WILD WIDE WORLD
THE sort of images travel publications normally avoid at all costs have been reproduced for all to see in a new Lonely Planet book – including 13 from Australia.
Crocodiles, termites, flying foxes, bluebottles – pictures that would never appear in Tourism Australia’s Instagram feed – are among those selected to depict our region in Wild World.
Compiled by the travel guide gurus at Lonely Planet, the book endeavours to share the “most sublime corners of every continent” from the Arctic’s Tundra to the largest living organism on earth – the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland.
Wild World editors said the pics were chosen to invigorate readers and take them on a journey well off the beaten track.
“Curating this book, it was clear that humans have left their mark on almost every inch of the globe, from the rainforests of South America and Africa to the oceans’ reefs,” said the editors.
“But despite all the changes we have wrought upon it, our home still has the power to evoke awe, respect, passion and protectiveness, to comfort and thrill us, to change our lives.
“Billions of years after it was forged, it’s still a wild world.”
News Corp obtained exclusive access to a range of photographs from the selection of 198 featured in the book, ahead of its release next week.
They include this incredible picture of a saltwater crocodile cruising past a Papua New Guinea island, captured by renowned underwater photographer Roberto Rinaldi.
The aftermath of a lightning strike in the Daintree National Park in Far North Queensland, a termite tower in a carpet of spinifex in the East Kimberley, and an awesome aerial of the Great Barrier Reef also made the cut.
Other quintessentially Australian images to feature, include a colony of flying foxes tearing across the night sky in the Northern Territory, kangaroos bouncing over the beach at Lucky Bay in Western Australia and the colourful cassowary.
Europe scored the most entries in the book, with 44 photographs, ranging from a galloping reindeer herd in Swedish Lapland, to the Crystal Cave on the Dead Sea in Jordan.
Africa was a close second with 42, including some of the most spectacular shots of wildlife – like a lioness charging through a venue of vultures, and a sailfish eyeing sardines in Port St John, South Africa.