Dark Sky, No Invitation

The Warrumbungles announced themselves from a distance. The volcanic peaks rose out of flat country with a sharpness that looked wrong for New South Wales, more like something transplanted from rougher, older land. We had not been here before, and the approach alone made it clear this was a different kind of place from the quiet river camps we had been settling into.

Anth sent the drone up within an hour of arriving, which in hindsight was optimistic. The peregrines found it almost immediately. Two of them, fast and precise, swooping at the rotors with the kind of authority that does not leave room for negotiation. The drone's collision alarms screamed. Anth brought it down quickly, and the falcons banked away as though the matter had been settled to their satisfaction. The Warrumbungles, it turned out, had their own views on uninvited aircraft.

The campsite sat inside a designated Dark Sky Park, which had been half the reason for coming, but the sky had plans of its own that first night. A storm rolled in after dark: lightning across the ranges, thunder heavy enough to feel through the floor of the bus, rain that hammered the roof and made conversation pointless. We gave in to it, retreated to bed with books, and let the storm do what it wanted.

It cleared by two in the morning. We woke to silence, and the silence was what drew us outside. The sky above the Warrumbungles without light pollution was not the sky we were used to. It was dense with stars, the Milky Way so thick it looked structural, as though it were holding something up. We stood there with the cameras, cold in the small hours, and while Sal watched, a shooting star burned a line across her view and vanished. Anth caught it on the lens. Neither of them had expected that, and the photograph, when they checked it, carried the kind of luck that cannot be repeated or planned for.

Morning brought one more lesson in who owned this place. Anth flew the drone again over Split Rock, and this time a wedge-tailed eagle met it at altitude. Bigger than the peregrines, slower, and entirely unbothered by the noise. It circled the drone once with a wingspan that made the machine look like a toy, and Anth brought it down for the second time in two days. Two flights, two escorts. The Warrumbungles did not need a sign at the gate. The birds made the position clear enough.Read more