Hockeyroos captain Georgie Morgan’s incredible photos from Great Southern escape

What looked like a rocky outcrop in the water, turned into an epic firsthand experience with a whale and her calf at Normans Beach, east of Albany for Georgie Morgan. On a weekend getaway in the Great Southern, the Hockeyroos co-captain was able to use her newly purchased drone to capture amazing images of the whales just a couple of hundred metres from the beach. Part of the elite national hockey program since 2015, Morgan has for years used an Olympus camera to document her vast and regular international travel. It has also been a welcome outlet from the pressures of high-level training and competition for the 27-year-old, who has dealt with her share of injuries on the field. Morgan said her passion for photography has grown over time. “I’ve always had the Olympus with me and I recently got a drone,” she said. “You travel around the world with hockey and touring can be very exhausting and tiring so this has always been an outlet for me. “You tend to get sick of each other, being away for weeks at a time, and you can just go off and explore wherever you may be touring. “Elite sport is full and all encompassing and this is something I really enjoy. It’s not a job or anything like that but it’s a really good relief in a sense.” She has lived in Perth for the last six years and with this year’s Olympic Games postponed, she has been able to find more time to shoot the stunning WA coastline. “I haven’t got to do a lot of travel in WA so with this bit of downtime I came down and spent the whole weekend in Albany driving around going to beaches, hiked up Isthmus Hill, did the Gap and the windfarm and I certainly didn’t run out of things to do,” she said. “I did see a whale in Esperance a couple of weeks earlier but this was my first real experience. “I wasn’t expecting to see them that close and it kind of looked like a rock break and it wasn’t until I put the drone up I realised what I had stumbled across. “It was unreal, I took some footage for 15 minutes and then I just stood there in awe and it was a crazy experience.” Morgan has created an Instagram page named by_a_long_shot where she shares travel pictures and videos. She said with international travel on hold, every opportunity with a weekend off from training will be spent exploring WA. After making her Hockeyroos debut in 2014, the outstanding defender has made 93 appearances for the national side and was part of their 2016 Olympic campaign with South Stirling’s Kathryn Slattery. The Hockeyroos squad is currently split in half, with some players heading home to the east coast as COVID-19 hit. Morgan said it was a feeling like no other, as the highlight of their professional career, the Olympic Games, was postponed. “It really takes the wind out of your sails,” she said. “We were ramping up towards the last training block and like that it is gone. “Our squad is split but for those of us here in Perth we are back to normal life in a sense. “It is a very weird dynamic, preparing for an Olympic Games in this fashion but it has been good for this program and shown us how important it is to have things outside hockey. “I don’t feel done with hockey and my plan was always to go to Paris in 2024 as long as my body holds up. “Rio was really disappointing and I’m driven to get a result with this group.” Morgan said by August 1 the squad will be back in full training.