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Chasing the Aurora Australis: An Australian Photographer’s Honest Guide

I’ve been doing photography for over ten years. I’ve travelled to Iceland and joined a photography tour that went out every night to chase the aurora borealis. I was fully expecting a mind-blowing, spectacle of beams and swirls dancing overhead, it is Iceland after all right? Isn’t that the norm there? Nope… Consider my expectations humbled. Despite being out each night searching, the best I saw was a sky that glowed green. No beams or dancing lights.

It turns out the aurora is a lot more elusive than anyone lets on. You can obsess over forecasts, drive for hours, stand out in the freezing cold until 2am and still come home with absolutely nothing. It’s a huge game of luck. And the southern Aurora is very different and harder to catch than the Northern one.

Let’s talk about what the Aurora Australis actually is 

Here’s the thing no one tells you before you start chasing it: the Aurora Australis is not the same experience as the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights). If you are chasing the Australian aurora and expecting to see anything like the image below, you are going to be disappointed.

The first realisation is that the Aurora Australis is not as vivid as the Northern Lights. When we look south from mainland Australia, we are viewing the storm over a massive distance. We are essentially only seeing the very top of it.

Northern Hemisphere Aurora forecast example: The red band is directly over Canada, Alaska and Iceland. These countries will be able to see the aurora at full strength in the sky above them.
Southern Hemisphere Aurora forecast example: The red band is over Tasmania, so they would be able to see it overhead (Antarctica looks like a good bet!). By the time you get to mainland Australia however, it’s no longer overhead, you are looking at it over a distance. (This is also an insanely strong aurora, it’s very rare for the band to even get to Tasmania. We would normally always be looking at it over a long distance)

This is why the Northern Hemisphere auroras are so much stronger, their countries are in a better position to be directly underneath the aurora.

If you’re in Victoria and you get out on a strong night, you might see curtains and beams on the horizon. (This is exactly what I captured on January 20th.) It won’t be overhead. But it can absolutely be spectacular.

If you’re in Tasmania on a very strong night, you have a chance at something extraordinary. Waves moving overhead, colour filling the sky. That’s the closest thing on our side of the world to what the northern lights deliver in Scandinavia.

If you’re in NSW, a strong aurora might still only show as a glow, possibly with hints of structure. The further north you are, the harder it gets.

This is just the reality of our geography. You want to be as south as you possibly can. If you’re as far North as Queensland, Or anywhere north of Perth it’s unlikely you will ever be able to see it without venturing to a more southerly location.

This is the forecast map for the insane aurora of 2026.

The luck of the draw

I’ll be upfront about this: a huge part of this game is luck. Even if you do everything right. the right location, the right gear, the right forecast etc. the aurora can still fizzle out, or fire up at 3am just after you’ve given up and driven home.

You need the aurora itself to be strong enough to reach us. You need clear skies. You need a dark location with a clear view south. You need the moon to be small or below the horizon. You need all of these things to align at the same time. Most nights, they don’t.

I used to drive hours down to the Mornington Peninsula from Melbourne, set up my tripod at a pre-scouted spot, and wait. Every time, the aurora either didn’t arrive at all, or showed up as a faint green whisper that left me disappointed. 

Expecting to Use Your Eyes? They’re unlikely to see much

You are not going to step out your front door, look down your suburban street, and see a neon light show. The Aurora Australis is very rarely visible to the naked eye. To your eyes, a moderate aurora often just looks like a brighter patch of white/grey sky. (And this is only if you are in a dark location. Any form of lights will drown this out) It is not until you have overhead auroras that your eyes can start seeing the green. Your camera however, can see the colours much better than our eyes can. You will have to watch the show through a camera.

To even give your camera a chance, you need:

  • Zero Light Pollution: Looking south from a rural town just north of Melbourne? Forget it. You’ll just be photographing the ugly glow of Melbourne’s city lights.
  • A Dark Moon: The moon is a giant celestial spotlight that will instantly drown out the aurora. You need a small moon phase, or a night where the moon simply hasn’t risen yet.
  • Clear Skies: It sounds obvious, but you can have the strongest solar storm of the decade, and if a cloud bank rolls in, the show is over.
  • A clear view south: The Aurora Australis appears in on the southern horizon. You need to have a clear view in a southerly direction. This could be on a hill in a rural area, or at the beach down in Mornington. Exact location doesn’t matter as long as you can see the southern skies and aren’t looking in to city lights.

The Gear You Need

If you want an image sharp enough to actually print and hang on a wall, you will need to do a long exposure. It’s possible with some smart phones that allow you to control the exposure time and ISO. My phone does not have this ability and I always use my camera anyway. If you have a phone that you know can probably take great night photos, then go for it!

  • A Sturdy Tripod: This is completely non-negotiable. You’ll be shooting exposures of around 10 to 15 seconds.
  • A Fast, Wide-Angle Lens: You want an f/2.8 or f/4 lens. A wide angle allows you to capture the massive scale of the sky without having to leave the shutter open so long that the stars blur into trails.
  • A Modern Sensor: Any relatively modern camera will have high enough ISO capabilities to pull those vibrant colours out of the darkness.

Stop Driving Blind: How to Actually Hunt

The tools I rely on are the Glendale app and Facebook groups. I would love to show you a whole lot of graphs and data about solar winds and pretend I know what it all means. But I don’t, and don’t worry, you don’t have to.

Glendale has a feature where other aurora hunters drop ticks or Xs on a map showing whether they’ve seen activity (or not) from their location. This is genuinely useful. If there are successful sightings pinned across the northern parts of New Zealand, southern Victoria has a decent shot.

Which brings me to the Facebook groups. I watch the New Zealand aurora groups closely because NZ gets dark before we do, and parts of the country sit further south than we can reach from the mainland. If people in NZ are out looking and seeing nothing, you can save yourself the drive. If the Tassie groups start exploding with reports of beams, you know something serious is happening.

On January 20th, 2026, there was a purple alert in Glendale. I sat there obsessively refreshing the Tassie and NZ groups while the sun took what felt like an eternity to go down. The moment the Tassie group started filling with beam sightings, I grabbed my gear and headed to my pre-scouted location at the lake. I arrived at twilight, which gave me just enough light to set up properly and adjust my composition before the dark came in.

The fact that I was only 25 minutes from my spot made a huge difference. When I lived in Melbourne, I was always racing long commute times against a forecast that might not hold. Now, having a location close by and already scouted changed everything.

Scouting locations in advance

This is something I cannot recommend enough. Whenever I’m in an area with a clear view of the southern horizon and an interesting foreground, I stop and look around properly for possible compositions. If it looks like a good spot, I pin it in Google Maps. 

Doing that in daylight means that when you’re hurrying out in the pitch black at 9pm because the Tassie group just went off, you already know exactly where to park, where to walk, and where to place your tripod for the composition you had in mind. The lake I shot from on January 20th I had scouted weeks earlier on a completely ordinary afternoon. I knew which trees I liked, and where they were from the parking area.

The Big Win: January 20th, 2026

Recently, the stars weather and the aurora finally aligned for me. I was in the rural town of Stawell. This meant my pre-scouted south facing location at Lake Lonsdale was only a 25-minute drive away (Such a huge advantage.) The aurora groups were going off with anticipation of a crazy forecast. We just needed it to hold until the darkness could arrive.  I was obsessively refreshing the NZ and Tassie groups as the sun took what felt like an eternity to set.

Then, the Tasmania group exploded with reports of beams. That sealed the deal for me. If Tassie was having an amazing aurora, then Vic should have a decent show.

I grabbed my gear and bolted. I arrived at the lake during twilight, which gave me just enough ambient light to set up my tripod facing south and perfectly adjust my composition.

The last light of the sun lingered on the horizon for ages. Even when I could start seeing stars. Summer nights when the sun sets near 9pm aren’t great for astro photography as you have a much smaller window of darkness. (That and the fact that I am 0% night owl.) This was at 9:40pm, nearly an hour after sunset time and the horizon is still super bright.

As the sky finally blackened, the aurora could be seen as a green strip along the horizon. I waited eagerly, hoping that it was going to pick up. I then started seeing a faint pink vertical smudge above the aurora. Could it be a beam? I zoomed in on the picture excitedly. Yes! A faint beam. It wasn’t long before the sky started exploding with beams dancing in curtains. (At the same time, Tassie was getting waves directly overhead)

I watched in awe through the camera for hours. With my eyes, I could see the beams as white/brighter patches of sky. This was helpful so that I could recentre the camera when it moved a bit to the West. They danced for over an hour, before settling back down around 11pm. It was incredibly considerate of the aurora to come right after sunset, and pick up into such an amazing show of beams so early. I arrived home just after midnight and was still able to get a good sleep. (I don’t expect such a crazy alignment of luck will ever happen again!)

Here are some images from that night. If you would like to support me, these images are available for purchase in the Grampians gallery. (Click the images)


Or if you have some amazing aurora images yourself that you would like printed, I’ve got you covered. As night photography usually pushes camera sensors into high ISO, it can be hard to tell how large you can print an image before it looks too grainy. I’m happy to help recommend a size or print type. Send me an email with your image to [email protected] and I’ll check it out for you.