Another year, another book chart, another Yes Day.
The challenge of this year’s Yes Day was to avoid anything that required going the long way down the mountains given Vic Pass is shut. So Portland was out of the question, as was Oberon, Kanimbla, Hartley and Jenolan.
CR: There was a sunrise/sunset lookout theme to this year’s Yes Day. Both displeased Declan. A 6am alarm didn’t give Dec enough time to savour his oats so they came with us for a breakfast in Wobby at the lookout. DW: I don’t love sunrises. They are pretty, sure, but lots of things are and don’t require you to wake up quite so early.CR: We cheated a bit and got to Govetts Leap when the sky was bright. The plan was to get there when everything was pitch black and watch the colours of the sky change. That would have required an early morning on par with when we have to catch the train to Sydney for work… So we had to redefine sunrise as the literal rising of the sun above the mountains. DW: I hid in the car. I did flag to Caitlin that sunrise and sunset as defined by the BoM probably aren’t aligned with her understanding, but as it is Yes day, what is a boy to do. CR: After three minutes Declan asked, “when does sunrise end?”. He returned to the car to play on his phone. I hung out for another ten or fifteen minutes, taking a family photo for a cute Indonesian family, chatting to a group of rouge females dressed exclusively in Oldies, and learning about how a man from Penrith taught himself photography during Covid. DW: It’s a good question. There is a point when sunrise has obviously not started and a point when it has obviously ended, but a large grey zone of amiguity in the middle. I was looking for a quantitative definition so I could properly scope my involvement. Wobby: I’m bringin sexy back (yeah). Those other cars don’t know how to act (yeah). CR: More expresso, less depresso. Dek is tiring already of me taking photos. He’s unconsciously giving me the finger. DW: Hehe. This one was actually conscious and I wanted to see if you would realise. CR: After coffee, we head down the mountains via Clarence and Bell, turning off onto this dirt road before Lithgow. The major reason this road exists is access to the national park and a sand quarry.CR: Given it was a long weekend the sand quarry was on holidays, so the only vehicles on the track were recreational 4WDs and motorbikes. And Wobby.CR: Our destination was the Lost City hiking trail. With such a mysterious name, I was surprised that we hadn’t done this hike before. It’s just a little bit too out of the way for a regular weekend. A perfect Yes Day candidate. DW: This is indeed a good Yes Day activity. A Yes Day activity is about saying Yes to your local area as much as anything else. CR: And drive.CR: We are standing here at lookout at the start of the walk. To the right of Declan’s head you can see the track re-emerging on the next hill over. The walk takes you to that point, but via the valley. So the terminus looks close in this photo but there’s a fair amount of up and down to reach it. Once at the other side there’s another car park there to facilitate a car shuffle, or you just walk back the way you came, as we did.CR: The national park is called the Gardens of Stone. Whoever named this area deserves a Booker Prize.CR: Down the bottom of the valley.CR: The track was very easy to follow and looked as though it had been freshly redone in the last year. CR: It was surprisingly busy. There were so many people out and about. I was wondering if it’s a local haunt for Lithgowians but everyone we (I) chatted to were from out of town. We met an older couple from Canberra holidaying in Rydal (what there is to do in Rydal I still don’t know – they probably didn’t know either hence spent hours in the car driving here), a mother and daughter from Sydney who are spending the long weekend in Wentworth Falls, and a spergy couple our age who had a full hiking pack and were spending ‘a few days’ off track. There was even an infuriatingly loud and large group of wealthy South Africans who had produced too many children, so presumably this walk has some social media presence. DW: I left Caitlin in charge of chats and typically walked around the corner where no-one could see me and waited for her to catch up.CR: After berating me for taking too many photos all morning, as I was panting up the Grade 4 optional section of the hike with my hands on my hips Declan instructed me to take a photo of him. DW: This is as I have an excellent sense of framing and knew Caitlin would want this photo. CR: That’s a lie, you just wanted a photo because you thought you were being cool.
CR: Wobby steals the show doing some 4WD’ing on the way back to Lithgow.CR: Schnitty lunch at an (the) upmarket pub in Lithgow. We share a main but to ensure that the Yes Day good vibes continue we secure extra chips. DW: I would say too many chips. But it is impossible to know that when ordering.CR: And then split a sticky date pudding, the king of all puds. DW: I leave one arm in the sun in reptilian fashion to try and absorb some warmth into my blood and hope it gets transferred around my whole body. I think it works. CR: I’m typically not a fan of Lithgow but it looked very peaceful with the turning leaves. Until a raucous gang of wayward teens walks by. DW: The reason this is a weirdly short video is Caitlin got confused about her phone… CR: We visit the two only shops open on Sundays: the second hand bookstore and Woolworths. Yes, I buy some books. Yes, I make friends with the bookseller while Declan hides behind the sci-fi shelf. Yes, I am wearing a cheap Tradeweb vest because the nice one my boss bought me as a gift with our own branding was a size too small and I can’t do the zip up.CR: Sun bookends this Yes Day. Here we are watching the sunset over Mount Blackheath, alongside every Indian family touristing the mountains for the long weekend. DW: Thankfully Caitlin noticed a weird black streak near the sun. This gave me something to think about. I feel like it was contrails from a plane blocking light in an odd way. Either that or an ICBM. The jury is still out. CR: My haul from Lithgow-Stephen. DW: In this photo you can also see kangaroo rug and hero rat plushie. What a bounty of pressies from previous travels. CR: Cheeseburgers for dinner while we hate-watch Scott and Minae travel through Malaysia (https://youtu.be/4_ZiE6_Kpi8?si=xD1EsqIpOt8M8udf), followed by the last half of Downfall that we didn’t finish the prior night. DW: I always hate Scott and Minae time. Unfortunately this means Caitlin won’t watch it without me now…CR: As per usual, by the time I finish the book chart the theme is totally out of date. This Pokemon theme was inspired by our travels in Japan a year ago. Since then we’ve visited the world’s backwaters, Laos, where the kids didn’t even know what a PlayStation was. See you again in 50 books time.
I think it makes sense that sunrise finishes when the whole of the sun is first visible from earth, at that location, when viewed at mean sea level (MSL). Thereafter it is no longer sunrise, it is sun risen.
A definition based on that principle, conversely, could apply to sunset.
If you are in the mountains at the time then sunrise may strictly have already finished before you see the sun peak over the mountains.
Nice to see the “beyond” keep cup got to share in Yes Day.
According to those definitions, Caitlin missed both astronomical sunrise and sunset on Yes day. There was also a cloud layer you could see over the ocean which further obscured things and delayed our local “sunrise”.
You have described something similar to the onset of civil twilight which is commonly aligned with sunrise/sunset in an astronomical context and as a first pass I consider good enough for Yes Day (although it refers to first visible parts of actual sun, not fully visible per your proposed definition). Refraction of the sun complicates this though as the geometric truth is different from the visible truth.
I agree the height of the observer is important and should be standardised, but I would also note that elevation is more complicated than MSL. Firstly, the Earth is actually a geoid, not any regular shape (although often modeled as an oblate spheroid) and secondly sea level (ignoring tides, etc. for simplicity) varies over the earth both temporally and spatially and is not able to be rigorously defined as a datum. MSL can vary from geoid datums by several metres. However I will acknowledge, MSL could be used as an approximate and colloquial simplification though and for the purposes of yes day would have been sufficient.
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