There is a strong Canberra connection with "relentless adventurers" Richard and Carol Green, killed, with their filmmaker friend John Davis, in the helicopter crash reported on Monday.
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On Saturday they had been flying home to Sydney from near Tamworth (typically they'd been taking part in an environmental protest against a coalmine) in their famous and splendid EC135 helicopter. Richard Green called it their "flying camper van".
Nat Williams, curator of the Treasures Gallery of the National Library of Australia, got to know them when in 2008 the library showed an exhibition of Richard Green's grand photographs of wild Australian places. Upon hearing the awful news Mr Williams has written a heartfelt blog about the Greens, people he remembers as "relentless adventurers".
"Green by name and green by nature, the two of them were absolutely dedicated to making the world a better place. Richard's remarkably captivating images of pristine wilderness have proved to be both memorable and influential. He made them freely available to promote ecological causes.
"I received a news email from Richard only last Friday night [the crash seems to have been late in the afternoon of the following day] and was pleased to hear what they had been up to. More trips, more beautiful photographs, more adventures ... Visiting his grandson and eldest daughter in Melbourne for a first birthday party. Very busy grandparents enjoying life to the full.
"Richard mentioned in his email that one of his aerial forest photographs, showing the koala habitat inland from Bega, which is being threatened by logging, was made available free of charge to promote the cause.
"A man of strong opinions ... he ruffled feathers sometimes. He could be abrasive and impatient with bureaucracy, characteristics countered by Carol's warmth and preparedness to tell him to shut up. Carol painted and drew and eloquently captured the landscape they roamed through, while Richard caught the moment digitally, waiting for the perfect light conditions.
"I had a lot to do with Richard and Carol when the library showed an exhibition, Wild Places, of his hugely successful photographs in 2008. The public loved them. They left rapturous comments about them in the visitors' book."
Reminiscing to us on Tuesday about that exhibition Mr Williams said that the Richard Green pictures in it really bewitched people. They were enormous (up to three metres wide) and so offered "panoramas, really large sweeps of the remote and wild". And they were elaborately made by making one picture from the artful "stitching together" of eight or 12 images.
Mr Williams remembers how "That exhibition led to a self-produced major book documenting his work which, again, the public consumed with great enthusiasm. It was typical of Richard to produce his own book and to do so to such technically demanding standards. He crafted a gorgeous volume which I will wistfully enjoy in the years ahead. Richard's gift of photographs to the National Library after his exhibition was a generous act.
"He loved technology, he had made his fortune from it, hence the EC135 helicopter and his great cameras. He also loved his tavern clocks, a museum-standard collection,which he tinkered with and craftily maintained. The house ticked along to the rhythm of these rarities and no doubt they are now slowing and stopping in his absence.
"Richard and Carol loved adventure ... and most of all flying to places where non-indigenous Australians had probably not been before. Creating a vision of the unspoilt to haunt us in a messy, greedy world, they succeeded in making many people take pause and think about the world we are losing. Richard and Carol certainly lived life to the full, loved their helicopter trips, camping out under the stars and will be sorely missed by the many that knew them. Their images, however, will live on."
And while we're out in the great Australian outdoors that the Greens loved here is another picture, for the month of December, from the Bureau of Meteorology's meteorologically patriotic and glossily gorgeous 2016 Australian Weather Calendar.
It is Cathryn Vasseleu's Lightning from Nightcliff, Darwin, Northern Territory. Those of us who have lived in Darwin can testify that NT lightning is the most theatrical lightning there is.
"The Australian tropics experience two distinct seasons – 'dry' from May to September and 'wet' from October to April," the grand calendar explains.
"As the end of the year approaches, temperatures increase in tropical areas and a shift in the prevailing wind direction brings increased moisture into the area from warm oceans over the Arafura Sea to Australia's north.
" 'At that part of the build-up,' says Darwin local Cathryn Vasseleu, 'up until about December, there's really big lightning storms but it's not raining – so you can get photos of big lightning strikes because you're not in peril of being drenched. Where I took the photo is a popular spot that people actively come to view the lightning. Up here, lightning is almost a way of life'."
You may have to move like lightning to buy the modestly-priced, not-for-profit 2016 calendar (2015's popular calendar sold 60,000 copies) while stocks last. Call 1300 798 789.
