Planet Fungi author event at The Book Room

THE authors of the new coffee table book Planet Fungi: A Photographer’s Foray are hosting a Q&A event at The Book Room in Byron Bay on Wednesday September 17.

Northern Rivers-based photographer Stephen Axford and filmmaker Catherine Marciniak — who co-authored the book with leading mycologist Dr Tom May — will share their passion for mushrooms and other microorganisms on the night.

Published by CSIRO Publishing, Planet Fungi features photographs captured in rainforests, deserts and remote cloud forests around the world, showcasing fungi’s bizarre forms and highlighting their critical ecological roles.

Axford, who had always loved spending time in nature, took up photography in his late 50s after retiring from a career in IT and developed a fascination with photographing mushrooms.

His time-lapse footage of the luminous fungi Mycena chlorophos caught the eye of the BBC, who featured it in David Attenborough’s award-winning documentary Planet Earth II. His work has since appeared in other acclaimed nature documentaries, including Our Planet.

Marciniak, a seasoned features reporter for the ABC and keen bushwalker, has produced the national broadcaster’s religion and ethics program Compass and worked as an independent documentary filmmaker for more than 30 years.

In 2019, she was named a finalist in the Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism for her documentary Leagueability, and was part of the ABC regional NSW team that received a Walkley Award for its coverage of the 2019/2020 bushfires.

Marciniak first came across Axford’s fungi photography while working as a producer at ABC North Coast. The two collaborated on a simple audio slideshow for an ABC Open project called Water is… Fungi.

Now based on a property they are restoring in Eltham, the couple also made the Netflix documentary Follow the Rain, which premiered at last year’s Bangalow Film Festival.

“For years, people asked if we had a coffee-table book,” Marciniak said. “We knew we had a vast archive of photographs — many taken in remote forests rarely visited by mycologists — and we felt we had a story worth telling.

“We wanted to combine Stephen’s photography, my storytelling and Tom’s incredible expertise, to create something unique: a book that blends pioneering fungi adventures, mind-expanding science, and images of fungi at their most bizarre and beautiful.”

The book begins with Axford’s life-changing encounter with a purple mushroom at Wilsons Promontory in Victoria and unfolds with a blend of personal stories, photography techniques, science and fungi safaris in some of the world’s most remote forests.

Over the past decade, the pair have been invited to collaborate on fungi surveys in Australasia, China, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal, Chile and Zambia.

“We’re captivated by fungi because they reveal a hidden world teeming with wonder — and because they are absolutely essential to life,” Marciniak said. “They are ‘nature’s master connectors’, linking forests and underpinning climate resilience in ways most people don’t see.”

Marciniak said that the Northern Rivers is a biodiversity hotspot where fungi thrive alongside the region’s rich variety of plant and animal life.

“Our subtropical climate brings tropical fungi with the summer rains, and cooler months invite species more often found in temperate southern forests,” she said.

“These forests are also under-surveyed, so there are many species still waiting to be discovered. Right now, we’re contributing specimens, photographs and research toward the description of three new species.”

Marciniak said Border Ranges National Park is a great location for fungi spotting, while vibrant blue Entoloma mushrooms have been found in areas such as Wallum and near Lake Ainsworth at Lennox Head. “They’re one of the most stunning mushrooms on the planet,” she said.

Meet the authors of Planet Fungi at The Book Room in Byron Bay on Wednesday September 17 from 6pm to 7.30pm. Register via Eventbrite.