I wrote this in August 2022 and posted to my Instagram, after beholding a breathtaking sunset from Dudley Page Reserve in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Click through the gallery below to see the photos.

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Perched on a clifftop park in Sydney’s east, I experienced the most exquisite and magical sunset unfolding over Sydney Harbour. It was a beautiful canvas of day turning into night, with a sublime palette of colour, light, and feeling: from deepest navy-black to fiery, molten gold and blood orange reds. Watching the sunset from such a height, I was acutely aware of being on the celestial orb of the earth, as the oceanic tide of night swept across the immense sky to extinguish the sun's fire and light, leaving only smouldering red embers behind on the horizon, and witnessing the light refracting around the earth's curvature and atmosphere (I think). It reminded me of several poetic extracts on the sky, or 'heavens’ from Dante and Shakespeare (below). It also made me think about how humanity experiences verticality from the earth's centre to the outer edges of the visible sky and cosmos (see Dante's axis-mundi), and how humbling and awe-inspiring all of this is to contemplate, especially after a day in an office behind a screen!

“The heavens call to you, and circle about you, displaying to you their eternal splendors, and your eye gazes only to earth.”
- The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri

“… this most excellent canopy, the air,
look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire…”
- Hamlet, by William Shakspeare, Act II, Scene II

Dudley Page Reserve, Sydney - 8 August 2022, 5:38-5:42pm