“I started with a science background. I worked in mining for several years and then in explosives research for another couple of years. I only got halfway through the degree because I wasn’t that way inclined.
I was born in Melbourne. I went to University in London then came back to Melbourne again where I worked in the computer industry for many years. The computer industry suited my talents more. I ended up doing quite well in the computer industry but really, it wasn’t a soul fulfilling job though it did pay very well, and I ended up retiring at 56.
My former partner Pat who I was with from 1985 to 1998 died from breast cancer and just after that I found out that I had Hepatitis C. There wasn’t the treatment we have now. After a year I went on Interferon which is harsh and luckily for me I was cured.
I needed to reinvent myself after Pat died and facing mortality myself so I decided to climb volcanoes mostly in Indonesia, and photograph mushrooms.
I moved up here and gradually got into more photography which was a major hobby, well apart from climbing volcanoes.
There’s one volcano that I climbed a couple of times in Indonesia called Samuru which is in Java. It’s nearly 4000 meters high, so it’s a significant mountain. It takes a couple of days to climb and you get to the top and you’re absolutely exhausted because the last 700 meters vertically is like a sand dune. It’s just an ash cone. The active crater is just a little bit down one side and it would erupt every 15 minutes. It’s big enough to form a mushroom cloud. I went to Nyarugenge in the Congo and climbed that and various other ones through Asia and Vanuatu. That was a good hobby for a while. I even led a group of tourists on a volcano trek one time.
I started photographing fungi as much as I could and then I met Catherine. Then three things happened!
First there is an American blog called – This is Colossal which does Photography and Art posts. It’s invite only. I got an email from them back in 2013 asking if they could use my fungi photographs on their blog. I said yes and I didn’t have any watermarks on my photos on the net and they were high res which most photographers don’t do. I wasn’t posting them to make money but to share the beauty of fungi. When Colossal did the article on my images I got emails from magazines, mainly through Europe, wanted me to do articles and pay me real dollars. Most magazines would pay 1 to 2 thousand Euros which was great. That kick started it.
Shortly after the BBC wrote to me wanting information on luminous fungi. After I told them I was doing time-lapse they were very interested. The time-lapses ended up on Planet Earth 2. It was the highest rating nature documentary in the world for 10 years. Tim Shepherd a time-lapse videographer who works on many of the BBC documentaries, said to me, “Once you’ve been on Planet Earth 2 you don’t need to advertise anymore”.
The third thing that happened was Prof Peter Mortimer invited us to document fungi on a field trip in Yunnan, China. We have now been there 4 times and have learned much from those Mycologists. There are only a handful of mycologists in Australia. They do their best to document fungi but there just isn’t enough of them or enough funding.
People ask me if there’s a particular target fungi I’m trying to find but fungi’s not like that. There’s somewhere between 2 and 12 million species of fungus on this planet of which we have documented about 150 thousand. So, the chance of finding a fungi that hasn’t been described is really quite high.
About 12 years ago I found a very striking blue fungus. After a 10 year investigation it was finally named just last year as a new species. It’s known to be here, Lord Howe Island and New Caledonia and that’s it. Lismore to the coast is the only area in Australia where it’s found.
We also found new species of luminous fungi in India and there’s a species of magic mushroom which is named after me they found in Yunnan in China – Paneolus axfordii. It’s one of the very few fungi I don’t have a photograph of which is a bit funny.
The best description of what fungi actually do is they are like the glue that holds things together. Most of the fungus in this world is microscopic like yeast in beer or bread but in the forest we find three major types –
The first is the Saprotrophic Fungi which are the recyclers. Your compost has the fungus to break down material, fallen trees have fungus growing in them to break down the cellulose and wood and recycle it back into the forest. Without fungus the dead trees would just pile up in the forest. They recycle dead animals and dead vegetation.
Then there’s fungi that are Ectomycorrhizal and they form associations with trees and plants by supplying nutrients, minerals and water which the fungus can access but the tree roots can’t.
There’s also Parasitic Fungi which live by freeloading on other living organisms. Some kill insects and live on the body. There is interest in them now for biological control so I think in the future rather than using chemicals which destroy our natural environment, they might use fungi instead.
Our time lapses in Planet Earth 2 had David Attenborough’s narration behind it and Catherine cried hearing his voice over our time lapses done in a shipping container of our Big Scrub fungi.
Our work has been in lots of documentaries including Hostile Planet, Kangaroo Valley that’s on Netflix at the moment, Australian Odyssey a multi-screen exhibition screening here and internationally in museums and exhibition centres. We’re about to have time-lapses as part of the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Nature in Slovakia. Our film is screening in Lichtenstein in a couple of months. We are part of this whole global network.
I am a Sony ambassador and they have been very supportive so those cameras have really helped us lift the bar on our work.
In our new documentary FOLLOW THE RAIN we start in The Big Scrub and we talk about how it’s the wet season. It’s the most beautiful bio-diverse forest and there is only 1% of it left.
The early colonists called it the big scrub which is such a dismissive term for such a beautiful forest.
In the film we show how it not an easy place to be a fungi hunter as there are giant stinging trees, wait-a-while vines, leaches and paralysis ticks. One day filming Catherine walked right into a stinging tree just after filming how dangerous they can be. But luckily she had gaffer tape on her so she could pull the hairs off.
One of the beautiful things about this new film is we take people behind the scenes and into our time-lapse studio to show how the magic happens. We go to deserts, Cradle Mountain, The Tarkine, Lord Howe Island where a naturalist found a bright pink mushroom like our blue one, that’s only found on Lord Howe.”
Catherine – “Steve and I often wonder where we will end up. We are on property on the edge of 2480 and we’re getting older. Steve has been diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease. When he’s creative it just seems to disappear – must be those feel-good chemicals.”
Steve – “Generally it slows me down because sometimes I’m not firing on all cylinders. It affects dopamine and everything that comes from that like serotonin, adrenaline, and most of the neurotransmitters. It just means we do things a little differently.”
Catherine – “Steve and I both identify with Lismore. Our fantasy before the floods was we were going to buy a shop top, create a studio apartment and be elderly people in the middle of the Lismore CBD. Then of course, the flood happened, and so that plan is not going to happen. We are not sure where we will end up. The coast is great for a beach walk but we love the melting pot of Lismore, the artistic community, the first nations community that exists here, the farmers, the university, the Koalas and of course the influence of Aquarius. There’s something about a river town.”
If you can afford to, let’s get this film out in the world by donating what you can. Every little bit helps.
