One photographer travels to one of the wildest, most untouched places on the planet

(Photo/Tom Parker)

I’ve traveled to nearly 90 countries in my work as a photographer — among them some of the most remote, extreme places on the planet. But the scale and emptiness of northwestern Australia was unlike anything I had seen before. It’s one of earth’s last great wildernesses. That’s often my main motivation when I travel: To take pictures of places that are still relatively untouched by man.

The area I covered was vast. I landed in Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory, and spent the next seven days driving eastward, through Kakadu National Park and Arnhem Land — a 13,000-square-mile area the government gave back to the Aboriginal community around 50 years ago. Then, using small desert planes and helicopters, I flew some 900 miles to the Kimberley, an even more remote region of northwestern Australia. The Kimberley is the same size as California, yet has a population of just 38,000. There’s almost nothing there except this ancient, incredibly wild landscape.

Along the way, I flew over the Bungle Bungle mountains, which were only “discovered” by the outside world in 1982. The geology is very complex, and there’s a lot of texture there, but it can be tricky capturing that unless you’re able to shoot from above. Flying overhead in small aircraft meant I was able to take aerial photographs that really give a sense of how unique the topography is.