When a pink glow lit up the evening sky in the northern Victorian town of Mildura on Wednesday, Tammy Szumowski wondered if the Apocalypse had arrived.
Close contacts of the third type or was the explanation more… prosaic?
When a pink glow lit up the evening sky in the northern Victorian town of Mildura on Wednesday, local resident Tami Zumowski wondered if the Apocalypse had arrived.
“They did the cool, cool mum, I was telling the kids, ‘There’s nothing to worry about,'” she told the BBC. “But in my head I’m like, what the hell is this?”
Like other stunned locals, Ms. Zumowski’s mind initially went to the worst: was it an alien invasion? Maybe an asteroid?
“Mum’s on the phone and Dad’s like, ‘I’d better hurry and drink my tea because the world is ending.’ “And Mum says, ‘What’s the point of drinking your tea if the world ends?’
Another resident, Nikea Champion, initially thought it was a really bright red moon – before realizing the light was coming from the ground. “All these doomsday scenarios were going through my head,” he told the BBC.
Nike Champion
“I was having a Stranger Things moment… I say, Vecna? You’re;” Champion joked, referring to a monster from the popular fantasy TV series.
Both women – to their relief – were wrong about the causes of the pink glow. It turned out that the eerie glow was coming from a… hemp farm just outside the Australian city!
Medicinal cannabis was legalized in Australia in 2016, but recreational use of the drug is prohibited. There are very few cultivation facilities and their locations are top secret for security reasons – but in this particular case the farm has come to light
Lights with a reddish tint are used to help the growth of the crop. Usually, the blackout blinds come down at dusk, but on Wednesday they didn’t work, a spokesman for cannabis grower Cann Group revealed. And because it was an overcast night, the lights created a “sunset on…steroids” that could be spotted nearly an hour away from the facility…
“I burst out laughing … it could have been something much more important, but basically it was just lights for growing medical marijuana,” Ms Champion said. Ms Szumowski said they “laughed their hearts out”. Despite the initial panic, he admired the beauty of the (not so) eerie show: “I think it was great – they should do it more often,” he said.
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