Full moon in Gippsland...

​There are times in my life when I’ve wondered how I can possibly afford to move to the coast, sustain a living and have decent internet. Such things were on my mind as I planned an overnight trip to Reeves Beach in Gippsland to photograph a perigee moon rise over the sea. 

View from Silcocks Hill, near Toora

Why Reeves Beach? Well, no specific reason other than it looked nice, the moon would rise out of the sea at a particular angle at a specific time, the weather conditions were promised to be just right and it was sufficiently far enough away from anywhere that light pollution wouldn’t be an issue.
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Knowing absolutely nothing about camping and having even less equipment, I called on my good mate Flashie to see if she fancied a girlie road trip. Flashie is excellent value, knows a thing or two about camping and has ingenious ideas for decanting scotch. Armed with everything we thought we’d need (including said scotch), we headed off into the wild blue yonder and 4 hours later we (she) pitched a tent at a beachside camping ground and started brewing a coffee. She also dragged out a blow up mattress because “we’re not animals!”. Like I said, she’s excellent value.

Tent under moonlight. It fits so much inside.

​As the sun started to dip, we ventured out to the beach and noticed two things: 1) it was more windy than a baked bean chomping vegan and 2) the sky had a weird colour to it. So weird in fact, that when the moon rose, it was almost the same colour as the sky and barely bloody noticeable until it got higher and brighter. It should’ve looked enormous, but it was just a bit meh.

Bad moon rising?

The evening wasn’t helped by the wind chucking 4 bags of sand into my eyes and buffeting a 400mm lens around, regardless of how weighted down the tripod was. An hour and a half later, it was quite dark but still windy and a cheeky beverage was calling my name. We decided to retreat to the campsite. But first, a couple of moody sea shots to finish off with.

As a pleasant evening comes to an end, we discover that "every thing we thought we'd need" wasn't enough because we had no means with which to evict the monster dinner-plate sized, backpack carrying beast that had moved in to the tent and was in no hurry to leave.

So of course, we slept in the car. And of course, in the morning the beast couldn't be found. And this is just one of the reasons that spiders can't be trusted.

Come the morning, that bastard spider was no-where to be found.