Total Solar Eclipse November 2012: A Remarkable Phenomenon [PHOTOS]

In Cairns and Port Douglas, thousands of spectators who lined up the shores applauded and burst into tears after experiencing darkness for two minutes with the extraordinary total solar eclipse.

It was like nothing else was happening when the sun's weird yet wonderful glow of indigo spread above the tropical coast. "It was breathtaking. I felt my heart skip a few beats, felt myself clapping, I was just breathless in awe," tourist Ann Lucey, a nurse in her mid-fifties from Florida in the United States, shared.

During the sun eclipse, massive dark storm clouds were present with only patches of light visible across the Coral Sea. Sky-gazers felt threatened that these dark clouds won't allow them to witness the remarkable phenomenon.

"That big cloud hung about like a bad smell. It was like someone said, 'No, I'm not going to show it to you'," a 56-year-old Swiss eclipse chaser named Barbara Vonarburg stated. "When the light of the sun did come back to Earth, I felt tears of thanks in my eye. Imagine if it didn't?" Vonarburg further added.

Also, Hiroaki Kondo, a 28-year-old Japanese tourist traveled four charter flights out of Japan just to come to Cairns and experience 2012 total solar eclipse. "I feel so excited. Everything was so surreal," Kondo said.

Moreover, forty hot air balloons filled up the sky over the Atherton Tablelands as well as fleet of sailboats, super yachts, runabouts and four cruise liners scattered on the waters of the inner Great Barrier Reef.

"It is like everyone had come down to watch the End of the World. When it goes dark and the temperature drops, you get a sense of the fragility of life," Dr. Natalie Dillon, a scientist in Mareeba, revealed.

"I just feel in awe. It is like the Moon has wiped a cloth over the face of the Sun and we can start afresh. It shows how the Sun is the reason life exists on earth. Too much closer and we'd burn. Too much further away and we'd freeze. For a moment, you get a sense of what it felt like when the dinosaurs went extinct as the cloud of a meteorite storm obscured the sun and plunged Earth into an Ice Age," Dr. Dillon further shared.