IMMERSED IN NATURE

A wild, free childhood in coastal Sydney proved to be perfect grounding for this internationally acclaimed, multi-award-winning natural-history filmmaker.

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KARINA HOLDEN’S EARLIEST memory is as a carefree child running barefoot through the bush, with her two sisters and a gang of local kids. The daily pulse of those early years was linked to the rhythms of the sea. “It was knowing when it was high tide, and making sure you were ready to jump in the ocean at the bottom of the hill,” she recalls. “That was when the water was cleanest and you could dive down and see everything so clearly – little seahorses connected to the ropes on the jetty pool, and stingrays that would come along.”

Swimming in rock pools along the cave-strewn coast was second nature to young Karina. So was lighting fires inside the caves for mock smoking ceremonies, far from adult scrutiny. “I didn’t ever want to miss out on the opportunity of throwing myself in the water, so I used to sleep in my swimming costume at night,” she says. “We’d roam around like wild kids, which I don’t think kids get enough of these days. Nothing ever happened to us, and if it did, I guess we’d have learnt a whole lot of lessons from it.”

Encounters with nature were visceral, unmediated by others and encouraged by her parents, whose busy retirement led to roles as NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service park rangers when aged in their 70s. “They imparted courage that, when the wind was blowing and the storm was coming, the rain was pounding and the surf was crashing, you could be in the landscape with its most elemental forces,” Karina says. “You had to respect it but you didn’t have to fear it.”