Capturing the Ephemeral - mist and fog in the Australian landscape

This is an old, but strong, memory: Caz and I standing on the edge of an extinct volcano at dawn. Mist, settled in the valley below. In the distance, the volcanoes remnant central vent, Wollumbin (Mt Warning), and 600m below my feet lush farmland now covering the ancient crater. We are at Pinnacle Lookout in Border Ranges National Park, entranced and awestruck by the day’s first casting of shadows. 

The sun’s morning light is soft and golden. Birds are calling in the rainforest behind me. The metal lookout fence is cold beneath my arms. The sky is clear. And, the mist is making this moment magic. It has thrown a thin veil over the landscape below. The trees, the paddocks, the farmhouses and dams are a mosaic of light and dark - long rays of shadow streak across the hills like the strands of a fine and delicate tapestry still being woven.

The question is though - was it mist or fog I was admiring in the valley below? I have always used the terms in a random, interchangeable way. But surely, if there are two words, there must be two different meanings. 

Turns out, in meteorological glossary, fog is defined as 'obscurity in the surface layers of the atmosphere, which is caused by a suspension of water droplets'. By international agreement (particularly for aviation purposes) fog is the name used when visibility is less than 1 km.

Mist is defined as 'when there is such obscurity and the associated visibility is equal to or exceeds 1000 m'. Like fog, mist is still the result of the suspension of water droplets, but simply at a lower density. Typically, mist will dissipate more quickly and can rapidly disappear with even slight winds, it's also what you see when you breathe out on a cold day.

The tent is just 15m away. And yet, we cannot find it. 

Fog has descended. It is so dense and has arrived so suddenly it has us bamboozled. Each rock is now a faint, anonymous shadow. Somewhere, tucked in a tiny nook amongst this maze of granite boulders, is our home, our food, our warmth and shelter. Like a flash of movement out of the corner of the eye, so is that split second of panic in the mind. Where the hell is the tent?

We had ducked out to look at the view, gone no more than 50m, turned around, started back, then found ourselves in nature’s finest whiteout. While the panic quickly passes, the fog does not. As it swirls about us, we pause to get our bearings. That tree over there I recognise. Behind it, Caz finds the log we clamber past to get to the boulder overhang. We move slowly and methodically, making sure we recognise each small landmark. 

And here is another word we bandy about - whiteout. All mountain areas have a higher propensity for low cloud than valleys and costal areas. Our moment of disorientation is on a peak in Cathedral Rock National Park, at about 1200m above sea level. The thought of walking in cloud, and this kind of reduced visibility can, naturally, be scary and intimidating. But, it can also be thoroughly beautiful. As we see the faint blue shadow of our tent, I let the calmness of the fog into my soul.  I settle in for an afternoon of muffled silence and ghostly visitations. Small scrubwrens appear and disappear like magicians. A gentle breeze swirls the fog about the rocks and the steam from my cup of tea blends with the atmosphere in one seamless movement.

But, apparently, I am not in a whiteout. 

“A proper white-out is not a nice experience, and happens when there is already a full covering of snow on the ground, it's snowing and you're in low cloud. In such situations your foot/eye co-ordination will become difficult, as it's virtually impossible to tell exactly where the ground is in front of you as everything is white. Apart from the odd minor stumble when the ground isn't quite where you expected, safe route finding will become virtually impossible. You may be able to see a colleague walking in front of you, but whether he can properly know where he's going is another issue.” 

Whether it be called mist or fog or low cloud, it brings mood. And for Caz, as a photographer, it is worth walking out into. It can be eerily beautiful, moody, dramatic and otherworldly. Mist and fog in photography has been the central, evocative element in some of Australia’s most iconic landscape images - think Dombrovskis Rock Island Bend image of the Franklin River and Rob Blaker’s mist soaked forest scene of the Tarkine.

Mist and/or fog is so pliable and alive. It fills valleys like a liquid, rises off ridges and drifts out of gullies like the trees are breathing, it can drop off escarpments like a waterfall, and slide across a lake like a dragon approaching.

We have been walking for two days and have seen nothing more than the world immediately around us. Visibility is a constant 50-100m. Fortunately we have a track to follow but we came here for the vast views that we cannot see. We persist, and keep walking to each marked lookout point where we wait and stare into the white veil. After a few minutes of hopeful conversation, we give up and continue on to the next point where we plan to make camp. There is a small flat area that makes a perfect bivvy spot. It feels dark early and we hope the morning will bring those views. It doesn't. We wake to the same thick whiteness. We pack up slowly, hopefully, surely, it will lift.

Walking back through the forest we are forced to put on our rain jackets as two days of fog is catching on the trees and dripping slowly like rain. Fog and mist is a climate maker and marker. And the forest we are intimately enclosed in, is a 'cloud forest'.

A cloud forest is one where the water in clouds directly condenses on the surface of plants as precipitation. This phenomenon is variously referred to in scientific literature as ‘horizontal precipitation,’ ‘direct interception,’ or ‘cloud water stripping’ where cloud water is deposited regularly on the canopy of the trees, as well as feeding down to the ferns, mosses and other understorey plants. The cloud primarily comes from orographically lifted air masses that cool to form the clouds.

There is some literature out there that also suggests that tropical cloud forests in Australia, and around the world, could be impacted by climate change through the 'lifting cloud base' hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that as sea surface temperatures warm with climate change, moisture formation will occur at higher elevations. This means that cloud bases will rise, therefore moving higher and higher the point at which forests intersect clouds. The net effect for Australia, with its low elevation mountains could be the loss of this magical fog shrouded landscape – think Gondwana cool temperate rainforests, Antarctic Beech and those moss covered green rooms you see on our blog page. 

But, cloud forests are not the only thing that will suffer with the loss of cloud water stripping – our water supply is also under threat.

"New Australian research has quantified the huge amount of water that upland rainforests can harvest directly from clouds…In a study of forests in North Queensland, a team from the Rainforest Co-operative Research Centre has been the first to measure accurately the amount of water absorbed by cloud forests in the Asia-Pacific region.

"We have calculated that most forests capture 10 to 25 per cent more water from clouds than falls as rain," said researcher Dr Paul Reddell. "That amounts to between 150 and 500 millimetres per year extra water."

Dr Reddell said the rainforests harvest water from clouds in various ways: "Sometimes it's condensation, in other cases mosses and orchids act like sponges," he said. But, if the cloud base lifts as predicted this extra water will be lost, not only to the forests but to the people who rely on the river water from mountain catchments.

My final fog/mist anecdote is not from a walk but a drive - through the magnificent Karri forests of Western Australia. It is called the Heartbreak Drive Trail, outside of Pemberton in Warren National Park. This 12 km drive winds through magnificent karri forest and along the Warren River.  It offers access to camping and canoe launching sites as well as the Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree and the Marianne North tree.  

We set off early on our way to... I-can't-remember-where-next. But we go via the Heartbreak Drive Trail. Along the drive are transmitting points where you can tune your car radio to hear commentary of the history of the area. I am leant forward, fiddling with the radio dial as we round a bend and begin climbing from the Warren River to the top of the hills. Caz says something about looking at the mist and then he stops the car in the middle of the road. It is one of those 'right time right place' moments. The sun has risen and is beaming through the forest. It forms a misty star burst that is both joyous and breathtaking. So beautiful it might break your heart. 

Caz jumped out of the drivers seat, grabbed the camera and tripod and tried to capture it all before the sun burnt the moisture to clear skies. And in a strange synergy, as if reflecting mist's very ephemeral nature - Caz's photos are now also gone. I cannot find them. They have vanished. The phone camera photos remain however, and they show Caz at work, dwarfed by the mighty trees, hidden in the deep shadow beneath fingers of light. Trying to capture the ephemeral. 

 

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