Catching the Moon
A month ago on 1 July, Antigone and I were cycling home to our caravan from Chinatown in the late afternoon. I suggested we ride via Kennedy’s Hill (about the only hill in Broome) in order to get a sunset view. Sunset time is great around the coastline of the Peninsula which forms Broome, but sunset views are less available from Broome’s Chinatown and Old Town areas. One exception is Kennedy’s Hill. As it turned out, Antigone preferred nit to stop at the Kennedy’s Hill lookout due to concerns about Midgies (sand flies) which are at their worst around full-moon time when the tidal changes are greatest.
From Kennedy’s Hill, we noticed the recently-risen full moon to the east and I took a couple of photos of Antigone holding the moon. I love the expressions she has, both gazing at the moon and showing it off.
Cycling back to Town Beach I saw the sculpture which celbrates the contribution of wmone to the pearling industry. What an opportunity to display the moon as a giant pearl! and only marred by the tripod set up by another photographer who was waiting for the moon to be in the right position. I simply moved myself across the road and lined myself up with the moon and sculpture.
We remembered years ago when we had photographed the moon at this time of the month at the dunes above Cable Beach – catching the moon.
Broome makes a fuss about the ‘Staircase to the Moon’ when the full moon rises over the Roebuck Bay mudflats and the reflections look like a staircase. This occurs on two days each month. It happened in July on the two days following our photos of Antigone holding the moon. I realized that such photos can only be taken on one day each month – the first day of the full moon when it rises before the sky darkens.
For the start of August, we planned ahead to go to Cable Beach to try and recreate our ‘catching the moon’ photo from 2008.
Our friends Ying and Annika were feeling tired and could not be cajoled to join us, so I needed to organize somebody else to assist. The first few people I approached declined, but I eventually found an assistant – Anna. I gave her my phone for the photo and I took Antigone’s phone with me up to the dune so we could communicate about locations etc.
Anna did a great job, taking many photos and including Antigone in the foreground, an added bonus I had not anticipated. I am very pleased with this one, the best, both with the camels and cropped to include just us.
August had a blue moon (a second full moon in a calndar month). We didn’t go to quite the effort we had at the start of August. But we still took some interesting photos.
