He r o e s
Follow me on Twitter at:
twitter.com/chrissigoldrickFrom the Editor-in-chief
January. February 11W
ELCOME TO AUSTRALIAN
GEOGRAPHIC’s 30th anniver-
sary edition, which we are
celebrating with a brand-new look. Our
talented team has been hard at work for
six months to freshen up the content and
layout, and we created a dramatic new
cover design. We hope you’ll enjoy por-
ing over this landmark edition as much as
we have enjoyed putting it together.
Our regular photographers are often
the unsung heroes of AG as they battle
bad weather, poor light and other unex-
pected challenges to capture those photos
that bring our stories so vividly to life.
We put them fi rmly in the spotlight for
our birthday issue and invited them to
nominate their favourite photos. It’s great
to revisit classic images, such as the swag-
man on the Birdsville Track, and hear the
backgrounds to these memorable photos.
In 30 years, the environment has
moved from the margins to the centre
of political debate, thanks mostly to the
eff orts of a few articulate, committed and
passionate individuals. We salute 30The AG team. From left : Jo Runciman, Mike Ellott, Tessa Cassettari, Lauren Smith,
Chrissie Goldrick, Carolyn Barry, Rebecca Cotton (front), Natsumi Penberthy, John
Pickrell, Jess Teideman, Katharine McKinnon (front), Amy Russell and Nicola Conti.heroes who have had a profound infl u-
ence on Australian conservation.
Oh, and there’s a birthday gift for our
readers. A fully updated Australia sheet
map to inspire future adventures.
See you along the track somewhere.TOP: PIP BLACKWOOD
We would like to acknowledge the
sponsors of the 2015 Australian
Geographic Society Gala Awards.More contributors: Peter Aitchison, Jeff Ayton, Bill Bachman, Colin Beard, Esther Beaton, Ben Blanche, Jenni Brammall, Amanda Burdon, Chris Duczynski, Trevor
Evans, Tim Flannery, Karen Ford, Don Fuchs, Andrew Gregory, Jane Hammond, David Hancock, Ben Hansen, Joanna Hartmann, Bill Hatcher, Frank Heydrich,
Owen Hughes, Ellen Keidge, Louisa Kelland, Karl Kruszelnicki, Mike Langford, Ofer Levy, Peter Meredith, Tamara Montgomery, Peter Morris, James O’Hanlon, Peter
Rae, Nick Rains, Mitch Reardon, Mike Rossi, Ben Sanders, Barry Skipsey, Ed Sloane, Mark Spencer, Ian Vickers, Fred Watson, Rebecca Wellard, Thomas Wielecki.Frank Povah
has been working as a
copy editor for AG since
the mid-1980s. His fi rst
corrections were read
over the public tele-
phone at Wollar, NSW – a village boasting
the last manual exchange in the state –
as he sat on a crate with proofs arranged
around him and weighted down by rocks.
His passion is ‘dinkum lingo’, the once-rich
Australian dialect and accent that is rap-
idly giving way to TV English, the language
of US script writers (see page 15).Cont ributors
Jason Edwards
is a longtime contributor
who has travelled the
world for several dec-
ades, also working for
publications such as
National Geographic, BBC Wildlife and The
New Yorker. His passion for wildlife and the
environment has seen him take on unu-
sual assignments, such as the time he
spent 300 hours in a hide photographing
northern hairy-nosed wombats for us
(AG 72). See his shots of brumbies on the
cover and in our feature on page 72.Sandy Guy
has been working as
a freelance journalist
for more than 20 years,
writing about anything
and everything. Her
work has taken her around the world,
from piranha-infested waters in Brazil
to the Indian Himalaya. Despite the
globe-trotting, her main passions are
native and historical stories, such as the
feature on the Sydney Cove shipwreck
(page 94), which is the fi rst story she has
penned for AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC.