Water is fundamental to life and increasingly this precious resource is becoming a significant issue around the world. Australia is no different, with water affecting every aspect of our lives and economy.

Over many years our major river systems, particularly the Murray Darling basin have suffered significant degradation. The Coorong
(image left) at the Murray's mouth is a good example of an ecological system suffering from low environmental flows as well as drainage issues relating to dry land salinity. Working with Coorong ecologist Dr David Paton from Adelaide University and Earthwatch [www.earthwatch.org],
I was fortunate enough to be able to photograph the Coorong over different seasons, learning about this wetland of international significance as I went.

Living in Healesville, to the east of Melbourne, I am on the fringe of Melbourne's water catchments and the tall wet forests (image right) that are found there. These magnificent forests not only provide water for Australia's second largest city, but also recreational opportunities, cleaner air, a range of forest products and habitat for a great diversity of animals. It was in these forests that I worked on the Leadbeater's Possum, one of Victoria's faunal emblems, before turning to photography full time.

Water management can be quite contentious however. The damming of Lake Pedder for hydro electricity in 1972, in many ways brought environmentalism to the fore in Tasmania, and indeed Australia, and was significant in the determined effort that eventually saw the Franklin River saved from being dammed. I rafted down a river in a similar predicament in the Kimberley region of Western Australia to photograph it. There were plans to dam the Fitzroy River at Dimond Gorge (image left), a spectacularly beautiful spot on the largest wild river in the Kimberley. While the plan has been shelved for now, with ecologically disastrous ideas such as 'turning the rivers inland', and a nation's thirst for water, it may yet re-emerge.