Nick Moir’s 30 years on the climate change frontline

Thirty years is a long time, and for the majority of that time, the Herald’s chief photographer Nick Moir has been stalking some of the world’s most dangerous weather events, racing to the frontline to capture the chaos.

He’s been on the ground for countless bushfires, floods, and droughts as well as chasing tornados in the US. His disaster expertise meant he was sent to cover the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that devastated Aceh’s west coast in Indonesia. It’s not a job for everyone.

Nick Moir surveying storm clouds in 2019.

Moir’s interest in extreme weather started when he was growing up in the lower Blue Mountains, where bushfires and storms were common. In 1994, a year after joining the Herald, Moir helped his mum defend her house from fires. It was the first time that Moir had a close encounter with fire. He was hooked. Over the coming years, he wanted to document them and understand the driving force behind them: the weather.

Moir began working with “weather nerds” – as he calls the storm chasers at the Australian Severe Weather Association – where he began storm chasing and learnt more about meteorology. He also took basic firefighting training with the NSW Rural Fire Service to get a better understanding of fire behaviour. (Today, the RFS runs media accreditation courses that Moir’s experience has helped shape).

“Those early days, there is a huge niche there and it requires an obsessiveness. I was the man for the job,” Moir said. “Caring about the issue meant getting a higher skill in those issues to be there when people are experiencing those moments of bravery, success or failure.”

It also meant getting a close-up view of the accelerating impact climate change is having on natural disasters. “During the past 30 years, we’ve seen fire behaviour and climatology become exponential … it is becoming worse.”

The first major bushfire season Moir covered was the 2001 fires that smashed the Hawkesbury, Blue Mountains, Cessnock and Penrith. The fires burnt more than 753,300 hectares and destroyed 109 houses. Moir then covered the 2003 Canberra fires, where he had several close calls.

“I got into a situation where the only way I could see where I was going was by opening the door and watching the white lines of the road go past. And it’s like, ‘you’re in too deep there buddy, you can’t see what is happening’.”

Moir rarely gets time off from disasters. He shoots court jobs, crime scenes, interesting people and daily Sydney life between his time on the road.

In 2004, just days after Christmas, Moir found himself on a plane to Aceh, the scene of a tsunami that killed at least 130,000 people and left around 500,000 people homeless.

“I’d seen, you know, dead bodies at police crime scenes and stuff, but Aceh was really brutal. The smells of literally thousands of people and dead children. It was a brutal, brutal place.”

The experience means that now “I don’t go to the beach without going, where’s a nice high spot,” he said. “I have dreams about it ... but it was also one of the first truly global stories where I was there very early and able to get pictures that could make a difference.”

Moir has also travelled extensively in the US chasing storms and tornados. He said one big advantage of working so intensely in the field was being able to read the weather and have a sound understanding of what may happen next, especially when instruments fail. His knowledge is so respected that other photographers and journalists seek out his advice about where to shoot for the day.

His years on the job chasing the most extreme weather events prepared him for the Black Summer fires of 2019-2020 – the worst Australia has seen. He worked tirelessly on documenting the flames and destruction, including the inferno that tore through the Blue Mountain town of Bilpin – near where Moir grew up.

Kundle Moto Rural Fire Service deputy Captain Floyd Goodwin deploys hoses moments before being overwhelmed and forced to retreat behind the truck during the Hillville fire in NSW in 2019.Credit: Nick Moir

He also saw fire behaviour that had been rarely documented, including when a one-metre blaze suddenly exploded into 100-metre flames within seconds, the radiant heat singeing his hair and skin. It’s during this time that Moir captured some of his favourite shots, including when a fire burnt over him and the Kundle Moto RFS Brigade.

“There are hundreds of moments like that, but being able to capture it, be part of it and share that moment was pretty awesome,” he said.

During his time with the Herald, Moir has won countless awards, including a World Press Photo award for coverage of the 2002-03 bushfire season and Australian Press Photographer of the Year in 2002 for a series on Sydney’s severe weather. He also won the 2020 Nikon-Walkley Award for Feature or Photographic Essay for his work on the Black Summer bushfires.

Mothership supercell near Imperial in Nebraska, USA. Moir was storm chasing and this monster appeared a few moments after driving out of rain.Credit: Nick Moir

When I asked Moir how he’s captured climate change in a single frame, he laughed. It’s not so simple, he explained. Rather, the story of climate change is told through his entire 30 years’ worth of photography: the changes in extreme weather, the natural disasters and the people left behind, the new weather patterns or phenomena shot for the first time on camera.

His passion for weather and for climate, understanding it and how it is changing led him to join the RFS as a volunteer earlier this year. He is giving back to an organisation that has helped him become the photographer he is today.

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