Looking through a different lens

This photo was taken on my Samsung Galaxy A21s mobile phone. No filter was necessary. I was just in the right place at the right time.

How I got there?

My daughter relocated to Brisbane in February after Covid brought her home for a couple of months. During this time we also relocated to Cairns to be closer to her brothers and our extended family. After a massive clean and quite a few emotional processes of elimination, my daughter still had more stuff to fly back with her than what her luggage limitations would allow. So, I offered to transport these boxes in my own car.

After a couple of false starts, I finally found time to make the 3,365-kilometre return trip between Cairns and Brisbane. The first overnight stop on my self-made itinerary was the Cape Hillsborough Nature Tourist Park.

Cape Hillsborough National Park... rainforest, beaches and rocky headlands

With a couple of stops in between, it took me about 10 hours to drive from my home in Cairns to Cape Hillsborough in my little car. I was intentional in choosing the day to set off and choosing this place to camp. I wanted to wake to the wallabies on the beach on the morning of my 49th birthday. I wanted to start my final year in my forties witnessing the sunrise I had seen in other photos online. Doing this for myself had become a spiritual decision to physically mark the start of a fresh beginning in achieving my creative dreams and hopes. I was doing this for me.

By the time I made my way to the beach the next morning, a little crowd of campers were already snapping away at the wallabies that were there to say hello. The morning was crisp as Australia was in autumn heading into winter, so people were rugged up and huddled closer than what they would have been if the weather had been warmer. However, it was a magical start to my birthday and it only got better.

Wallabies are smaller than kangaroos. We were told by the rangers that kangaroos sometimes show up on the beach but it's the wallabies that are the frequent visitors. I was told that every morning they feed on seaweed and mangrove seed pods that have washed up overnight and that the pods contain healing nutrients. The ranger I spoke with said that although these wallabies were mostly hand-raised, they instinctively visited the beach for the pods and seaweed. The rangers also gave them some feed from a bucket which is how the photo above was captured - the wallabies were lining up to each peek into this bucket. The one in the photo below also stopped to give her belly a good scratch.

It was obvious who the alpha wallaby was. It took a grunt or a growl from one to get others moving out of his way. There was a distinct pecking order among these macropods and to watch them bound across the beach, stand tall and take control of the crowd with their tough dispositions, cute exteriors and undeniable curiousity was impressive to watch. They knew their environment and did not seem fazed by it.

Afterwards, some went further to the water's edge and with nothing but my mobile phone, I followed. A teenager was fishing in the shallows with a rod and seemed oblivious to the 2 wallabies who were curious about him. I thought this was such an iconic moment - fittingly symbolic of Australia and impressively representative of many Queenslanders love of fishing.

It was remarkable to watch and then it became more so as the grey of a pre-dawn morning was washed away by colours of orange and yellow. The sun was slowly rising, and it was as though the wallabies stopped to also admire her beauty.

I found myself being in the right place at the right time. As the sun rose and the teenager continued to fish, the wallabies and I paused and took it all in. The many shades of orange and yellow painted the landscape and I did not have to do a thing to make the final shot look beautiful as it already was. That very moment took my breath away and captured my imagination. It was all I hoped it to be and more... and the sunrise was pretty spectacular too.

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