Albany is a beautiful town. I had such a surreal experience recently there, that ended up with me joining a stranger’s FaceTime (in a way).
It was dusk and I had left it too late to go photograph any of golden hour. But I went out anyway to Sharp Point Lookout. It looks out across the vast Indian Ocean that connects Australia and Antarctica. If you look west, you can see the Albany Wind Farm turning away in the strong winds.
It was a beautifully peaceful night. Calm with the rolling swells pushing up against the coastal rocks and the usual amount of wind. But this night it was pretty calm up top of the cliffs.
When I arrived at Sharp Point, I was planning to sit and enjoy the view for half an hour and wind down. But there was another car in the car park (it was already pretty dark) and I wondered if I’d bump into the owners as I got out.
Sure enough, as I rounded the corner to the lookout, they were there seated on the platform railing, looking out over the ocean. I could hear some conversation going on, they were very chatty. It was such a serene location, my first thought was for some reason – they were discussing something serious and I should just leave.
Then while I took a few quick photos from nearby, I realised they were speaking German, the conversation was pretty jovial and there was a third voice. They were FaceTiming someone, I’m guessing back in Germany.
Okay, chill then and I took more photos as we exchanged glances. They laughed away with their mate on the other side of the world.
It’s a very common situation. People often sit on the beach or cliff and call family or mates and share the view with them. But for some reason, this one was quite dreamy, mainly due to the scenery and lighting I think.
What seemed like a couple, we’re calling a friend, tens of thousands of kilometres away through that tiny iPhone and I could hear the conversation going as they showed off the stunning sunset.
It was like they were straining for signal. Which of course they weren’t, we had full bars! And it was also like they were facing their friend, so very far away by sitting as close as they could on the edge of the world. Like they’d found the best location where they had peace and quiet and the best chance of hearing their friend.
Logically, they actually had their backs to them direction-wise, RUDE lol and signal wasn’t a factor.
I don’t understand German, so didn’t get the words but it was such a dreamy thing to hear this voice arriving from Germany to Sharp Point through the massive expanse of sky and ocean that was all around us.
Sitting in such a huge open space, you really feel that distance of the person on the other line. Their voice travelling in real time into space and down across 14,500 kms to that tiny 1m of space so their friends could hear it and send back the view of the expanse of the Indian Ocean.
The swells rolled in, the turbines slowly spun away and the wind blustered through our lookout every now and then. I snapped away, until I captured what I wanted.
And off I went.
Hallo and Verabschiedung friend across the ocean. We shared a serene space for a brief moment in the timeline of the world ✨
