Hinge then spent time travelling and working abroad, including ten years in the large farming territories of the Australian Outback.

He trekked on foot through the King Country in 1900, covered the Cheviot earthquake in 1901, and was part of two rescue missions to find wrecked ships on remote islands.

He travelled on horseback with surveyors mapping the proposed road between the East and West Coast of the South Island, and accompanied naturalists checking the growth of the Wapiti deer population in Fiordland.

He covered all the Royal visits to New Zealand between the two world wars, and was in the first motor car to reach Murchison after the 1929 earthquake.

In his obituary in Wellington's Evening Post, he was described as "one of the first to realise that the Press photographer must also be a journalist in the news sense", and was credited with being a pioneer in adventure tourism photography.