Finally I have received a few author’s copies of a book “The World through the eyes of a blogger” where I wrote a chapter about Australian outback. As a travel photographer I’ve got photos published in books, booklets, magazines etc. I also have a couple of articles published in local magazines, but this time it’s different. It’s a full story with photos. It was published in Russia (yeah, in Russian as well) with support from National Geographic Traveller magazine and LiveJournal – one of the most popular blogging platform. The book consists of 27 stories illustrated with photos about interesting places around the globe; most of them are off the beaten path. The cover story about our planet was written by Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin. Other stories in the book are about Namibia, Vietnam, Syria, Mongolia, Holland, Singapore, India, Papua (province), Iran, China, Tibet, Yemen, Botswana, Bulgaria, Algeria, Israel, Columbia, USA, Ecuador, Egypt, Costa Rica, Tunisia, Norway, New Zealand and Alaska (yeah, it’s USA, but it’s toooooo far from the mainland) are written by different people – professional photographers, businessmen, artists etc. Very different people, very different approach to writing and showing the world around us. But it’s quite interesting book and I’m proud to be a part of that team.

Also I received a gift from russian travel photographer Michael Vorobyov – his photo-book about Huangshan (Yellow Mountains) and Li River in China. The whole story behid that is that my wife is a travel writer and after we spent a few weeks in China she wrote a series of articles about travelling in Huangshan and Zhangjiajie mountains, Longji Rice Fields and along Li River, explaining all itineraries, where to stay, providing maps, describing hotels, where to buy tickets, prices etc. So Michael used these articles for his photo trip and once he came back home he published a photo book and sent a copy to me as appreciation of the articles. For those of you who wants to read the articles I’ve got a couple of notes: 1) All articles are in Russian, however in the right-upper corner you can select a desired language and Google will translate it for you. Hopefully it translates correctly. 2) All maps are in English. Maps for Huangshan mountains have sunrise/sunset locations. If you are planning to go there it’s worth reading the articles. Hope that’ll help you in your trips to China. And Japan as well. And may be South Korea, New Zealand and Australia. Who knows. She has articles on that too.

Made this shot yesterday at North Brother mountain on the way back home after camping at Diamond Head. There were about 15 paragliders in the sky at the same time flying over Laurieton.

There are two versions of why the mountains in Dooragan National Park are named “brothers”. The first one leads to Captain James Cook who passed the area on 12 May 1770 and named three mountains as “Three Brothers”. Also local aboriginal people tell a dreamtime legend of three brothers of the Birpai tribe who met their fate at the hands of the witch called Widjirriejuggi and were buried where each of the Three Brothers Mountains stand. The youngest of the three was Dooragan, for whom the park is named.
Amazing coincidence!

On a clear day the view from North Brother Lookout is really beautiful. It is one of Australia’s most impressive coastal panoramas. It is 5km up on the Captain Cook Bicentenary Road. Head west along Kew Rd then take the signposted turnoff on the left and follow the winding road to the summit.