A New Zealand fur seal relaxes on the rocks at Antipodes Island. “I had no idea that there was so much more down there; you think of it as just ocean,” he says. “Fundamentally though, it really is. I remember mucking around on Google Maps and – cripes – was I zooming in to pick up any landmass.” But in October last year, the 34-year-old won the 2020
New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year. With the prize came a trip to the Chatham Islands and subantarctics with Heritage Expeditions, a wildlife and Southern Ocean tour. He took along his mum, Wellington Oriental rug and carpet restorer Anna Williams (Rob Suisted, the 2019 winner of the award, was there too).
Call of the wild: New Zealand s southern-most islands are a wilderness hotspot.
If you are looking for adventure, exploration, and candid wildlife encounters, seek out some of most isolated islands on Earth. Andrea Vance and Iain McGregor visited New Zealand’s subantarctic islands with Heritage Expeditions. Bare, slippery granite, pummelled by the Southern Ocean, and washed clean of soil and vegetation, the Bounty Islands appear to be one of the most inhospitable places on Earth.
Iain McGregor/Stuff
Rockhopper penguins scrambled onto the Bounty Islands’ rocky shore. They lie almost 700km south-east of the South Island, and with no safe anchorage or obvious landing sites, or freshwater, they are the most remote and least visited of New Zealand’s subantarctic islands. Their Māori name – Moutere Hauriri – means “angry wind”.