Well what a spectacular sunrise and start to the day ... the thing is it wasn't the start of the day for me.
This picture is from a meet up photo shoot i had with Malcom, the man in the hat ....

The location is Maitland Bay, Boudi National Park on the Central Coast, which is about a 40min drive north of Sydney. Mal scouted the location last week, he said there is a 1km track we need to walk down, I said is it a "marked path track" or a "track track", he said "it will be ok Matt, just bring a torch".

Mal said we'll have to meet up before the "crack of dawn", I didn't even know who dawn was, let alone getting up her crack, so I said to Mal how about we just meet at the train station nearby at 4.30am ... agreed.

That meant i needed to be up at 2.00am have a coffee, get ready and leave at 2.30am, geez not too bad but i got home the night before at 11pm from an 18th b'day party.

Things went smoothly, met up, pleasant introductions, jumped in Mal's truck for a bit of a drive to the carpark of Maitland Bay.

The 1km track, was a track alright, a track that not even an A grade mountain goat with a 3 dan black belt would take on. Mal said bring a torch ... geez he forgot to mention the harness and ropes. As it turned out though getting down was not too bad, the whole way i was thinking we have to get back up this. Mal said it was secluded ... secluded indeed, no european foot had set foot on it.

We get down in the darkness and found a good size slab of sandstone to use as a table to get our gear ready.

Some dialogue .....

Matt: I dont know Mal but it looks cloudy
Mal: there's no stars Matt
Matt:the clouds look pretty thick
Mal: oh well we tried
Matt: yeah, we can always try again

Mal: which way do you think the sun will come up?
Matt: *thinks, this is the east coast ... it's autumn, so slightly north of directly out to sea* .... over there *points what i think is NE direction*
Mal: yeah maybe more east than that *points*
Matt: *looks in a direction that he thinks is, well, NW over the mountain* .... Mal
Mal: yeah Matt
Matt: *points* what's that light starting to come from above the mountain
Mal: *scratching head* umm ... umm

I had a map of the central coast area, i get it out and we both start studying .. after some discussion and study we realise the bay almost points in a SW diection, very disorienting when you have lived on the EAST coast all your life and water is EAST, anyways here's 2 guys (and guys never get lost right ) disoriented but finally agreeing that the light we see is probably the sun.

I think this is fanatstic, it's cloudy, we have 1km of black belt goat territory to scale to get back to the truck, ive had 3 hrs sleep ... AND THE FRIGGIN SUN DOESNT RISE OVER THE WATER ANYWAY !!!!!!!

Within the hour, negative feelings had changed to absolute amazement !!!! mother nature (as you can see) treated us to one spectacular show.

The only dissapointment was i wasnt going to get an awesome new Pentax camera afterall, after i had killed Mal ... there was no need to hide the body no one would find it.

All jokes aside, it was great to meet Mal and to treated to such a sunrise. Cheers Mal to a great morning