Sunday March 16, 2025 Disembarking from the Westerdam in Auckland :
This is a view of the Auckland skyline from our balcony on the Westerdam. Today we disembark the ship to spend a few days in Auckland before we travel back to Sydney.
*-*-*
Our hotel lobby just out of camera view on the right was the scene of utter chaos - the front desk.
*-*-*
We decided to take a cab from the port to the hotel, rather than an Uber. We ended up in a shared van with three other couples and
a driver that did not know where any of the downtown hotels were. We each passed our hotel multiple times and he finally dropped off everyone else. He passed our hotel one more time, we pointed it out and
he flipped a u-turn on a one-way street and announced our arrival.
When we got into the hotel, the Holiday Inn Express Central Aukland, it was utter chaos and only 9:30 AM. The crowd in front of the reception desk looked like the
pit area of a rock concert (there are NO orderly lines in New Zealand) as the two harried desk clerks tried to tell people rooms weren't going to be ready until after 2 PM, direct them
to where they could leave their bags and then repeat the story to the next customer. Meanwhile there was another group of people trying to check out.
*-*-*
I have to give credit to the staff, they were helpful, pleasant and did not lose their cool. After being triaged, we moved to some tables in the back and watched them keep it up for almost an hour before the crowd thinnedto a trickle.
We got a room around noon and went upstairs. It is a very nice hotel and we have a lovely view of the bay. We dropped our bags, freshened up, and went out for lunch. Wanting something familiar - we saw there was
a Taco Bell within walking distance. Auckland is made up of steep hills. You are either going up at a sharp angle or down at a sharp angle.
When we walked in, it looked like home. When we saw the menu - it did not. While they served burritos and tacos, they were different. Burritos had rice and black beans and a spicy creamy sauce.
Tacos were plain only. They did have cinnamon twists but they had, in addition to the cinnamon, a peppery taste. It was pretty wild!
We walked around a bit and looked in a few stores, watched a St. Patrick's Day informal parade, then went back to our room. Later we went back out to dinner at Sal's New York Style pizza - not sure what to expect. Sal has nailed it! His pizza was the typical thin chewy New York style crust, with real pepperoni (salami is popular here) and cheese. We were in heaven!
Monday March 17, 2025 Auckland Day 2:
Overcast, cool and drizzly/rainy later in the day.
We started out the day with a visit to the Sky Tower. We walked the couple of blocks to get there. Here is a view from the street.
*-*-*
A view of the Auckland Bridge and Westhaven Marina. At the base of the bridge is our destination for lunch! The Westhaven Marina is the largest yacht marina in the southern hemisphere.
*-*-*
A view of the Central Business District and the harbor beyond. The blue cast in the photos is due to the window tinting on the Sky Tower windows.
*-*-*
We kept seeing signs for the Voco Hotel near our hotel but could never figure out where it was. Now we see it is stacked on top of the Holiday Inn Express we are staying in. Wow!
*-*-*
Another view of the harbor and the Auckland Bridge.
*-*-*
Lori and Barry in the Sky Tower.
*-*-*
The Buoy Cafe in the Westhaven Marina - the location of Rueben's Deli in "My Life is Murder" starring Lucy Lawless. We enjoy watching it on Acorn TV.
*-*-*
The interior of the Buoy Cafe and Bakery. Very recognizable (for fans of the show) are the bakery cases, the wall of wooden shelves and the distinctive light fixtures.
*-*-*
We enjoyed a tasty lunch of a burger and fries for Barry and fish and chips for Lori. The windows behind us are sliding doors that open on warm days to give it a very open feel.
*-*-*
The patio area overlooking the marina. As you can tell we are obsessed with this place. Actually we had fun locating it and visiting.
*-*-*
After lunch we had the Uber driver drop us off at a Post Office where we picked up a box to mail some stuff back home. When we get to Australia, there are smaller weight limits on our bags for domestic flights and train rides. We are concerned they will be too heavy. So we hatched a plan that we could mail some of the clothes and souveniers that we wouldn't need for Oz Sky Star Safari to lighten the bags. We found a box and downloaded the app for for filling out the customs forms.
We got another Uber and it was the same person that picked us up in Westhaven. What a coincidence!
When I started filling out the customs forms, I found I had to list each item, tell their origin, weight and value. The vast majority of the items are clothing we brought from the US and none of it is new. So I made the list (20 items long), estimated the value in NZ$ for used clothing, left the weight box blank and tried to submit the form. It was rejected and indicated that I needed to have weights for each item. So I presented that problem to Barry.
We decided to sort each item by weight relative to one another and assign a weight factor based on the relative position. All of the weight factors must add to 1.0. When we take the box to the Post Office and weigh it, we can then mutiply the total weight by the relative weight factor for each item and have an approximate weight for that item. Not perfect but a good approximation.
We saw this really unusual skyscraper on one of our walks.
*-*-*
We were deciding where to go for dinner and this one stood out because of the name: Tony's Lord Nelson Steakhouse and it was not too far from our hotel.
*-*-*
They are really keeping with the Lord Nelson theme - here is the menu cover. The steaks (Scotch ribeyes) were outstanding - tender with the right amount of marbleing and cooked to perfection. The Hokey Pokey Sunday for dessert was sublime!
*-*-*
After leaving Lord Nelson's we went to The Warehouse, a large Target-type store, to pick up a few things including tape and a marker for addressing our package. We then walked back to our room and did our parametric weight evaluation of the items we planned to ship back home. We put the information into an Excel spreadhseet for use when we get the total package weight. Then we packed our box and taped it up. We streamed an episode of ""My Life is Murder and went to bed.
Tuesday March 18, 2025 Auckland Day 3:
We slept in, ate breakfast and showered. About 10 AM we took our package, our laptop and our umbrellas and Uber'd to the area of the Post Office. We weighed our package to get a total weight, then walked across the street to to the Subway, had lunch, booted the laptop and updated our spreadsheet with the total package weight. Then we painstakingly filled out the customs form and packed up and walked back to the Post Office. When I brought up the phone for the barcode from the customs form, it had disappeared, so we filled it out one more time. Finally we got our package mailed. It took a lot longer and was way more complicated than it should have been.
*-*-*
The weather still looked clear and sunny so we headed for the harbor to get our tickets for the harbor cruise. We saw these painted Kiwis around the dock area. They reminded us of the cows in Chicago and the horses in Amarillo. We had some gelatto and got in line to board the cruise boat and the skies opened up and it poured.
*-*-*
Unfortunately it continued to rain during the cruise. Barry got this artistic photo through the rainy window of the Sydney skyline.
*-*-*
Another sight we saw on the cruise was the famous Chelsea Sugar Factor, established in 1883 by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company of Sydney. It was a significant player in the international sugar trade and the industrial development of Sydney and continues to operate to this day.
*-*-*
At the other end of the pier we ran into this cute Kiwi.
*-*-*
It rained for the rest of the day and we stayed in, napped and packed. We ran out for dinner back at the Lord Nelson and tried some of their other entrees.
Wednesday March 19, 2025 Back to Sydney:
We got up early and Uber'd to the Auckland airport for our flight back to Sydney. Here we are, bags checked, through international security, sitting at the Auckland airport in the general waiting area for our flight to be assigned a gate.
*-*-*
One thing we noticed about Auckland (and also previously about Sydney) is that the roads are very organic and random. There are no direct routes to anywhere - it seems to always be lots of turns and block long zigzags.
The other thing that has occurred to us is what a wonderful app and business model Uber is. The drivers really seem to know the city or do a great job relying on their traffic directions. You can order up transportation on demand and know what you will be paying without arguement from the driver. The ride, for the most part, is pleasant. Some of the drivers are very entertaining with their questions and commentary, once they know you are from the US.
This hotel we picked because of its proximity to the train station where we had to catch the train for the next leg of our journey. The 57 Hotel was an eclectic bougie hotel with a disco elevator...seriously it had a disco ball and red lights that flashed on your ride up. This was our room which had a glass bathroom behind the sheer brown curtains which didn't quite provide privacy for any activity. Interesting design choice.
*-*-*
Before dinner we walked to the train station to see where we needed to go in the morning. It was good that we did because if took us a while to find the area for the Trainlink trains out of town. We also picked up our tickets and found out about checking our baggage. Then we Uber'd to the Italian Bowl Restaurant in Newtown. It was a loud, chaotic, and boisterous establishment that had really good, simple Italian food. Hot and plentiful! You ordered the pasta and what sauce and got a big bowl of it. And in an unusual twist in this "cashless" dominated world - they didn't accept cards. Only cash.
*-*-*
Thursday March 20, 2025 Sydney to Coonabarabran:
We got up really early and left for the train station. We had been really stressed out because the train website indicated strict weight and size limits on our checked and carry-on luggage. We had gotten the suitcase down to just under the alloted 20 kilos and the duffle was also less. But now we each had two carry-on bags and you were limited to one. When we got on the train, no questions asked about the carry-ons, we felt really stupid because most other passengers had bigger bags and more of them as well as rollerboards they brought on. This is a view of the cabin with the overhead storage shown. There were also shelves in the back for the rollerboards. It seems the travel world is the same all over - the carrier makes the rules and the passengers ignore them!
*-*-*
It took about an hour to get to the outskirts of Sydney and its suburbs. The towns did start getting smaller and less congested.
*-*-*
Here was a lovely countryside view coming into one of the small towns along the way.
*-*-*
Finally it became very rural with some sweeping vistas.
*-*-*
There was quite a variety of scenery as we climbed to elevation headed for Dubbo.
*-*-*
It was near this area and in an open field like this one that we saw our first mob of kangaroos. There were about a 100 of them. Unfortunately they surprised us and we were past them before we could snap a photo. They were on the move and almost seemed birdlike in their graceful herd motion.
*-*-*
We also saw a number of stands of trees turning colors since it is autumn in Australia.
*-*-*
After 5 thoroughly enjoyable hours we arrived in Dubbo. This building was just outside of Dubbo Station. This was the station master's residence built in 1881. It is now privately owned.
*-*-*
This mother and calf black rhinocerous sculpture is in front of the Dubbo Regional Airport. We were surpised to see them and looked up the history of why they were there. In 2012 four much-loved black rhinos died at Taragona's Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo with a mysterious ailment. The locals were heartbroken to have lost their beloved rhinos and a local activist-artist created this sculture in memorial to the rhinos. There is a another identical sculpture located at the zoo and at the visitor information center in Dubbo.
*-*-*
We got our rental car from the Avis counter at Dubbo airport and got on the road. It has the steering wheel on the right hand side and where the turn signal usually lives, is the windshield wiper switch. It appears to be a shared experience for Americans to turn on the windshield wipers when they want to turn!
*-*-*
Here is Barry driving our rental car. For never having driven on the wrong side of the road he did pretty well. I was white knuckle in the passenger seat though because we were hugging the left edge of a narrow two lane road with a jagged edge and no shoulders. He did get us safely to Coonabarabran about two hours away.
*-*-*
While the road was pretty lightly traveled and we didn't go through any large towns, this was one of the roads used by the really long trucks. Here was one of the "road train" trucks we passed in an "overtaking lane". They are huge.
*-*-*
As we neared Coonabarabran, we could see the Warrumbungles Mountains in the distance.
*-*-*
We pulled into the Coonabarabran Welcome Center to get some papers out of the trunk and were greeted with this sign. We checked into our motel, rested, then had dinner at the Golden Sea Dragon Chinese Restaurant. When we got back to the hotel, Barry set up the camera in the parking lot and snapped a few photos of the Southern Cross and we looked for the Magellanic clouds. A group of ladies stopped by to talk to us. They had been out at the edge of town stargazing themselves. They were from Sydney.
*-*-*
Friday March 21, 2025 Move to Warrumbungles Mountain Motel:
We discovered a flaw in our plan. I had us moving to the Oz Sky Star Safari a day before they were opening. So after contacting the coordinator, we decided to run out to the Warrumbunga Mountain Motel and see if we could check in earlier than our reservation.
We started out of town and as soon as we got beyond the town limits, we saw this sign warning us to watch out for wombats!
*-*-*
Soon after we encountered this sign also warning us of kangaroos. We dearly hoped we would see one or the other or maybe both!
*-*-*
We found the motel - a very small rural inn and pulled in. We talked to the proprietor and explained we were due to check in on Sunday and had arrived early and wondered if we could check in on Friday or Saturday. After some discussion and changing of rooms, we checked in and got the key. This is the bedroom, living room, dining room portion of our "efficiency". As I told a friend it has the definite vibe of a YMCA summer camp.
*-*-*
And here is our kitchen. We have a small stove, toaster, microwave and refrigerator!
*-*-*
After looking around we went back into town, found a laundromat and got our laundry started, then walked over to CoonaChicks to have lunch. Their chicken fingers and fries (chips) were really good with a very light coating. It started to rain hard as we walked back to pick up our laundry. We waited for it to let up, dashed to the car (with our clean clothes bundled to our chests) and went back to the in-town hotel. We packed up and checked out, then went to pick up some groceries so we could eat in, at least for breakfast and lunch. Then we went back to the Warrumbunga Mountain Motel and moved in.
As evening approached, the skies cleared and we set up the tracking mount to get it polar aligned (first time in the southern hemisphere) and to be able to image. Because of the rain, however the field was really wet and the atmosphere very humid. While we were sitting awaiting darkness, we saw a pair of kookaburras land in a nearby tree. It was only later that we got to hear their very distinctive call.
*-*-*
Here was a unique Covid distancing sign we saw outside our room at the hotel. How distinctly Aussie!
*-*-*
We captured this image of the Large Magellanic Cloud using the tracking mount, the Canon R6 DSLR, a 70-200 zoom lens at 200 mm. This is a single 30 second exposure. The skies here are really dark. This object, a large galaxy which is a satellite to our own Milky Way, can only be seen from the Southern Hemisphere.
*-*-*
This is the Milky Way as seen from the Southern Hemiphere. The large galaxy to the right of the Milky Way is the Large Magellanic Cloud and the smaller one below it is the Small Magellanic Cloud. Also visible is the Southern Cross (a kite made up of 4 stars laying sideways left of center with one vertex in the dark hole) and the pointer stars. The Southern Cross and the pointer stars showed early navigators where the southern pole was located.
*-*-*
A timelapse video of the Milky Way rotating about the South Pole. Also visible are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
*-*-*
Saturday March 22, 2025 Oz Sky Day 0:
When we looked out of our bedroom window this morning we were greeted with the sight of these two kangaroos having breakfast!
*-*-*
Mid-morning we decided to walk around the lovely property and familiarize ourselves with it. There are multiple groves of trees like this one.
*-*-*
There is a type of tree whose trunk is completely white. They really stand out in the forests. They are members of the Eucalyptus family and are native to Australia.
*-*-*
This is a view of the Observing Field. Only a few of the telescopes have arrived and are set up. More should come in today and tomorrow.
*-*-*
After lunch we took a drive up to Siding Springs Observatory. We have a tour scheduled for next Thursday but wanted to see where it was. This is the dome for the Anglo-Australian 4m Telescope and the visitor center.
*-*-*
On the grounds of the Siding Springs observatory, we saw this map for the world's largest virtual solar system drive. So we decided to find all of the planets. The Anglo-Australian Dome represents the sun.
*-*-*
Here are some other domes at Siding Springs. This site is a part of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University.
*-*-*
As we were leaving Siding Springs, at the front gate we saw this kangaroo grazing. Only after we got home did we see the second roo photobombing. These guys are everywhere but it is a thrill to see them every time!
*-*-*
Just outside the gate of Siding Springs, we saw our first planet - Mercury!
*-*-*
About halfway down the mountain we found Venus.
*-*-*
And just before we turned onto the main road, we found Earth.
*-*-*
Unfortunately there was some road construction and heavy equipment at the next location on this very narrow, windy road which made driving and photographing Mars very treacherous and we were not successful. So, our solar system doesn't have a Mars.
This was an unusual dome-rock we saw on our drive.
*-*-*
Sunday March 23, 2025 Oz Sky Day 1 Registration and Orientation:
We made a run to Woolworths and picked up some additional groceries. As we were leaving, Lori got stung on her shoulder by an unknown insect which immediately started swelling. It was also extremely painful.
We have seen a large number vehicles with snorkels. We haven't asked why.
*-*-*
It was a pretty lazy day and heavily overcast. Lori took Benadryl for the sting and took a nap. Barry processed the time-lapse from the night before. Around 4 PM, our neighbors from Deming arrived. Then we went off for the orientation talk.
At dusk we went to see if we could hear the cookaburras again and saw these kangaroos eating at the far end of the field.
*-*-*
It remained overcast so no looking at telescopes tonight!
Monday March 24, 2025 Oz Sky Day 2 Clouds and more clouds:
Barry and I attended a presentation called "Shooting Stars Part I - Nightscapes A Journey into Darkness" given by Andrew Murrell. Despite sounding like a Marlon Brando movie, it was a very interesting look at how to take nightscapes - photos of the Milky Way with interesting terrestrial imagery included. He talked about framing, camera settings, exposures and so forth. It was an excellent presentation!
We had lunch in and then later Barry went to another presentation on how to align and use the Argo Navis - a system for pointing the Dobsonian telescopes we will get to use if the skies clear.
After that we went to the group photo wearing our Oz Sky t-shirts (here we are waiting for everyone to arrive) and then dinner which was a cookout hosted by the Oz Sky team. We had bangers or snags as some of the locals called them, cooked on the grill, chips, and salad. There were peaches and ice cream for dessert. It was "bring your own drinks, plates and cutlery" and we got to visit with other participants and swap stories. We met folks from Colorado, Arizona and Albuquerque. After, it was still cloudy so no astronomy, but we sat outside for a while and enjoyed the darkness.
*-*-*
The official Oz Sky Group photo.
*-*-*
Tuesday March 25, 2025 Oz Sky Day 3 Continued Clouds with Little Hope of Improvement:
We awakened early to broken clouds and we decided to get dressed and take the camera with telephoto lens out to see if we could get some more kangaroo photos.
Here is a photo of the moon peeking out from the clouds this morning.
*-*-*
And the morning sunrise. It was a lovely temperature and there was a very slight breeze. The kangaroos showed up at the treeline at the far end.
*-*-*
Around eight kangaroos came for breakfast today. They hung out for about 40 minutes and then went into the trees and down to the river.
*-*-*
A cute couple of roos!
*-*-*
Later in the morning we went to the second part of the Nightscapes lecture on the steps to processing your images to bring out the details. These are single images with no stacking involved.
At 11 AM we left for staff meeting at this Subway we found in Coonabarabran. Because this planet was located between the motel and Coonabarabran, we passed by this one several times but today we took the photo. Here is Jupiter.
*-*-*
The Subway menu is similar (Barry could still get a tuna sandwich) but a number of the other familiar sandwiches are simply not on the menu and they have substituted Chicken Schnitzel and other Aussie favorites. I had a terrific Chicken Classic which was a breaded chicken patty with "old english style cheese" (a strong yellow cheese) and garlic aoli. They didn't have any crisps (chips to us from the US) and we asked about it. He said they didn't sell and he stopped carrying them. They did have cookies but no oatmeal raisin. They also carried coke products and was one of the few places in Australia where we could get legit Diet Coke and not just Coke Zero.
*-*-*
This is a photo looking toward the traffic circle in downtown Coonabarabran. In spite of it spinning the wrong way (for us) Barry has become quite good at navigating it and coming out at the correct road.
*-*-*
Coonabarabran is a small town northeast of Sydney near the Warrumbungle National Forest. It has a population of around 3500 people and according to Wikipedia about 15% of the citizens are indigenous aborigines. The name of the town means "inquisitive person".
A photo looking toward the other end of Coonabarabran. It has a number of bakeries, cafes, and hotels. Also shown in the picture is the unusual 45 degree parking where you have to back into the space. It makes sense once you get the hang of it because when you pull out you can easily see traffic and you are not backing out blindly. But the first time it felt really strange.
*-*-*
After walking around a bit, we went to fill the car with gas. This was the sign at the petrol station we used. AUD$1.77 per liter. That is AUD$6.70 per gallon or US$4.35 per gallon. A little pricey!
*-*-*
Before heading back to the hotel, we went to the bank to get change for an AUD$100 bill that we brought from the US because smaller bills are more easily used. We asked if they could exchange US dollars for Aussie dollars and they suggested the Post Office. The gentleman at the Post Office said it could only be done at international airports.
Rural mailboxes are quite whimsical and apparently without a lot of rules. This particular one belongs to a sheep farm.
*-*-*
And here is an Emu mailbox just down the road.
*-*-*
This appears to be a privately owned observatory along the road to our motel.
*-*-*
This is the entrance to our motel. It is easy to miss and drive past! Notice the beautiful grove of eucalyptus trees at the entrance.
*-*-*
Wednesday March 26, 2025 Oz Sky Day 4 Visiting the Emu Farm:
The sky hadn't cleared much and it looked drizzly but we decided it was a good day to drive over to the local Emu Farm and see these interesting birds.
We drove 35 minutes west, through the Warrumbungle National Park to the emu farm. One of the other attendees had mentioned going over there earlier in the week. It was closed but many of the birds were near the fence.
*-*-*
This gorgeous bird posed for a photo.
*-*-*
The emu were slow, patient creatures and stood there examining us as we were examining them. This lovely bird had such interesting feathering around his face, almost like curly hair and eyelashes. The magnificant turquoise markings really stood out.
*-*-*
They were curious creatures and not long after we arrived, this line of emus started coming toward us along the fence line.
*-*-*
Here are two posing in front of a field of other emu.
*-*-*
Unfortunately not long after this photo was taken two very loud motorbikes went roaring down the road and the emu scattered and ran away from the fence line.
We left and, because there was very little traffic, Lori got up the courage to drive. She drove all the way home!
*-*-*
When we arrived back at the motel, we noticed the parrots were in residence at the bird feeder. Barry got this picture of four Australian King Parrots chowing down.
*-*-*
A lovely King Parrot Couple. The male has the red head and the female is mostly green with a red belly.
*-*-*
Apparently they live on the motel grounds, but are not caged and are free to roam. They are often seen in the various shrubs and trees around the motel. But they do come back to eat in the mornings and evenings and that is when you can be treated to seeing half a dozen or more in one place.
Thursday March 27, 2025 Oz Sky Day 5 - A visit to Siding Springs Observatory:
We awakened to yet another gray and overcast day. More people are leaving and either going elsewhere in Australia or starting home. Barry and I have discussed some 'Hail Mary' moves like getting back to Sydney and flying to Perth or Adelaide or somewhere there are no clouds. Unfortunately there is no clearcut winner in that regard because it would take us two days to get there.
After breakfast we drive into Coonabarabran to get change and make a few phone calls back to Deming. We are concerned the package we mailed ourselves from New Zealand is going to be shipped back because there is no one present to sign for it. After talking to the Deming Postmaster, who assures us all is fine, we get back to the motel. The one washer at the hotel is busy so we decide to go back into town to do our laundry. While it is running, we ate lunch at the Royal Hotel. The restaurant is a nice little corner of the lobby with half a dozen tables and a view of their courtyard. They had the doors open and it was very pleasant.
As we were sitting there talking, it struck us that we were very glad (in spite of the weather) that we had spent time in Australia away from Sydney. We were here long enough to get the rythym of the town, meet a number of its citizens and just relax. The Australians, in general, and the ones who live here, in particular, seem to be a friendly, happy group of people. They are very willing to answer questions and talk with you. We met one man in front of the Subway Sandwich Shop when we had gone there to lunch that pointed out where we were parked was for parallel parking not 45 degree parking (after we had parked that way). While Barry re-parked the car, he chatted me up and told me about his great-great grandfather that had come to Australia from Stamford, Connecticut in 1885 during the gold rush.
Today we are touring the Anglo-Australian Telescope at the Sidings Springs Observatory. It is a 3.9 meter equatorially mounted telescope which is the largest optical telescope in Australia.
*-*-*
This is a photo of us in front of the telescope inside the dome. It went into operation in 1974 and, at the time was completely manual and attended by astronomers in residence. Now it is completely automated and is used by researchers all over the world. It is reserved a year in advance and if you miss your night because of weather, you go back to the bottom of the list. We were wearing coats because they keep the dome to the coldest temperature expected at night for the stability of the optics.
*-*-*
We were very excited when they activated first the dome and then the telescope. Barry captured a video of the telescope moving up to a vertical position.
*-*-*
After an introductory talk, they took us up onto the platform at telescope level. The round white cylinder at the top is the secondary mirror. The primary mirror is below that but hidden by the support structure. They remove, clean and recoat the mirror with aluminum annually.
*-*-*
They rotated the telescope to allow workers to access the secondary.
*-*-*
There is a catwalk all the way around the dome which they let the tour group use. Here is a view toward the mountains.
*-*-*
Here is the view toward another cluster of domes and telescopes, including the UK Schmidt Telescope. The UK Schmidt Telescope is a survey telescope with a 1.2 meter aperture which was designed to do photographic surveys of a 6.6 degree square area of the sky. The last survey was completed in 2005. It was then upgraded to a multi-object fiber-optic spectrograph system.
*-*-*
The photo also shows the road in, the parking lot and our little bright red suzuki.
This is the other cluster of domes and telescopes at the observatory including the Sky Mapper Telescope, a fully automated 1.35 meter widefield telescope. It is producing a high fidelity digital record of the entire southern sky. Also in the photo is the 2.3 meter Australian National University telescope for students at ANU and other universities. Also called the ATT or Advanced Technology Telescope, it is located in the rather unique square building which rotates around the telescope.
*-*-*
Here is a full-scale mock up of the blank for the mirror used in the Anglo-Australian Telescope.
*-*-*
The placard associated with the telescope blank.
*-*-*
Here is Barry coming to earth as a meteor!
*-*-*
As we drove home from the observatory, we saw a large group of kangaroos hanging out in a field near the road. Later that evening, we ate a catered dinner put on by the motel with other Oz Sky participants and then went back to the room.
Friday March 28, 2025 Oz Sky Day 6:
We awakened to continuing overcast and rain. At this point the ground is totally saturated and according to the weather forecast, the humidity is sitting at 96%. We decided to drive around then go to lunch. Barry spotted an intriguing subdivision north of Coonabarabran which had street names like 'Constellation' and 'Sirius', so thinking it might be an astronomy-related subdivision, we drove there. The round structures were water tanks, the houses were pretty rudimentary and some folks were living in travel trailers with lean-to add-ons. Not an astronomy subdivsion. So we drove back to town and went to the Crystal Kingdom, a small mineral/crystal museum.
They had a moderate sized area where they sold crystals and rocks from all over the world. A second area was the museum with rocks, minerals, and fossiles from Australia. Admission was free and these guys stood at the entrance to the museum patiently waiting for an excited boy or girl to climb on their back!
*-*-*
This dinosaur was the centerpiece of the museum part. We did enjoy looking at the many fossils and mineral samples.
*-*-*
After leaving the museum we went to lunch. It was about 11:15. We went to Coona Chicks but they were more than their usual 15 minutes late in opening and there were 7 school-aged teens and 3 workmen waiting. Eventually the others all left and we were left by ourselves. Coona Chicks finaly opened at 11:40. They lost a lot of business that day...
We went back to the motel in time to hear a really great talk on Wehrner von Braun. We ate dinner and then turned in.
Saturday March 29, 2025 Oz Sky Day 7 (Last Day):
During the night it rained really hard and our roof started leaking. In the morning one corner of the ceiling was pretty wet and dripping on the floor. We had breakfast, hung around the room and started packing. As the afternoon wore on, you could start to see some blue patches. We went to our final talk on the discovery and acknowledgement of spiral arms in galaxies, which was controversial in its day because it indicated the heavens were evolving which conflicted with the church views on God's creation. After the talk, we attended the photo contest.
In past years I am sure it was all about astronomy. But this year, because the skies never cleared there were lots of animal, bird and people pictures. The winner was selected by popular vote and Barry won for his Portrait of an Emu. He chose a small meteorite for his prize.
As we went to dinner the group was all abuzz with the possibility of getting to look through the scopes as the sky was continuing to clear. Our Oz Sky hosts put on a farewell barbeque of burgers with all the Aussie trimmings...tomato sauce (ketchup), beets, grilled onions, lettuce and tomato. (No cheese).
After dinner, the telescopes were open for business. The grass was incredibly wet and soggy but we all got to look through a number of 20 inch and larger Dobsonion Telescopes at some ot the best southern objects. Among other memorable objects, we saw Eta Carinae (a binary star which has a split down the middle and is 100 times brighter than our sun), 47 Tucanae (the brightest globular cluster after Omega Centari) and the Tarantula Nebula, a star forming region in the Large Magellanic cloud. It was terrific and the skies cooperated until well after 10 PM. We all had a great time and the crowd was very convivial and boisterous going from telescope to telescope to get a look.
Barry and I stole off and set up the camera on the tripod to get some Milky Way photos. The dew was a problem, but we did capture some great images.
This is our epic Milky Way photo, taken around 5 in the morning the day we were set to leave. Barry went out one last time and this was high overhead.
*-*-*
Sunday March 30, 2025 Travel back to Sydney:
We didn't get a lot of sleep last night, a combination of excitement at going home and Barry getting up to take photos of a different part of the sky. We got up early, had breakfast and repacked the camera equipment, finished packing our clothes and loaded up the car. Then we set off for Dubbo.
Just south of Coonabarabran on our way back to Dubbo, we found Saturn.
*-*-*
Driving further along the road to Dubbo, at a rest area we found Uranus.
*-*-*
Neptune was supposed to be in the town of Dunedoo, but it was more of a challenge because it was a slightly bigger town and had several possible roads. So I tried typing Neptune into iMaps and Barry was surprised when Siri said, "Getting directions to Neptune."
*-*-*
The drive to Dubbo was pretty uneventful. Barry felt significantly more comfortable driving on the left side of the road. We found four more entries in the largest solar system model and the last one (Pluto) took us to the park in Dubbo where we saw this terrific old iron bridge photobombed by the indigenous turtle!
*-*-*
And here is our last planet - Pluto.
*-*-*
From the park, we drove through downtown Dubbo (around 6 roundabouts in a row) to get to the McDonalds for lunch and then to the airport. We waited for a while for Avis to open (not happening), checked our bags and went through security. It was fun - they had you take all electronic devices out of your bags and you went through one of the Leidos full-body scanners. But, no id or ticket check and your friends and neighbors could also go through to see you off planeside. Here is our plane on the Tarmac. It was a DeHavilland -8. This was a very small airport.
*-*-*
Barry's iPhone camera could stop the propellors in mid-flight.
*-*-*
We arrived in Sydney on-time, gathered our luggage from baggage claim and Uber'd to the Holiday Inn Express near the airport. Across the street was this pie bakery, with nary a sweet one but every type of meat pie you could imagine!
*-*-*
We took a nap. When we woke up it was raining and miserable outside so we decided to eat pizza in the hotel. It was so-so but we enjoyed each other's company and conversation and had a fun time.
Monday March 31, 2025 Sydney Part 3:
We decided to visit the Australian Museum. It is the oldest natural history museum in the southern hemisphere and the fifth oldest in the world. We read that it has an amazing array of artifacts.
Dinosaurs are a big part of their exhibits much to the delight of children and adults alike. The dinosaur exhibit hall entry has the bones of both a plant eater and a meat eater. Here is the plant eater.
*-*-*
And the meat eater. Although Australia has its share of dinosaur fossiles and bones, this pair came from Africa.
*-*-*
This model was very impressive. You gotta love those snaggly (but sharp) teeth!
*-*-*
Unfortunately part of the museum was closed for updating the exhibit and we didn't get to see the Alcoota Kalopsis, a predecessor to the wombat. But we did see this sign. He was about 5 ft long and 3 ft tall and like his modern day cousin is herbivorous.
*-*-*
The museum also had a large area devoted to rocks, meteorites, minerals, and crystals. This was a very large, eye-popping banded iron formation slab. It had alternating layers of kink-folded iron oxide (hematite and magnetite) and microcrystalline silica (red and brown chert and golden-brown tiget eye). The tiger eye looked like strands of gold. This slab weighed just under 200 lbs and was only about 2 inches thick.
*-*-*
We had lunch in the Billabong Water Hole where we feasted on sausage rolls and crisps. The flatware was made of thin wood.
*-*-*
Here is sampling of some the many crystals on display.
*-*-*
There was also an interesting display on rare earth metals and where various ones were being mined. We were fascinated by the size of the heat sink on this electronics board.
*-*-*
We also saw this meteorite found in western Australia on the Mundrabilla Nullabor Plain. It is part of a 780 piece collection of meteorites that the museum holds.
*-*-*
This display was suspended at the level of the 2nd gallery but was visible from different angles above and below. It is an Irish Elk skeleton which was neither exclusively Irish nor an Elk. It was pulled from a peat bog in Ireland which is what gives the bones the dark coloring. It is a megafauna of the Pleistocene and roamed Europe. It looks like a distant ancestor of today's North American moose. It stood over 6 feet tall with an antler span of over 9 feet.
*-*-*
Here is a display of some of the many freshwater turtle inhabiting Australia.
*-*-*
This is a whale skeleton suspended overhead in the Hall of Giants wing of the museum. It was originally displayed in 1883, shortly after acquisition, at eye level taking up a large portion of the hall it was in. The skeleton is a sperm whale that beached near Wollongong in 1871. In 1910 it was decided to supend it above viewers and remove all of the iron support scaffolding making it appear to float over viewers' heads.
*-*-*
This display has been a popular exhibit at the museum since 1873. It has been nicknamed the Bone Ranger. The horse skeleton belongs to the 19th century thoroughbred Sir Hercules who sired the 1866 Melbourne Cup winner. The skeleton's history is less clear. It was an unidentified body found along the McDonald River in 1976. Originally thought to be aboriginal, it was given to the museum. Further more recent DNA testing indicates it is the bones of a European male age 25 to 45 years but attempts at identification have been unsuccessful.
*-*-*
Also displayed in the Hall of Giants were a number of animals. Here is the giant aardvark.
*-*-*
And the now-extinct Tasmanian Tiger, also known as a Thylacine. It went extint on the Australian mainland about 2000 years ago but continued to roam in Tasmania. The last one died in captivity in Tasmania in 1936. It was a large carnivorous marsupial.
*-*-*
Barry joking around with an Emu.
*-*-*
A tawny frogmouth bird - a nocturnal carnivorous hunter.
*-*-*
A display of various types of seabirds in the Long Gallery.
*-*-*
A look back at the majestic Long Gallery of the Australian Museum. It contains three levels of gallery displays.
*-*-*
After leaving the museum we went back to the hotel and did some packing for the trip home. We went to dinner one last time at Primi, our favorite Aussie Italian restaurant.
*-*-*
Tuesday April 1, 2025 Fly Back to the U.S. and Home:
We got up and got to the Sydney International terminal, checked our bags, went through security and got to our seats. We had a 10:25 AM departure for our first leg - a 13 hour flight to LAX.
Sunrise somewhere over the Pacific.
*-*-*
We arrived at LAX with no incidents and no sleep to speak of at 5:30 in the morning on the same day we had left - April Fool's Day. First up was passport control and customs. We had Global Entery and it could not have been easier. Because we were the first flight in, there were no lines anywhere. We picked up our luggage, had our passports scanned, had a photo taken for facial id and then exited the area.
We walked to the Delta area to check our bags on to Phoenix and then had to exit the airport to go to the next gate in a different terminal (2 terminals away). We walked and walked and walked some more, entered the terminal and were directed in the direction in which we came and walked about halfway back to get to the entrance to the security checkpoint. After a short wait we got through, except, I had inadvertantly left water in my water bottle. Oh No! I got escorted back out of security (because I wanted to keep my bottle), had to empty it and go back through the security line again. Then I got to do special screening (because I had no luggage since I had left that with Barry)! We were finally through and found our gate. Since the layover was only two hours we did not have long before we boarded.
Next stop Phoenix - we arrived at the Delta terminal then walked down and got our luggage after a short wait. We then walked to the other end of the terminal to catch the train to the Southwest terminal and went to check in our bag (More walking!). We had a 5+ hour layover so we didn't have to rush. In fact, when we got to the Southwest baggage check, we were rejected because it was more than 4 hours before our flight. So we went to find some chairs and hang out for 45 minutes. Finally we checked our bags, went through security and found a place ot eat lunch. Then we went to our gate and waited for our flight. The thing we most wanted to do was sleep because, at this point, we had been awake for more than 24 hours.
The lateral winds were epic on our short flight from Phoenix to El Paso. This was the view out the window during our flight. That is not fog - it is the dust blowing. It was also one of the roughest landings we had ever experienced.
*-*-*
We got our luggage, picked up our rental car and set out for home. Unfortunately the winds were high and the dust was blowing, so I-10 was reported as closed from Las Cruces to past Deming. We stopped in Las Cruces for dinner at Red Lobster (to let the winds die down as the sun went down) and when we were done the roads were still reported as closed. But the visibility wasn't bad, so we started for Deming and decided we would turn back if necessary. We lucked out, the roads were open and we got home a little before 9 PM.
It was an epic trip with a lot of moving parts but we had a fantastic and very memorable time. However, it is good to be home.
