallop through snow near Mt Stirling, in Victoria’s high country. More than those of any other region, mountain brumbies have found their way into our hearts and our folklore through works like ‘Banjo’ Paterson’s immortal The Man from Snowy River, but thriving feral herds cause untold damage to fragile alpine environments and debate over culling still divides opinion.

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With a stance and glance that convey both strength and vulnerability, Yolngu boy Micky heralds in our first photographic cover in 2006. After 83 painted covers, Penny Tweedie’s striking portrait of the Arnhem Land youngster – similarly faced with reconciling the demands of the future and the traditions of the past – was a pivotal moment in the history of the Australian Geographic journal.

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The waking sun tints Lake Eyre orange and warmly greets its sleepy inhabitants, including banded stilts and silver gulls. On the edge of the lake, life also starts to stir – birds rustle saltbush branches and yawning campers crawl from their swags. With water, Lake Eyre springs to life – wildflowers bloom, fish breed and reptiles gleefully feed; without it, the lake is iced with a thick, salty crust.

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A mob of grey nurse sharks (Carcharias taurus) muster schools of black-tipped bullseyes and stripeys at Fish Rock Cave, near South West Rocks, NSW. Critically endangered because of overfishing, the grey nurse is docile and relatively harmless to humans, a character trait masked by its rows of menacing-looking teeth.

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Faith in its town and each other sustains the diverse NSW western plains community of Bourke, which cherishes its four divine Missionaries of Charity sisters Guadalupe, Fidelis, Rosen and Margritta. Collectively they have devoted 21 years to their parched parish, during a period of great social, cultural and
economic upheaval. “Mother Teresa herself walked past the town’s designated Aboriginal reserve in 1969, and decided that something needed to be done,” says Sister Fidelis.

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The Ghan glides 2979 km between Darwin and Adelaide in 60 hours and almost noiselessly, thanks in part to tracks fused into continuous lengths. “It’s really quiet,” says the night manager Ian Kelleher. “When
you’re out there, when you’re shunting the train, you just don’t hear anything. They call it the ‘silent death’.”

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Heat and flies on the Mitchelland Flinders-grass plains prove too much for this young steer. Stockman ‘Tick’ Everett hitches him to the back of his mount for a journey back to the yards on vast Brunette Downs cattle station, on the Barkly Tablelands, NT.

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Dwarfed by fog-shrouded mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans), Doug Sheather enjoys a few moments of solitude with his mount Dusty. Doug was one of a dozen cattlemen involved in Tom Groggin station’s two-day, highcountry drive in Alpine National Park, north-eastern Victoria. They drove a 400-strong mob of cattle from Tom Groggin, 15 km south of Mt Kosciuszko, to Davies Plain, where the station had a grazing licence.

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Australian babies are girls and boys on film – ultrasound, camera, video, webcam – a far cry from the largely unrecorded births of their own parents. These six debuted at Sydney’s Royal Hospital for Women on a bright and blustery winter day: 23 June 2006.

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Brisbane-based Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service officer Sarah Waters is looking for mites – adults and eggs – and thrips in a shipment of cherries grown in the USA. The tiny organisms, some just
a fraction of a millimetre long, could turn into a giant headache for Queensland fruit growers if they enter Australia.

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Australian mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape’s 1990 journey from the Bay of Bengal to Mt Everest’s summit was the first time the world’s highest peak had been scaled from sea level. A camp on a 3355 m ridge provided the team’s first view of Everest, at left, still 90 km away, and Tim’s wife Dr Ann Ward cartwheeled for joy.

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On a day charged with emotion, a young digger comforts WWII veteran Ossie Ostara, who missed his starting point for Sydney’s 1997 Anzac Day march. Despite their advanced years and the ailments that plague them, many veterans insist on participating.

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