Imagine my surprise when I received a short email from the Production Editor of Australian Geographic Magazine asking me to “check the edits of your article”. My first two questions were “what edits of which article”? It turns out that the blog-style review I’d written of the Australian Geographic Expedition to Lord Howe Island in 2016 had been chosen for publication, and they were going to use my photos as well. “Hang on a second” I said “I’m a hotel guy”, but there was a draft in my email and I had work to do. I’ve been reading Australian Geographic since I was a kid, and I felt some pressure to make my only ever article in the magazine (in all likelihood) as good as possible.
The article appeared in the May issue of the magazine, and thanks to the careful rewriting by the editors at Australian Geographic (thanks!), it captures the activities and experience of the week perfectly. We didn’t really know what kind of guests would come on the Expedition – would they be too nerdy or too serious to have a holiday at the same time? But luckily, they were among the best bunch of guests we’d ever hosted, and as soon as they left, we released dates for the follow-up Expedition in 2017 – this time to search for new bee and wasp species.
