Amanda Battle was holding her breath, weightless and suspended ten metres below the surface of the Indian Ocean, when she heard it.
She’d plunged into the waters above Ningaloo Reef desperate for relief from the debilitating symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder and now, as whale song pierced the silence and enveloped her, Battle wept as she felt something shift.
It had been more than two years since an incident at the Perth school where she was a teacher had left Battle isolated and shut down, with such bone-deep fatigue that she would return from a morning walk with her dog and have to sleep.
But when she emerged from the ocean that day, Battle felt energised. She knew something had changed, but she couldn’t have known that it would lead her on a year-long odyssey travelling up and down the WA coast, photographing women in the ocean to tell their stories of healing and resilience in a new coffee table book, Women Of Water.
“I think it switched something inside of me, to regain a bit of strength, a little more resilience around doing hard things again,” remembers Battle, who is still brought to tears by the memory. “I thought ‘Oh my God, I’m never going to make 10m’. But I did. Then I got 15m, and then I got 20m, and it started to build up that confidence back up, in a really safe way.”
That she could undertake a project such as Women Of Water would have been unthinkable beforehand, Battle says. That fateful day at work, which she can’t talk about, left her unable to return to teaching and sapped her energy, leaving her mired in sadness and vivid memories.
“I’ve always been so driven; I’ve owned yoga studios, and I’ve done this and that, and I’m always doing something,” Battle says. “For the first time in my life, there was just this void. It took a long time to really recalibrate, you know? I look back at that time now as a gift . . . but it did feel big at the time. I remember thinking, ‘I’m never going to get out of this’.”
But even during that time, the sea was a haven. Eventually, Battle began to return to her old loves, albeit not easily.
“I’ve always been a surfer, so I’m an old salty from way back,” she says. “Gradually, I started to go surfing a lot more, swimming in the ocean every day, yoga. But even that was a bit difficult, in terms of just being around a lot of people. I had to really retrain my nervous system into some sort of safety around where I was and who I was with.”
One night, sitting around the fire, a friend suggested Battle come with her to do a free diving course in Exmouth. Battle had grown up a keen snorkeller and had done scuba diving, but never free diving.
“I just thought, you know what, that sounds actually perfect for what I need,” Battle says. “I put a little old camper on the back of the car and off I went.”
The course was life-changing — “Being under the water at that depth just shuts off all of the white noise in your brain. It’s very like deep meditation” — but watching an underwater photographer work also sparked something in the former photography teacher.
“Seeing an image of myself in that moment (when she heard the whales) was really, really powerful,” Battle says. “I came home from that retreat with, for the first time in a long time, a bit of a spark back in my life. I was actually excited about things again, and had some inspiration.”
She retrieved an old DSLR camera from where it had laid unused for years, and started taking pictures. An email a few months later notifying her that the free diving school was running an underwater photography retreat seemed like serendipity. When she then ran into an old photographer friend at the park, purely by chance, who just happened to be selling her full underwater kit, it seemed something more like fate.
Battle returned to Exmouth with “all the gear and no idea,” she jokes. “But I was totally obsessed with it.”
She took photos of her dog Abby; now a reminder of “that beautiful angel” who died, aged 14, last year. She tried her hand at surfing photography (“I was like, ‘how hard can it be?’ Turns out, extremely,” she laughs). She took pictures of her friends, and was so struck by the beauty of them, especially of pregnant bodies suspended in the saltwater, that she started an Instagram account for what would become her business, @oceansoflovephotography. She gathered with other women on the sand at daybreak for group shoots.
As they talked, her subjects shared stories; of life and death, hardship and heartbreak, and how the water had been a salve. The conversations mingled with Battle’s own experience, and what she’d learned through work with the local chapter of the Waves Of Wellness surf therapy program and using surfing to help veterans with PTSD through Soldier On.
“Women were saying things like, ‘I’ve just gone through the most horrible divorce and the ocean has helped me so much’, or ‘learning to surf has helped me because it’s gotten me out of my head, back into my body’,” Battle remembers.
“There were breast cancer survivors, domestic violence survivors, all these stories coming in. It got me thinking; I could photograph women in the water, whether it be surfing, diving, swimming, working in the water, and I can make a book about that connection — about the healing nature of it.
“I felt like this was something that we have to get out, to document, to share. I always say this book has got nothing to do with me; it was just like channelled through me through the collective.”
Battle decided to dedicate 12 months to the project, in the lead-up to her 50th birthday. She put out a call for an initial sunrise shoot at Secret Harbour in January 2024; almost 70 women turned up. From there, she did sessions in Mandurah, Dunsborough, Lancelin and Exmouth; a planned event in Geraldton was stymied by an eight-metre swell. The final shoot was back in Secret Harbour in January this year.
In between the group gatherings, Battle also did one-on-one sessions with women who volunteered to share their stories.
There was Laura, who told how the ocean gave her a break from the violence and substance abuse she had been exposed to in her life. Jodie had found confidence and community with her local surf club. After the physical and psychological toll of menopause, in the ocean, Jo was able to accept and love her body again.
Joyce grew up in Borneo and didn’t see the ocean until she was 11, but found it a place to heal her past; she’s now in the ocean daily.
Maria suffered renal failure as a baby, enduring eight years on dialysis and two kidney transplants that left her with scars and an innate understanding of the fragility of life; she found respite in the ocean.
Molly, a lifelong ocean-goer, learned a lesson on its power when she helped to save the life of a boy who was pulled non-responsive from the water. And Emma, that friend who first invited Battle to the free diving retreat, tells of finding a similar peace in the depths, especially after the death of her father.
Battle says the experience of the individual shoots was “really humbling”.
“Sometimes, shoving a camera in someone’s face can be really off-putting,” she says. “For me, it’s all about connecting to that feminine essence, whether that be getting in the water, going swimming, going for a surf together. It’s very much about getting out of our heads and into our bodies. And that’s where those beautiful photos happen.”
Since Women Of Water was printed in March — Battle self-published the book and printed 350 copies — she’s been sending orders all over Australia and as far as Indonesia.
When shown their images, many of her subjects are “overwhelmed,” she says.
“I think as women, and especially as mums, we’re always taking photos: our kids, our dogs, our partners, everyone else,” she says. “But we’re never really centrestage for a lot of of our lives, so this was a real gift to each other and to ourselves. The women who did bravely step in and share and booked in for the photos, a lot of them hadn’t had professional photos ever.
“I think it’s a beautiful reminder that you can help people feel seen when a photo captures their essence. The gift of photography is being able to reflect back something that’s buried; a reflection back of that person to themselves.”
Women Of Water, $98, is available from womenofwater.com.au.