Aurora Australis: A Night of Magic, 12 May 2024

Aurora Australis: A Night of Magic, 12 May 2024

It was dusk when I lit the outdoor fire on 12 May 2024. The sky was already moving, pulsing in a way I couldn’t quite name. There was no colour yet, only motion. My heart raced as recognition settled in. The Aurora Australis had arrived.

At the same time, my dad was preparing dinner at his house, with freshly caught abalone carbonara due on the table at 7 pm. I messaged him: “Dad, I can’t make it at seven. There’s an aurora. It’s incredible. I’ll be late.”

I set up my tripod in front of the outdoor couch, my dog curled beside me, the fire crackling close. As the sun dipped below the horizon, the sky came alive. Colours danced, shifted and swirled, unfolding in waves of pure magic. Dinner waited until eight, and we sat together as a family, eating this beautifully indulgent meal beneath a pulsing, once-in-twenty-year geomagnetic storm.

But the night was far from over. After dinner, we grabbed our cameras and tripods and raced to a southern-facing lookout, laughing and shouting beneath a full 360-degree celestial spectacle. We stayed until midnight, completely immersed in the energy of the sky.

Later, I returned to the caravan I was living in on the 30-acre property, set up my tripod once more, and lay back on the outdoor couch. The aurora continued until sunrise, but my eyes surrendered around 3 am, after hours of watching a vast corona unfold overhead. Sleep came reluctantly, my neck aching, my mind alight.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime night. A reminder of the extraordinary woven into the everyday. A night when family, fire, food and the cosmos aligned, leaving a memory etched forever in the heart.