10 years of Guardian Australia’s best photography – in pictures

A herd of brumbies on the plains above Kiandra in the Kosciuszko national park. This photograph was taken in August 2014 for a special report by Guardian Australia’s Gabrielle Chan. Photographer Mike Bowers documented the animals as they tried, some unsuccessfully, to see out the harsh winter in the Australian Alps, while Chan followed the concerns of environmentalists about the species damaging precious alpine ranges.

In 2018, farmers in the central-west of NSW battled their worst drought in 100 years. Harry Taylor, six, plays with the bones of dead livestock on his family’s mixed sheep and cattle farm 25km north-west of Coonabarabran.

‘It’s the worst I’ve ever seen in the 20-odd years I’ve been doing this’ ... An exhausted Mike Munns, volunteer fire chief for Marlee in NSW, takes a break by the community hall after fighting fires for days. It’s November 2019, during what would become known as the black summer bushfires.

In 2020, for the first time in about 200 years, Australian native plant mandadyan nalluk – dancing grass – is harvested on Indigenous author and farmer Bruce Pascoe’s property in East Gippsland, Victoria. The farm produces native grains for flour and bread using traditional Aboriginal techniques.

Joshua Collings and his son Tully at Pamela Noonan’s farm in Curryong, north-eastern Victoria, 7 July 2020. Tully wears a robot jumper and is excited to live in a ‘robot house’, the name he gives the modular, technologically innovative, energy-efficient and fire-safe home being built for his family by Atomic 6, a Melbourne-based research and construction company.

Kimbra ahead of the launch of her album A Reckoning.

Eden residents prepare to take shelter aboard a tugboat at the town’s wharf rather than evacuating north by road, as the vast majority of residents have, as the border fire threatens the town on 5 January 2020.

Editor Tess Cullity is relying on the jobseeker payments to support her three-year-old son and herself after being made redundant due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Contract musterer Joe Curtin, 22, drives cattle using a motorbike on Connemara station, in the Channel country of south-west Queensland.

John Fredricks floats in the waters of the Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

Hamdi Ali walks through a flock of pigeons feeding on Weet-Bix left by a resident of 141 Nicholson Street flats, part of the Carlton Housing Estate.

The Ballina clean-up begins for June Mount after flooding destroyed thousands of properties.

Keneisha and Levi play in Wiluna’s claypan, Western Australia.

Jack Featherstone in his Braidwood aged care room where he paints with a safety pin in time to classical music, 2 July, 2022.

Australian photographer Krystle Wright captured this dusty wedge tornado forming on the outskirts of Morton in the Texan panhandle.

Barakat Shah Safi remembers his brother Matiullah Safi, who he lost in the Christchurch mosque attacks.

Yanyuwa/Garrwa artist Miriam Charlie visits family in Borroloola. She is pictured with her sister Jeanette and her grandson Elmazri.

Farewell to Archie Roach. The hearse travels up Gertrude Street, Fitzroy and stops for a minute’s silence outside Charcoal Lane.

Yokun’s descendants help prepare his grave during a repatriation. In 1934, Pitjantjatjara man Yokun was shot and killed by mounted constable Bill McKinnon at Uluru, where he was buried but later exhumed and sent to Adelaide. Today, his partial remains are finally laid to rest at the base of Uluru.

Cheryl Rowe living at a campsite in WA’s Margaret River region due to inaccessible housing.

Australian singer, artist, writer and rapper Ziggy Ramo hangs off a footbridge at Bondi beach, Sydney.

British-born Australian author John Birmingham.

Tattoo artist Alison Manners photographed at her home in Brisbane, 10 November, 2022. Alison had recently lost many of her possessions when the house she lived in was inundated by floodwaters.

Singer Paul Kelly at his home in St Kilda, Melbourne.

What drew conservation biologist Max James to live in remote Wangarabell 20 years ago was the thought of living a gentle bush life among Australia’s unique plants and animals. Now living in a fire-ravaged landscape, Max is keeping close tabs on the recovery of his quiet world. As a daily ritual he documents the bird species that survived the inferno and takes in the germinating plant life along the creek, which before the fires was inaccessible. “All has been erased and now nature has to come back through a blank, black canvas. It’s a lamentable game of survival – but beautiful to watch.”

Pop artist Banoffee, born Martha Brown, at Gordons Bay, Sydney, 23 November 2021.

Sunshine through the clouds after morning rain over Uluru.