Before Perth

The Dish

Enjoying ourselves, but...

For the past few days I have been unable to blog. I haven't had a lot of time (or sleep), and Paula has been able to get wi-fi where I can't. So I have an hour now, and I'm going to try to do some catch-up, though in much less detail than I would like.

Thursday we had lunch in Coonabarabran and dinner at the Matthew Flinders Motor Inn. We went to the Anglo-Australian Telescope (Siding Springs). That evening we were going to go stargazing at some dinky airport, but it was cloudy. Then it cleared up so we went, and when we got there it had clouded up again. so that was a bust.

Our local guide there was Donna the Astronomer. I'll have to look up her website when I have more time.

Our bus driver has been Sasha, and he has been taking us everywhere. After the first time he had to move a bunch of suitcases from the storage bay to get to the scooter, he has been certain to make it immediately available at each stop. At first he came down from the bus to load and unload it, but soon he realized I could do it myself quite easily. (We're learning some Australian: bus -> motor coach, bay -> garage. Also cane -> walking stick.)

We've been staying at a combination of high-end hotels where we have to order coffee at breakfast in the morning and wait 15 minutes to get it, and motels where we make our own in the room from instant. I definitely prefer the latter.

Anyway, Friday we had breakfast at the Matthew Flinders Motor Inn (if I'm not getting my days mixed up). We went to the Parkes Observatory (the 'Dish'), which is huge and beautiful.

Movies, then Q&A with the gentleman on the left

Best shot I could get of the two best things there

That evening we went stargazing to some area out past the back of beyond for some stargazing. Our tour guides, Elise and Tim, had arranged for a local astronomy group to meet us there--it's their spot, complete with a little building for tea--and on a Friday, instead of their usual Saturday. We got to see the Milky Way in all its glory, for the first time in many decades, and it's still beautiful, With some help, we found the Southern Cross, the Coal Sack, and the greater and lesser Magellanic clouds. We looked at a globular cluster through someone's telescope. Successful enough to more than make up for the previous evening's failure.

I tried taking some pictures with my cell phone. It worked amazingly well on its "night set" setting; by which I mean that it could actually capture a few stars (like 0.01%, but still better than I expected).

The Southern cross

The Aborigines count the seasons not by the stars, but by the dark areas in the Milky Way. The Coal Sack is the emu's egg, while the emu (stretching left and down from the egg) is the bird itself.

The Flinder's Motel was a little strange. Our room had one double and two twin beds.

Matthew Flinders Motor Inn

One thing I had not had a chance to blog about is that on the way to the observatory, there were scale models of the planets (1:200,000,000, if I recall) at scale distances from the observatory; the scale was set by the observatory dome as the sun. We managed to get pictures of three or maybe four planets.

Saturn (obviously)

One member of our group had some great T-shirts. One I particularly liked had a picture of the eight planets, and the words (In my day, we had NINE).

Saturday we sent to Scenic World and the lookout at Echo Point, which was mostly a waste of time for use. There was a rail car which was more nearly a roller coaster (inaccessible), cable cars (theoretically accessible), and a gift shop. But that's okay--that was really the only thing that was a waste for us, so we came out way ahead of what we expected.

Paula at Echo Point

Echo Point

Then Sunday--get up at 5am, fly west to Perth (where it's two hours earlier), have early lunch and cocktail party, then bed. Where I finally got caught up on sleep and had time to blog this.

Perth, BTW, is exactly 12 hours off from Philadelphia time, so conversion is easy.

At 1pm we will board the motor coach to go to the cruise ship.