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Pink sky over Mildura: "I was on the phone with my mother and my father said that the world is ending"
Photo: INSTAGRAM / @desert_2_sea via REUTERS
It was a dark night when the sky suddenly turned pink over the Australian city of Mildura.
A banned music festival?
Filming for »Independence Day 2«?
Or were real aliens on the move?
The population of Mildura, a town of 56,000 in the state of Victoria, reacted in panic to the color of the sky last Wednesday, according to Australian and international media reports.
According to the Washington Post, resident Tammy Szumowski and her family feared the end of the world.
"I just thought: What the hell is that?
It's bizarre, this huge pink light in the sky," she said, according to the newspaper.
And the »Guardian« quotes her as saying: »I was on the phone with my mother and my father said that the world is ending.«
According to the Australian portal news.com.au, other observers joked about the possible reasons for the pink sky, saw themselves in an episode of the Netflix series "Stranger Things" that had become reality or feared the landing of aliens.
According to the BBC, local resident Nikea Champion said: "All these doomsday scenarios went through my head."
But it was all very different: the light came from a medicinal cannabis farm.
The facility was reportedly testing LED lights - revealing its previously undisclosed location.
Forgot to draw the curtains
A security guard at the facility noticed the glow and saw several people stopping their cars to find the light source, the Washington Post writes.
The company typically uses blackout curtains or shades to hide the light from the red LED lights, which are designed to encourage plant growth.
But on Wednesday it was probably forgotten to close the curtains.
According to the Guardian, a spokesman for the operating company Cann Group said that the system would be darkened again in the future.
In Australia, the cultivation of cannabis for medical and scientific purposes is legal.
The Cann Group became the first Australian company to receive cannabis cultivation licenses.
Where the group built their cannabis facility was unclear — until now.
The plant is on the outskirts of Mildura on the site of a former juice factory. The first harvest batch was brought in a few weeks ago.
ptz
