Explore Sarah Quine’s underwater portfolio.

Jeff Miller first visited Tasmania in 2005 on recommendations from co-workers in the US Antarctic program.

“Being a geographically-challenged Yank, at the time all I really knew about Tassie was that the devil lived here. During that first visit I only had time to hike the Overland Track and see Wineglass Bay, but it was enough to make a huge impression. I was hooked.”

As luck would have it, his partner was offered a job in Hobart the following year.

Jeff quickly followed and, now permanent residents, they are intending to stay indefinitely.

“We are very keen bushwalkers and the huge unspoilt wilderness were such an attraction. Couple that with the laid-back lifestyle and the quality of life and I really can’t understand why Tassie isn’t overrun with mainlanders.

“It seems the locals have done a great job of keeping this place a well-guarded secret.”

While an unpublished amateur photographer, Jeff is skilled at capturing the graphic elements of a scene and has a well-developed eye for composition.

He particularly enjoys the symmetry of reflections, but finds beauty in most any landscape.

“In the short time we’ve been here, we have been lucky to see quite a lot of the State.

“For the photographer, Tasmanias varied landscapes offer endless opportunities. Rainforest, beaches, waterfalls, rugged mountains — you name it and it is here.”

Click on any image below to see a larger version:

Be awed by Stuart Gibson’s Shipstern Bluff portfolio.

By Emily Davey | Tasmania, of late, is realising its potential in the surfing world, and rightly so. After years of being kept a very good secret — our waves, our environment, our island and, most importantly, our surfers, are being exposed for what they really are: absolutely classic.

One thing that is consistently evident throughout our island state is the down-to-earth nature of the surfing community.

This is expressed through wide appreciation of Tasmania’s natural beauty. Local photographer Stuart Gibson has captured this beauty time after time and is now sharing our state’s best breaks with the world.

The passionate 24-year-old has raised the profile of our top surfers immensely — along with our state in the surfing realm — and deserves all credit for his efforts. His work has been published nationally and is regularly found in one of Australia’s top surfing magazines, Surfing Life.

His photos have also appeared in many other magazine and newspapers, and on various websites.

Having surfed on and off his whole life, Stuart is comfortable in his ocean work environment and has accumulated knowledge of Tassie’s surfers, top spots, and differing wave shapes. It is no wonder the freelance photographer is rapidly climbing to the top of his profession — despite only starting out with a camera a few years ago.

Tasmania’s most notorious break, Shipstern Bluff, has been named in the top ten list of the world’s heaviest waves — it certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted.

While Tassie’s coastline is ruled with beach breaks, reefs, river mouths and points, bearing classic waves, Shipstern is tucked away down south, letting in only the true adventurer. A two-hour drive (from Hobart) followed by a one-and-a-half hour trek, and a big southern ocean groundswell is required in order to experience our island’s greatest pearl.

Stuart captures the monstrous, short, thick, right reef break off south-east Tasmania on camera by regularly putting himself in the impact zone.

A must visit: Stuart Gibson’s Shipstern Bluff portfolio.

Emily Davey is the author of Secrets of the Island: An oral history of Tasmanian surfing, Published by Tassurf Publishing, ISBN 0-646-453335

There’s more at Stuart Gibson’s web site

Launceston-based photographer Peter Daalder consistently travels around Tasmania in search of images that capture the essence of the State.

He has a finely-tuned eye for detail, visual contradictions, and the impacts on an island going through enormous change.

For his first thisTasmania portfolio we have selected images that show the diversity of Tasmania’s rural landscapes.

Just imagine coming from a country where the highest point of elevation is a mere 321 metres above sea level.

When I first arrived in Tasmania, from Holland, during August 1982, I immediately fell in love with this place. My first home had an imposing view of three mountains which surround the Launceston area.

Friends quickly taught me that the easiest way to remember their names was to think of Arthur wheeling his Barrow up Ben Lomond.

After discovering the joy of bushwalking, I have climbed many of Tasmania’s peaks.

However, as the years have gone by, I now prefer to capture Tasmania’s rural landscapes. Sadly, I feel that I am documenting a rapidly disappearing landscape, as prime farming land gives way to an ever increasing number of tree plantations.

There is much more to Tasmania than Cradle Mountain, Wineglass Bay and Port Arthur. I hope that through my photography, many others will discover the great beauty that can (still) be found in many parts of this island state. — Peter Daalder

Portfolio by Peter Daalder: Rural Reality

Peter also produces a series of Tasmanian calendars. Visit his web site for more information.

Visit Sheila Smart’s portfolio.

My husband and I have lived in Australia since 1974 but it was not until 2004 that we decided to visit the only State we had yet to see — Tasmania.

It was long overdue and was very much an eye-opener for both of us. We were immediately struck by the beauty of the countryside and the friendliness of the wonderful people. Coming from frenetic Sydney, it was a joy to relax and let Tassie take over.

Photography being my great passion, I was not disappointed. From the wilderness of the Gordon River and Cradle Mountain, albeit in constant drizzle, to the white sands of eastern Tasmania, specifically Swansea, we were besotted by the landscape and plan to return in, hopefully, the not too distant future. — Sheila Smart

A convert to the world of digital photography, Sheila Smart is a Sydney-based freelance photographer, living with her husband and two cats in the northern beaches suburb of Avalon Beach.

Her varied portfolio includes candids of Sydney folk, black and white images, including infrared, aboriginality of urban Sydney and also urban wildlife. Enjoy more of her work here.

Rob Blakers is a nature and wilderness photographer, who uses Hobart as a base from which to explore wild Tasmania. He is passionate about its protection and sees the continuing inroads into Tasmanian wild country and ancient forests as an appalling tragedy of our time.

Images from Rob’s collection have been used extensively for nature conservation. He has also edited and published many photographic books based on Tasmania. These images come from his latest book Freycinet — available at all good local bookstores.

View Rob Blakers’ amazing Freycinet portfolio.

For more images visit Rob Blakers web site.

Don’t miss Peter Whyte’s mouthwatering mushroom portfolio.

However the precious fungi grown here do not suffer the vagaries of the weather as did the first serious attempts at commercial cultivation undertaken in New South Wales during the 1930s.

No straw-covered, raised open-field beds here, but a multi-million dollar climate-controlled growing facility and laboratory.

Its realisation took a decade. Back in the late 1980s, restaurateur Michael Brown was aghast to realise that exotic dried imported mushrooms were fetching $100 a kilo and that Australia lacked the technology to grow them.

His entrepreneurial interest was aroused and, with an earlier-acquired agricultural science degree in hand, he took part in a Tasmanian Enterprise Workshop program.

From this program, Huon Valley Mushrooms emerged and the first harvest of white mushrooms, Agaricus bisporus, was in 1991. The company’s early focus was on white mushrooms and other fast-fruiting varieties with high market demand, like the Swiss Brown or Tasmanian honey brown, the brown Agaricus, and the Oyster mushroom, Pleurotus ostreatus.

The cash flow generated underpinned R&D funding into the more lucrative and temperamental exotics.

These cluster-growing fan-shaped mushrooms are available in an amazing range of colours and boast a wonderful silky mouthfeel.

The brown and white Agaricus shared equal billing with consumers until a mutant white strain took centre stage in the 1920s and the brown variety temporarily fell from grace. However, with a more robust flavour than its white-capped cousin, reminiscent of the paddock-plucked mushrooms of my youth, the brown Agaricus is once again much sought after, as the one tonne a week produced by Huon Valley Mushrooms testifies.

Pleurotus ostreatus, the oyster mushroom, was another early specialty. These cluster-growing fan-shaped mushrooms are available in an amazing range of colours and boast a wonderful silky mouthfeel.

The real challenge began when HVM embarked on intensive research into the commercial production of shiitake, also known as Japanese tree or forest mushroom. While HVM found that the fungi being produced to that had been somewhat nonchalant as to their growing medium, the shiitake were not.

Some 2000 years ago, long before mushrooms were cultivated in Europe, the Japanese were harvesting these large fleshy brown parasol-shaped caps from water-softened dead oak wood. As this particular variety of wood was unavailable in Australia, HVM needed to find an alternative wood or to develop an artificial ‘log’.

The production of shiitake is very much a hands-on affair.

It took three years of persistence before a eucalypt sawdust log proved itself to be both inexpensive and readily available and with similar yields to the first trialled but disproportionately expensive myrtle, the closest local variety to the Japanese hardwood.

In 1999 the company received Commonwealth Government research and development loan assistance to commercialise its artificial log production system for shiitake production. HVM now produces 600-800kg of shiitake a week with potential to increase this fivefold.

Research into other edible mushroom species continues … ¶

Mushroom Magic portfolio by Peter Whyte.

Paul County portfolio

From Before we eat …

Paul County is a fifth generation Tasmanian who grew up in Hobart.

A statement which is nowhere as lively as the piece Bernard Lloyd wrote on the back flap of their book Before we eat … a delicious slice of Tasmania’s culinary life:

Lamb chops and three veg seems an unlikely entrée for the founder of an historical culinary research organisiation but that is because it leaves out Dino Bonifacio, the Italian next-door neighbour who offered him bitter black olives over the back fence: a playmate’s father, a Lebanese butcher, who hung meat to cure in the back shed; and the heady smell of chocolate wafting from the Cadbury factory.

Add a mother with a love of books and a father who kept the family’s history alive with stories of Paul’s colourful ancestors (one who charted the rugged west coast in the 1820s, another who operated the first private sawmill in Tasmania on the Huon River and a third who played violin in Martin Cash’s bushranging gang) and you have Paul County, teacher and cook as well as a photographer and storyteller, who still loves roast lamb with three veg.

The end result of the exercise was a stunning exhibition — and we feature a selection in this Paul County portfolio.

Read our reviews here

Visit Pam Verwey’s portfolio

Pam Verwey first became passionate about photography on a trip around Australia in 1984 and, inspired by our unique and diverse scenery, she felt compelled to capture the essence of Australia on film.

In 1986 Pam moved to Tasmania, continuing her work as a medical scientist, but determined to combine her desire to study fine art with her interest in photography.

It was some years before this was possible, but 1999 saw her graduate from the University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

After graduating Pam established Lachlan Studios in Mt Nelson, and a little later, Mad About Photography was born.

The next step was to buy an historic building in Hobart which houses her studio and tourist accommodation.

Pam’s other interests of bushwalking, sea kayaking and rafting also gave her the wonderful opportunities to photograph Tasmania’s superb wilderness.