Dawnwatch 13/02/2012 Lava Dawn

 Dawn from an East-Facing Balcony in Sydney

Current affairs have influence on this dawnwatcher.  Instead of finishing off the early April dawns in the pipeline, I am digressing back to this date because ABC News 24 is still airing the picture of this dawn, initially screened in the weather segment, now moved to the sports segment.  You’ll recognize the beach scene of young men carrying surfboards in the foreground.  The background is Lava Dawn.

Lava Dawn:  Monday, 13 February 2012

Today began as a dark and grey cloudy dawn.  None of the first pictures turned out properly; I’ve selected the least blurry to start this dawn sequence.  In fact, the sky remained under a blanket of cloud all morning, with one brief exception.  Two cloudbanks, actually; a lower bank and an upper bank, which later became very significant.  However, from the way this dawn began as a near washout, I wasn’t expecting much.

Well, the golden sun began to rise, and things began to get a bit interesting.  On a plain grey dawn, there’s a hint of pink lipstick applied below, then yellow blusher above, and generally the dawn proceeds like a plain woman in the process of applying make-up to her face.  This is one of those dawns where the beauty is in the close-up details. 

As the sun treks up through the lower cloud bank, the dawn takes on an exotic tropical look at telegraph pole level.  It certainly appeared that way on the beach, as the ABC News 24 photo proves - I'm coming to that.  High above, the upper clouds turn brown.  On only one other occasion this year to date did this happen, actually just the next day, which was otherwise a washout of clouds in a darker brown colour and so may never be reported on this blog.  Two other occasions, if you count Old Gold Dawn, where the clouds were chocolate brown in colour.

Returning now to the ABC News 24 photograph previously mentioned, it was taken from sea level on the beach looking up.  I’m trying to capture the dawn sun rising over a ridge and treetops.  But this is the time of the dawn when the ABC photographer took the shot that’s screening on television.  Editors have since omitted the higher brown clouds.

 As the sun rises over the low cloudbank, the visible sky turns 24 carat gold.  The higher cloudbank of stalactites reflect back the captured golden sunlight. Gold and brown make a beautiful contrast.

However, the best of this dawn occurred at sea level early on, below the lower cloudbank, most of which was sadly out my range of vision.  There are dawns where I wish I had a better position to do their beauty justice, and this is one of them. 

See the video on YouTube here.

Souvenir posters and mugs of this dawn are available from the Gagothicfunk store at Zazzle.com as displayed below:

Don’t forget your humble photographer also writes fantasy adventure fiction under the name of S E Champenby.  Paperbacks and epubs available from Lulu.com at S E Champenby’s store.