Flocking to One of the Few Specks of Land in Sight of a Total Eclipse

For tens of thousands of astrophotographers, eclipse hunters and cosmic-minded tourists wondering where to look for the best site to view Thursday’s total solar eclipse, the town of Exmouth, on a finger of land jutting out from Australia’s west coast, is the easiest solution to a problem of extreme scarcity.

A narrow band around the planet from which the eclipse can be seen crosses land in only four places: the farthest in East Timor and West Papua, in Indonesia; Australia’s freckle-like islands, one of which is controlled by the oil company Chevron; and Exmouth, a small tourist destination and former US naval base 770 miles from the nearest town.

When the time arrives at noon, many visitors are waiting on the beach of the city to watch the palest aquamarine and deep gray bands across the sea. Seagulls scattered. In the shadows of the palm leaves, specks of light erupted into a crescent moon. The wind changes direction. The stars seemed to twinkle, in a strange sky. The temperature dropped, and people began to hug themselves and each other.

Then, in the shrinking sliver of sunlight, Tara D’cruz-Noble, Bob Mackintosh and their children, Elijah and Luella, lay down on the silvery sand and remove their eclipse glasses.

Darkness sets in, and, within minutes, the moon blocks out the sun’s light — except for the dancing orange corona, the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere that is normally obscured by intense light.

Then, as if disappearing quickly, the sun reappeared on the other side of the moon, and a loud cheer broke out: “Welcome!” Ms D’cruz-Noble hugged Luella, then ran her hand up and down her arm. “I still have goose bumps,” she said.

It felt like the world had stopped.

But for Exmouth, a town of 3,000 people, the event was a godsend that no one asked for.

Every year, Exmouth sees a regular influx of several thousand tourists, drawn by the native reefs and resident whale sharks. But to accommodate the mass of 20,000 or 30,000 visitors requires several years of planning and millions of dollars in state support to update the infrastructure, hundreds of portable toilets, dozens of additional emergency workers, clearing five hectares of forest and 1.5 million. – gallon water tank.

“Sounds awful, doesn’t it?” said Darlene Allston, top local official. In many cases, hotels and other tourism operators first learned about the eclipse from savvy tourists who had booked their accommodation four or more years in advance. When someone emailed the city’s visitor center in 2018 asking for a reservation, “We thought it was a joke at first,” said Jessica Smith, who works there.

The town has no recycling system, only recently got its first store where you can buy underwear, and there are only a few places to eat, so locals don’t visit often “so we don’t get bored with the options,” says Sonia Beckwith. , who owns a tourism business and is originally from Washington State, put it.

The arrival of tens of thousands of visitors, as well as dozens of food trucks and a free three-night music festival, rocked the city. “We are not used to this,” Ms. Beckwith said.

Some enterprising business owners take the opportunity to make quick money, or even thousands, with rooms priced at many multiples of the usual high season peak.

“It is difficult if you have a unique solar event as an influence,” said Laurence Randor, who has led from Perth at the urging of three teenage children. “Camping is a price to pay.”

For people like Kryss Katsiavriades, a retired data analyst who traveled from London with his wife, Talaat Qureshi, to witness the 30th eclipse, the weather is an important consideration. Exmouth, a city of clinging red dust, silky sand and scrubby sun-bleached grass, offers a very good obstacle in the clear blue sky, he said.

“You have to see everything,” he said.

Exmouth’s brush with heavenly spectacle was the result of sublime serendipity. If it weren’t for the 55-mile long peninsula on which Exmouth sits, hugging the Indian Ocean, the total eclipse would have missed Australia.

As if to add to this luck, a Category 4 cyclone that brought record-breaking winds to Western Australia a few days earlier missed the entire peninsula, clearing it for hundreds of miles.

Then there’s the astronomical oddity that causes the eclipse. Of the 227 moons that orbit the planets in the solar system, only Earth is the right size and distance to cover the sun in the sky.

This perfect ratio is changing, as the moon flies further away from Earth, says Robin Cook, a researcher at the University of Western Australia. In thousands of years, “we won’t have a total solar eclipse again,” he said. “We’re just going to have this annular one” — a ring-like eclipse that happens when the moon doesn’t cover the sun — “and, eventually, there may be no solar eclipse at all.”

“All these coincidences – it seems inconceivable that it could happen,” Dr Cook said. “But, here we are.”

This year’s eclipse occurred almost exactly a century after the 1922 solar eclipse in Australia that gave scientists the opportunity to confirm the “proof” of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

David Blair, a physicist and professor at the University of Western Australia, called it “the most important scientific experiment ever done in Australia, in my opinion.” He said he was thinking of those who had helped with the work, including dozens of Aboriginal people and the scientists’ wives, whose efforts had not been successful but had given a “very human” account of the experience.

On the town’s beach on Thursday, Ms D’cruz-Noble, Mr Mackintosh and their family, who had traveled from the state of New South Wales, looked excited and confused as the light returned to the sky. Despite his love for photography, no one got a camera, Ms. D’Cruz-Noble.

“Mother Nature has a way of saying, ‘You need to pay attention, now,'” he said.

Mr. Mackintosh reached surreptitiously into a cool bag for a bottle of champagne – which made the sight known as the cork burst from the bottle and flew into the sand.

The rest of the audience, like the waves, plunged into the ocean. (A nine-foot alligator was reported in the area a week before the failure occurred.)

For some, it’s months in the making. Wesley Garth, a 16-year-old astrophotography enthusiast from West Gippsland, in the state of Victoria, worked six-month shifts at McDonald’s to finance the trip, which included two flights and a seven-hour bus ride.

It was more than worth the trouble, he said. “Lord of the sun, corona, oh Lord!” said. “It was life-changing. I’m still shaking.”