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Caption: Royal National Park
Australia GARIE
GALACTIC
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Caption: The Royal National Park–Australia’s first National Park–is a sweet green buffer between Sydney & Wollongong, the biggest & third-biggest cites in the state of New South Wales.
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Garie Beach is a very popular location within the Park, offering swimming, surfing, fishing, hiking & picnicking to those willing to trek to the isolated spot. Mobile phone service is sporadic & the entrance gates are locked between sunset and sunrise each night. Well, not every night…
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Caption: The nearly-full moon lights up the land, sea & sky to look like daytime, at night.
Caption: MOST nights of the week the gates to Garie Beach are locked, leaving me unable to drive in. I park outside & walk the 300 metres to the Governor Game Lookout, a few km up behind the shoreline.
From the lookout you can capture scenes like the moonlit composition on the previous page, plus the ones following…
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Caption: The International Space Station passing over the city of Wollongong, seen from Garie lookout.
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Caption: Sometimes I succumb to
the selfie's call.
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Caption: The Milky Way's galactic core brooding over the Tasman Sea, off Garie Beach.
Caption: SOME nights I strike it lucky & the gates are unlocked. It's a steep & winding 3km drive down to the beach, which I usually have all to myself.
The dark, starry skies are almost begging to be photographed.
Have a look at what I mean…
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Caption: Venus
is so bright
that its light is
reflecting off the sea.
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Caption: The Milky Way's grand arch stretching the length of the beach, with the Magellanic Clouds down near the horizon at right.
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Caption: The turning earth makes the stars scribe circles over the moonlit beach.
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Caption: A one-man
picnic under
the stars
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Caption: Garie is great in the daytime.
I find it nicer at night.
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Caption: "Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility" —Arthur C. Clarke,
The Challenge of the Spaceship, 1959
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