One hundred years ago today, 21-year-old Edward 'Ryko' Reichenbach, arrived at the old Darwin Post Office, having cycled 3,000km across the desert from the post office in Adelaide.
Ryko, a keen cyclist and photographer, broke the record for the fastest person to cycle form Adelaide to Darwin, completing the journey in just 28 days.
The Northern Territory Library, which is on the site of the old post office, where Ryko completed his journey, is marking the centenary of the occasion with an exhibition of some of the photographs Ryko took during his journey.
The adventurous young man embarked on the 3,000km journey with a friend, John Fahey, but just before crossing the border from South Australia into the Northern Territory, Mr Fahey sprained his ankle and was forced to stop and rest, leaving Ryko to continue the journey alone.
A keen photographer, Ryko took a Koadak camera with him and used the trip to photograph some of Australia's most remote sites.
After arriving in Darwin, Ryko opened a shop where he sold prints of his photographs for four pence each, developing the photos in a stuidio out the back.
But in December 1915 he sold the business and resumed his nomadic lifestyle, travelling across the Northern Territory, taking photographs as he went.
He often visited the Mary and Alligator Rivers, near Kakadu, to photograph the buffalo shooting camps, and returned to Darwin every few months to develop, print and sell his work.
During the First World War the Northern Territory government suspected Tyko of being a German spy, due to his German heritage – though he was Australian-born – and because of his travelling and photography. His name was cleared, but by 1917 he had already left the Northern Territory.
Ryko moved to Sydney, but his flat was robbed and his collection of photographs, from which he derived his income, was stolen.
The collection has never resurfaced and the only photographs of his that are currently publicly available come from the prints he sold that survived in private collections, museums, archives and libraries.