The dust storm had its origins in South Australia and reached the coastline of New South Wales not long after sunrise. The dust had traveled more than 1400 kilometres (about 880 miles). It was an eerie experience. The orange and red glow streamed through the curtains and I immediately grabbed my camera and went outside to diocument the experience.

The Sydney Morning Herald has created a site dedicated to the event and there is also a Flickr group ~ The Red Sydney Project The Dust Storm Days. I took the first nine photographs on the morning of the 23rd September 2009, from my home, of the suburb in which I live. The final five photographs were taken three days later on the 26th September when a less substantial dust storm also crossed the region early in the morning. The sun was nicely filtered by the dust. A display of fourteen images can also be viewed over at my online gallery.

There were some very strong gusts early in the morning, well before sunset, so I climbed out of bed, got dressed, brewed some coffee and sat out by the back deck to observe the impact of the wind. I felt it was a good idea to keep an eye on our home and those of our neighbours just in case any decided that they wished to shift their location to one east of their current position.

As I sat and waited for the coffee to finish brewing I observed that some of the higher altitude clouds were beginning to show hints of red as they captured the rays of the sun which was still well below the horizon from my perspective on the ground. I grabbed my camera and took a number of photographs of the clouds to the west, south and east. Those shown are not in any chronological order. It i simply the order in which I resized them.

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