Baz Ledwidge has been capturing life in the Top End for more than 40 years. He moved to Darwin in 1974 not long before Cyclone Tracy hit, and was one of the first to photograph the city in the wake of the cyclone.

“Myself and another photographer got photos in Smith Street first thing in the morning, before the bulldozers got down there. It was eerie,” he said.

Born in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Baz’s photographic career began with a cadetship at the Wagga Daily Advertiser. After a variety of jobs in London and Papua New Guinea, he was sent to Darwin to work for the federal Australian Information Service in 1974 as a photographer.

“The reporter and I drove all over the NT in a 4WD looking for offbeat stories and weird and wonderful characters,” he said.

After 18 months Baz was requested to return to Canberra, but by then the Territory had claimed Baz’s heart and soul and he stayed here.

“Ever since I was a kid I’ve had this funny thing in my head about palm trees and jungles. I’d draw palm trees on the wall,” he said. “Years later, when I went to the Rum Jungle site to take pics for a story, I remembered my fascination.”

Baz became photographer at the Northern Territory University (now Charles Darwin University), a position he held for 22 years, and was a co-founder of Darwin’s independent Star newspaper.

His camera has chronicled events both epic and small, along with a multitude of characters who have made Darwin and the Territory so unique.

“Darwin was a frontier town back then,” Baz said. He was a founding member of an unruly social group of tanned Territorians called the Rocksitters. “It was like the wild west. We didn’t have iPhones, so we made our own fun, like sitting down at the East Point cliffs with a beer to watch the sun set over the Arafura Sea.

“It’s less crazy these days, but you still have the freedom to be who you want to be in the Territory. It’s why I love it so much.”