Ngaire Hart, A typical Macquarie Island Day in Subantarctica (February theme: Amazing places)

This is a typical day on Macquarie Island, part of Australia, a subantarctic island halfway to Antartica. Only a few days of the year have no rain, with a yearly rainfall of 900mm. Winds are constant 25km/hr with gusts over 170 km/h and heavy cloud cover. Temperatures when I visited over Christmas were 3 - 7 degrees Celcius. Yet full of penguins, seals, kelp, amazing grasses and plants.

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