One of the most profound joys of travel is experiencing the world from a different perspective, and sometimes, that means simply looking up. About 5 days into our trip, we were finally in an area not surrounded by city lights. We were spending one night in Port Macquarie, Australia, in a charming square yurt-like tent near the beach. We had one of those truly humbling moments: gazing at the southern sky for the first time.
Our evening began with a drive up to Crowdy Head Lighthouse – we have a soft spot for lighthouses, and this one, silhouetted against the setting sun, was a small little thing. We were only able to view it from the outside. As the last rays of sunlight faded, we headed back to our home for the night, unpacked, and settled in outside, eager to witness the southern hemisphere’s night sky.
I had just gotten a new phone a few months before the trip, and I was keen to try out its night mode photography. Without a tripod, I spent a good while trying to hold it perfectly still, experimenting with different settings, hoping to capture the magic unfolding above us. While my photos weren’t exactly gallery-worthy (a testament to the challenges of capturing faint starlight with an unsteady hand!), the effort was part of the fun.
Eventually, we put the phone down. The photos could wait. Instead, we chose to live in the moment, sitting quietly, letting the vastness of the sky wash over us. It was a strange, yet deeply cool, sensation not to see the familiar constellations of the Northern Hemisphere. No Big Dipper, no Little Dipper – just entirely new patterns, unfamiliar yet utterly captivating. The Southern Cross was prominent, a powerful symbol of this new celestial landscape.
The silence of the night, broken only by the distant sounds of the ocean, amplified the experience. We reflected on where we were, so far from home, under a completely different sky. It was a moment of peace and wonder, a reminder of the sheer scale of the universe and our small, yet significant, place within it.
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