From loud bursts of colour to quiet family moments, these 28 images paint a picture of Australia’s unique personality.
With 'Youth' I aimed to evoke a feeling that arises often for young people; losing oneself in thought, feeling anxious and lost. I also wished to explore the subtle and cinematic beauty of suburbia at night, aided by the streetlights and thick fog in Blackheath, Blue Mountains.
Listen to an audio description about this image and hear Sandy Edwards, Australian Life curator, share some background about the photographer and image.
Location: Blackheath, NSW
A young football fan feels the rain on his face minutes before kick-off for the Tiwi Islands grand final – the muddiest game of football.
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Location: Bathurst Island, NT
An ancient pickled cabbage recipe sees new light, adapted onto the Hills Hoist in a sunny Australian backyard. This image represents the ideas, cultures and foods immigrants bring to the country, while adding their own Aussie twist. It represents the resourcefulness and innovation of generations past, present and future.
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Location: Sydney, NSW
Once a year, teams all over Central Australia travel to participate in the annual Papunya Carnival. They travel extreme distances on hazardous dirt roads to make the pilgrimage.
This year 12 women's teams participated – it’s only the second year of women's competition, which started spontaneously after borrowing the men's jerseys.
Listen to an audio description about this image and hear Sandy Edwards, Australian Life curator, share some background about the photographer and image.
Location: Papunya, NT
Parishioners celebrate Easter and the officership of 8 new officers into the Salvation Army.
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Location: Auburn, NSW
It struck me just how normal this daily scene is to Gabriella, as she messages friends on her smartphone. Daughter of farmer Michelle Phillips who owns the camel farm Hunter Valley Camels in the Upper Hunter town, Denman. Feeding time during a severe drought.
Listen to an audio description about this image and hear Sandy Edwards, Australian Life curator, share some background about the photographer and image.
Location: Denman, NSW
Maxi Shield, the popular Oxford Street drag artiste, broadcasts to her online audience live from Darlinghurst's Oxford Hotel – home to one of her regular gigs. With all venues closed during the Covid lockdown, Maxi quickly started-up her own live Instagram chat show, ‘Maxi's Couch Potato’. She relished taking her audience online.
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Location: Oxford Street, NSW
A carpet of snow surrounds charred gums in a sub-alpine area devastated by the 2020 Black Summer bushfires. The snow, mist and silence created a hauntingly beautiful and otherworldly Australian winter landscape. In the midst of a global pandemic, the scene felt particularly surreal.
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Location: Ngarigo country - Kosciuszko National Park, NSW
I first met Rachael and Rebekah, who are identical twins, in 2017. At that time, they would often dress the same. Perhaps because I'm an only child, I was fascinated by their sisterly closeness. Now, years later, they are finishing high school, nearing adulthood, and forging their own individual paths.
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Location: Melbourne, VIC
Sardie (2 years) is cooling off in an esky as temperatures can reach 40°C.
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Location: Kennedy Hill, Broome, WA
In the summer of 2021, we travelled to an old holiday cabin in Lemon Tree Passage for our annual family holiday where I documented the activities of my 6-year-old daughter, 9-year-old son and my partner as they began unwinding from the challenging year that was 2020.
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Location: Lemon Tree Passage, NSW
Paul and Tania run the NRL Facebook fan page Panther Pulse. Paul surprised Tania with a proposal on the field at Penrith Stadium just before the start of their final home game for the 2019 season. They’re pictured here carrying the head of winger Brian To’o into their Mortdale home. Part of the series, ‘Outside the Stadium’, a project of Penrith Regional Gallery and Lyndal Irons.
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Location: Mortdale, NSW
Children take to the trampoline in floodwaters after the Manning River on the NSW mid-north coast broke its banks, inundating properties across the region and destroying homes and countless livestock. Impacted by bushfires the previous year, the resilience and spirit of the local children never dampened.
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Location: Bohnock, NSW
Sajeda and her daughter Asma embrace on a cliffside as they remember the dangerous journey by boat they made to seek refuge in Australia. They are Rohingya refugees who arrived in 2013. The fraught resettlement process means a they’re in constant battle to be recognised as citizens in their new safe haven.
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Location: Sydney, NSW
Unposed, candid photo taken after an Easter Mass at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
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Location: St Mary's Cathedral, NSW
Freshly shaven and armed with a bouquet of flowers, Leo waits to meet Rosie for the first time.
He was nervous.
Apprehensive.
He shouldn’t have been. After a whirlwind romance Leo and Rosie were soon engaged and married.
At 73 years of age, this would be Leo’s third attempt at marriage.
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Location: Newcastle, NSW
‘Proper Way’ is basically saying the right way. Culture is in our veins, and these young men saw carp still breeding and destroying ecosystem. Nonetheless, they jumped in without question or permission and gave back to mother earth. The smile on their faces shows a restored identity and strength from within.
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Location: Coleambally, NSW
Dave, arrived early at the quay for his day of work. He was sitting in a densely planted area, a tropical haven amongst the noise and road works of the busy tourist area. I captured this portrait while he waited for the rest of his busking mob.
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Location: Circular Quay, NSW
Each night we would watch SBS in the front yard on an iPad as the world started to crumble under Covid-19.
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Location: Capertee Valley, NSW
The Dengs have been in Australia since 2016 under the UNHCR refugee program. Prior to this Dabora and Malual spent 17 years in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in north Kenya. Malual was a soldier in South Sudan during the civil war and fled when his village was overrun.
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Location: Canberra, ACT
Visitors to the koala hospital are able to watch the care and attention given to koalas. Here, an admission is checked by clinical director Cheyne Flanagan (pictured right), Scott Castle assistant clinical director, and volunteer Susanne Schueter. This image was part of a commission for Australian Geographic.
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Location: Port Macquarie, NSW
A local square dance group meet one evening a week for practice. The eldest of the group is 90 years young and has never missed practice.
The ladies bring with them home made delicacies to enjoy for supper, carefully packed in lace lined baskets.
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Location: Fremantle, WA
After a year when most gatherings were cancelled, our little group of families found a Saturday in December where we could have a get-together and celebrate the end to a year most would hope to forget. A week later the virus re-emerged, and we were all separated once more.
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Location: Stanmore, NSW
Amidst the pandemic, my family are grateful to be able to sit by Hazel's side in her final days. It is a window of opportunity that so many people have been denied, to hold her soft hands and say goodbye.
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Location: Clemton Park, NSW
The skeletal remains of a burnt-out caravan is all that is left on friend John Corker's Rocky Hall property following the devastating 2020 black summer bushfires.
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Location: Rocky Hall, NSW
A representation of the one in four Australian adults that experience loneliness. Often there are no portraits of those lost within our communities. With no figure to be seen we place into the image our neighbour, family or ourselves and in doing so experience the feelings that accompany this isolation.
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Location: Sydney, NSW
In the water off Bondi a swimmer embraces rainstorm.
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Location: Bondi, NSW
Shot in 2018 during the peak of the drought in Broken Hill, when it was not uncommon for animals to venture into towns in search of food and water. Vital things were scarce due to the extreme lack of water in the wild. I stalked this emu around the northern suburbs of Broken Hill for some time, waiting to take this photograph.
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Location: Broken Hill, NSW
The $10,000 grand prize winner and people's choice award will be broadcast live on YouTube and Facebook on Thursday 16 September from 12.30pm to 1pm.
Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfYUykaCpsI
Published 31 July 2021, updated 16 September 2021
