The Cover Shot - Wild #194

There are those rare nights where everything just lines up, and this was one of them. We headed to Lion Rock—nine kilometres from the eastern terminus of the 85km South Coast Track at Cockle Creek—with a decent chance of catching an aurora with the western fall of the Milky Way; it was already an exciting combination. But what we did not see coming was the magic in the water: bioluminescence. That made it a photographer’s perfect ‘hat trick’: aurora, Milky Way, and bioluminescence all in one frame. You cannot plan for nights like these; they just happen, and when they do, you have to be ready.

I stayed up most of the night, completely immersed in capturing every angle, every detail of the scene. The sky was perfectly clear: No light pollution, just the stars, the southernmost point of Australia, and me. The three-hour walk in was straightforward, but the reward at the end was unforgettable. There is a great campground nearby, though I barely used it. Evenings like these make all of the hard effort and sleepless nights worthwhile.

You can read more about the South Coast Track and the threats to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area in the accompanying feature story ‘Surveying Tassie’s Southwest Sky Country’ starting on p56 of Wild issue 194.

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