WHAT started with an email home each Sunday has resulted in an unexpected endeavour for Zane Hacker.
Seven years after his adventure working as a chef in Antarctica, Zane launched a cross-genre coffee-table book - Antarctic Sundays.
The book is a creative blend of travel, cooking and photography.
In his early 20s, Zane finished his chef's apprenticeship and was looking at overseas job opportunities when he came across an advertisement in the paper looking for an Antarctic chef.
The application process took close to a year and after formal training, he was off to live at Mawson Station for 14 months.
Zane said while constructing meal plans was a basic job for a chef, it was also a logistical challenge in Antarctica as they only received two deliveries of food per year.
Food has to be rationed around that visit and the varying station population at different times of the year also has to be considered.
For example, you work out how many eggs per person, per year and divide that figure by 12 to create monthly plans. Much of the food was dehydrated or tinned because of quarantine rules; interestingly Antarctica doesn't have a great deal of moulds or fungi due in part to its dry climate.
He said it was a matter of looking at what you've got and thinking about what you can create; a slightly old-fashioned but practical approach to cooking.
"I catered for research scientists and mostly trades and station support," he said.
"Depending on the sites - a lot of our site experiments are unmanned - they are mechanical and controlled online. So I was catering for them and that includes food for people to reheat out in the field."
Before heading over, photography was suggested to Zane as a hobby. After a few lessons from a BBC photographer he was ready to give it a go.
Zane said taking photos was a very personal process for many people on the station and they would all capture different things.
"It's a different creative space; when I was taking photos in Antarctica I was isolated and often alone," he said.
"I'd be having a silent moment with the animals around me. Wait for the animals to do nothing, just be as they are; Antarctic animals spend a lot of time conserving energy.
"It's a hobby I didn't bring back to Australia with me. It's really hard to photograph things back in the real world because everything is so busy."
"It's a different creative space; when I was taking photos in Antarctica I was isolated and often alone."
Zane struggled with literacy, reading and writing while at school, so when the idea to create a book was suggested, it was something he had never considered.
A group of his mother's colleagues were interested in what he was up to and wanted to know more about his recipes, so Zane would send them an email each Sunday.
"I was in Antarctica for 14 months and I'd written the book gradually over the year but I didn't realise I'd written a book at the time," he said.
"It wasn't easy at the start - a bit of a chore - but at the end of the year I had written about 70,000 words and they had put it in a folder and it was just sitting in their tea room at work."
One of his mother's friends, a retired librarian, read all the emails as one and asked to see some of his photos and suggested the idea of creating a coffee table book. However, after returning home, the emails spent another three years in a drawer.
After meeting a few writers who gave him motivation, Zane decided to revisit his manuscript.
The process began with taking a day off work and spending a day-and-a-half each week constructing the elements needed for a book.
Although it was a slow process, thanks to help from others, including his two sisters, Zane completed the book.
He was passionate about having the book printed in Australia and worked closely with a graphic designer and printing company to bring his masterpiece to life.
"With every challenging part there was something enjoyable - it's a matter of finding it."
The first copies came off the press in August 2014 and Zane decided to once again do things a little differently and distribute the book with "shoe leather" by visiting libraries and literary events.
"I decided I wasn't going to distribute online because I noticed that a lot of our little book shops are closing down because people aren't using them," he said.
"I think these small bookshops are worth saving. A lot of them said 'you know what, that's a really nice thing of you to do'. They might be small but by goodness they can network."
Zane can look back on the process of marrying together his literature with photos and recipes, to making the decision to independently produce the book, with a sense of accomplishment.
"We often start things without the finish in mind. With every challenging part there was something enjoyable - it's a matter of finding it.
"Enjoyment can be found anywhere - you've just got to look in the right places and have a good balance."