This shot comes from another of my Noosa hinterland excursions but this time heading more South towards Brisbane than West into the hills.

The entire region is peppered with the remnants of the major volcanic activity which created many of the features of the east coast of Australia in the last 2-20 million years as the Pacific Plate was pushed under the Indo-Australian Plate.

This image is of the Glasshouse Mountains and shows several volcanic plugs - the volcanic vents of much larger volcanic eruptions the shells of which have long since eroded away. I had often seen them on the years we drove from Brisbane airport to Noosa and had been itching to find an appropriate vantage point from which to shoot them.

There are several vantage points for photography recommended by Queensland Parks and Forests but the sunrise lighting from those points always has the camera pointing into the sun. A look at the topographical map yielded the enticingly named "Wild Horse Mountain" on the Eastern edge of the mountain area and with a convenient lookout platform at the top.

Another early start (4am) and I was on the highway heading South until I reached the base of the mountain. Then a fairly steep climb brought me out onto a little cleared plateau at the top with a very nicely constructed view platform.

From here I had 360° views with the coast and the sunrise out to the East and the volcanoes to the West. The wind had picked up to a Beaufort 6/7 and while I took several sunward shots they were all unsuccessful due to pretty severe camera shake. I canned that idea and concentrated on my westward shot.

I actually thought that the entire enterprise would be in vain - mainly due to a bland and featureless sky - but in the end the wind was my friend and pushed this beautiful cloud bank across the frame so I re-imagined my panorama as a vertical rather than horizontal one and I am pleased with the result.

There are many possible vantage points around the Glasshouse Mountains from which to take photographs however most of them would have placed me facing into the sunrise on this fine morning and I was looking for a shot where the mountains were lit from behind the camera position.

After trawling though various “what to do around Noosa” websites I settled on the lookout at Wild Horse Mountain as the most likely vantage point for the shot I was after.

Cloud Free Night provided me with the cloud cover data I needed and while there was cloud rolling down the coast after the sunrise  there was little to no high, mid level or low cloud predicted for 2 hours before dawn to about 1 hour after it. This meant that the Golden Hour light would wash over the faces of the mountains - as indeed it did.