The Cover Shot - Wild #201

The Nullarbor (Latin: ‘no trees’) is renowned for its astonishing flatness and its vast expanse of treeless terrain. Yet concealed beneath the desert surface is a cave network of staggering beauty, grandeur and scientific value. I took this photograph in 2023, in midwinter when the core of the Milky Way lies directly overhead. Fortuitously—and under moonless, clear skies—the angle of the cave entrance and the Milky Way aligned so that the former framed the latter like a giant galactic eye, mirrored by the caver, both looking inwards. Earth, Eye, Sky—whispered by the muse—seemed a fitting title for the composition.

Nullarbor cave entrances are spectacular gaping sinkholes that abruptly breach the Earth’s surface to reveal a dark and mysterious underworld. Forty three years ago, as a young cave diver, I stood on this same edge and gazed in awe at the steep, rocky slope disappearing into the depths below. My dive buddies, meanwhile, told glowing stories of the huge, submerged tunnel 80m down, barrelling off into the great unknown. I was hooked, and have returned many times over the ensuing decades to dive, explore, research and photograph these astonishing, world-class caves.

Over several expeditions to this cave, while climbing back out the entrance at the end of a long day hauling dive gear, I have been struck by its photogenic sky window promising boundless creative opportunity—at some future time, perhaps. That time came in 2023, just after my wife Bronwen and I heard of a preposterous proposal to industrialise the Nullarbor with the world’s largest wind- and solar-powered hydrogen- and ammonia-export hub. We spent nine weeks photographing the caves and landscape to raise public awareness and to campaign for World Heritage recognition. This image was one of many I took during those weeks.

You can see more of Stefan and Bronwen’s imagery, and read about the threats facing the Nullarbor, in the accompanying story ‘The Nullarbor: The World’s Largest Arid Limestone Karst Is Under Threat’ starting on p100 of issue 201.

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