A recap of my travels and happenings in 2025

Over the last year I’ve gotten to see some amazing things and have had so many wonderful adventures its hard to pick a place to start, so I guess I’ll start chronologically.

This time last year I had the opportunity to go to Exmouth to help one of the PhD students at UWA with her fieldwork. Here I got to see coral reefs for the first time, albeit not the healthiest of reefs post bleaching events, but we were able to find some oasis of life on the back side the fringing reef system. This was also my first experience truly freediving, and carrying at times 16 kg lead weights, I got good at it, fast. This trip was also highlighted by seeing my first whale shark, as well as getting to swim with Manta Rays and a Tiger Shark! That in itself was quite the thrill.

Following my return to Perth, I quickly went on a long weekend climbing trip to Eagle Stone Rock and had my first experience climbing trad in Western Australia. We also got to camp right next to a massive salt lake and were greeted by quite possibly the most amazing sunrise I have ever seen. It was truly something to behold! The reds and oranges danced both above my head and below my feet and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The climbing was also great! I climbed an off-width trad route and took my mate Max up his first ever pitch of trad.

Following this trip were trips to Margaret River and to Avon Valley National Park in the hills surrounding Perth to try and catch a glimpse of the lunar eclipse. The trip to Margaret river was amazing, Amber and I surfed some, but really just enjoyed relaxing, especially considering how stressed we had both been with uni recently. Our trip into the hills was much more spontaneous. We planned it last minute hoping to glimpse a bit of the lunar eclipse between the storm that had rolled through that evening. We went to sleep early but had an alarm set for the middle of the night to try and glimpse it. Waking up was difficult, it was cold and our sleeping bags were warm, but with heavy eyes I peered out of the tent, looked up into the sky and all I could see was darkness. This wasn’t surprising given the fact that it was still raining and honestly, we were glad to be able to stay warm and not have to get out of bed.

Lucky for us, the next morning we awoke to find the valley below us filled with fog, and the sun just peaking out over the hills stretching to the East. There was even a rainbow to greet us!

Not too long after the trip to Avon Valley, Amber, myself and five of our friends: Dec, Ruby, Chris, Anneke and Ty journeyed out to Wave Rock for their 20th Annual music festival. This was actually my first, and at the time of writing this, only music festival I have ever gone to. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun. We danced entire days away, played hacky-sack in the sand and just enjoyed each others company through and through. My personal favourite from the weekend was Ali, a band from Indonesia, who if you haven’t yet had the chance to listen to, I highly recommend that you make the time to do so.

After this trip I kept my head down for a while between getting my masters work done and working my ass off to fill the hole left by one of my coworkers. The result of this was a lack of personal trips in October, but a work trip to Exmouth the week before finals to quickly get some drone surveys of the beaches surrounding Coral Bay and Tantabiddi.

Finally, I finished the year off with a trip to the Sterling Ranges for a historical reenactment of the first trad line being sent there 60 years prior and a trip to Indonesia with Amber, but those will have to be there own posts!