The Lights

For a long time I have hoped I would one day (night) be able to catch a good display of the southern lights, the aurora australis,with one of Mont’s superb wilderness tents included in the view.

A couple of days ago I had a walk planned up in to Tassie’s Central Highlands and at the same time there was an advisory of the possibility of a strong auroral display. This sounded very promising :)

It was a beautiful clear afternoon where I was camped and I wandered the landscape looking for images that expressed that clarity.

Towards evening the temperature dropped to -1.7°C. After the patch of cold weather we had recently (where I had a night at -13.6°C in the mountains), Tasmania has swung the opposite way and we have been experiencing ridiculously warm temperatures so the forecast was for relatively mild conditions for August. I had packed my Helium 450sleeping bag as I didn’t expect especially low temperatures. August in Tasmania is usually our snowiest month but even though I was camped at 1170 metres altitude there was absolutely no snow on the plateau, a very worrying trend. 

I had also packed my Supercell tent mainly because it is so easy to erect. It is also roomy and wind resistant.   

I went to bed to read a few pages on my Kindle. I had left the southern facing tent door undone with the tripod set up ready to mount a camera to occasionally check the sky.....just in case.

Just before going to sleep, I thought I might as well check. The first image was underexposed and showed no colour. I readjusted the camera and took another.....

A couple of minutes later I was dressed and out of the tent with the camera set up in position, the sky was alight!

For the next 2 hours I took a series of images as the colours above silently roared. The display was excellent and my ambition of capturing a Mont tent under a dazzling sky was fulfilled.

Eventually it was time for bed, again. The night got warmer so by dawn it was 5°C, a crazy temperature for this time of year, so much so that I would not have been the least bit surprised to see a Tiger snake on the walk back out. Normally this wouldn’t occur before mid to late September.

The track traverses some magnificently gnarled myrtle forest as it drops back down off the plateau and there was mist flowing through the trees as I descended. I captured some images of the trees and continued down to the car.

It’s always good when the plans work out :)

Geoff Murray
Mont Ambassador

@geoffmurray55