After my last post, I started towards to Calder freeway to head north but saw the clouds and made a uturn and went south west instead. Decided to check out You Yang mount range near Little River, inbetween Melbourne and Geelong. Never been there before so driving around in the dark looking for a suitable spot was a challenge. Tried one reserve car parks but there was a suspect car stationed there so drove to the north side of the range and found a dirt track and another reserve car park which was secluded and well away from basically everywhere. Wind was pretty bad, as were the mozzies but I fortunately do not have any reactions from their bites (Apart from slapping myslef). This was my first time setting up my gear in the field for photography work and given my last minute decision to change location did not have the accurate Lat and Long, dec coordinates. Roughly aligned the mount and set the rest of the gear up. Took me over an hour to get fully set up and overcome a number of technical issues, mostly due to being the first time callibrating the guiding set up etc. Eventually settled into a night of imaging. The wind was pretty severe at times and I'm sure this impacted on stability but none the less it was wonderful to be out under the stars finally. Glow from Melbourne was still visible but only as a dome, as was Geelong but overall it was much much darker than home.
The spot itself was quite allnight apart from a few snapping branches and odd noises coming from the woods. There are toilet amenities there, no lamps or lighting so all in all a pretty reasonable spot for anyone looking for a pretty safe spot to view/photograph. Laptop was covered in a pretty interesting spread of insect life and a few managed to make their way into my ears and mouth, not to mention the car.
Have now taken my first asto shots and will attempt some processing now and will post results later as well as a few of the spot itself.
First shot attached now
Happy for a night under the stars
Squish em 
