Stevie Reinhart, A View Left Unknown (PLACES WILDERNESS 2026)

The Budawangs have long been my closest playground from Canberra. Since discovering the outdoors in the early 2000s, this landscape has become a constant in my life, a place I return to not only for adventure, but for perspective. Like many who spend time here, I’ve grown to respect both its beauty and its complexity. The Budawangs don’t reveal themselves easily, and perhaps that’s part of what has kept drawing me back for all these years. For years I had carried an old photograph in the back of my mind. A photograph taken some time around 1970, showing The Castle from an angle I had never seen before. The Budawangs are full of iconic locations and well-known viewpoints, but this image felt different. Untamed. Mysterious. A perspective that seemed to exist outside the familiar trail lines and guidebook pages. I had no idea where it had been taken. No grid reference. No description. Just terrain, instinct and the quiet belief that somewhere out there, beyond the classic walks and known lookouts, a different view still existed. That idea stayed with me. The Budawangs don’t hand over their rewards easily. Anyone who has travelled through this country knows that already. The landscape is beautiful, but it asks something of you in return. Thick and unforgiving vegetation swallows progress. Tracks disappear beneath scrub. Rope climbs, chimneys, chains and exposed rock demand patience and focus. Navigating here is rarely straightforward. As the sun dropped toward the western face of The Castle, the landscape transformed. Orange light spilled across the rock and ignited the escarpment in a way that felt almost surreal. After days of uncertainty, wet climbing and stubborn navigation, the view opened itself to us all at once. It was more beautiful than I had imagined. I remember standing there with the camera and feeling briefly overwhelmed by the scale of it. Not because we had solved some mystery or completed an objective, but because the place still held surprise. In an age where nearly every landscape can be searched, tagged and pinned to a map within seconds, that feeling matters. Discovery still exists. And perhaps that is what drew me to the original photograph all along. That matters to us.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.