Sunrise

Sunrise at Tin City, the shack rooflines silhouetted against the eastern horizon and the Pacific running away under a low band of cloud. The sun is just clear of the sea, and the first direct light catches the windward edges of the roofs and the tops of the dune behind. The colours are warm pink and orange in the sky, fading down to the cooler grey of the dune sand below. The shacks are still mostly in shadow. The line of the foreshore is faintly visible below the row of buildings; the swell catches the light in scattered points across the surf.

Tin City faces the Pacific to the east, with the dune field running west behind. The settlement sits roughly 11 km south-west of Anna Bay on the Stockton Bight, and the sunrise comes in directly over the water. Day-trip access to the settlement is by NPWS-licensed 4WD; the dawn shots come from the few visitors who stay overnight under specific licensed arrangements or who arrive before first light. The 11 remaining shacks have caught sunrises like this one since at least the 1930s, and the original 19th-century provision sheds that preceded them caught the same view from the same direction long before the habitable shacks went up.