Skip to main content

Of Moon rocks and rockets



The rules changed a few days ago and many residents of Sydney, including us, can now visit the Australian Capital Territory. It's barely an interstate trip, but there was small desire to visit.

Unfortunately Alex is suffering nausea as we drive along the Lachlan Valley Highway and we have to make a few stops for him to empty his stomach.

We pull over at Boorowa to use the facilities and end up taking a walk around the historically quaint main street. There are gift shops, cafes and a bakery, along with a nice park where Alex rests. It seems to do the trick and he is much better for the rest of the ride. 




I plan to continue the astronomical trail with a visit to the Tidbinbilla Space Tracking Station. There is a brief stint along the Hume Highway, the first four lane highway since leaving the Blue Mountains. Then we turn off into the Barton Highway, eventually into Canberra. 

Many think the ACT is Canberra, but there is more to it than that. Tidbinbilla sits to the south of the city, accessed along winding roads through grasslands and granite hills. The views are spectacular, though I have to focus on the driving. 

We switch our phones to flight mode as we enter the road to the tracking station. The dishes have to be sensitive enough to receive signals from probes that have reached the edge of the solar system. 

The tracking station is part of NASA's network and is responsible for transmitting to and receiving signals from both manned and unmanned space missions and probes. 

Contrary to movie history, the first vision of Neil Armstrong's first steps on to the lunar surface came via the Honeysuckle Creek station further south in the ACT, not Parkes, which took over transmissions a little later. 

The Honeysuckle Creek site is now decommissioned and the receiver moved to its current site at Tidbinbilla, where it too is now out of service. However, there are four other dishes still in service, three 34 meters in diameter, one giant 70 metre, bigger than Parkes. 






All this information and much more is contained within the visitors centre. There are so many great things to see, from old astronaut meals to space suits, information and models of probes, rockets and the space shuttle. The best: A piece of Moon rock brought back by the Apollo missions. 









The attached cafe is great as well. B announces that her beef hamburger is the best she's had. 

We are all pretty tired after the drive and centre, so we drive straight back to the Deco hotel, where we've stayed twice before. There we spend the rest of the afternoon, watching cricket and sleeping. 

Though it has cooking facilities, we can't be bothered and so drive to the Canberra Centre to eat at PappaRich. It's not the best Malaysian food in Canberra, but it is convenient for late night shopping. We only buy breakfast groceries. 

Not sure what we will do tomorrow other than head home. 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The little Jedi of Kinosaki Onsen

A long time ago in a land far, far away. That's what it felt like as we walked the streets of Kinosaki Onsen dressed in our yukatas, the clop-clop of wooden getas sounding in the air. In his robes Alex looked the spitting image of a young Jedi padawan, all that was missing was the lightsaber. Incidently, Padawan is a district of Kuching in Malaysia. The town was so far back in time that my 4G router couldn't get a signal, hence the lack of an update. Plus I was feeling a little under the weather. There can be few better places to rest than Kinosaki Onsen. We dragged our luggage on the Midosuji subway to Umeda, then barely caught the Ltd Exp Hamakaze in time. An older Japanese train it lacked a food service or vending machines, leading to big issues. Alex was hungry for breakfast. B and I had eaten slices of Kobe cheesecake for breakfast, but Alex didn't like it. As we raced past the huge Akashi bridge Alex was pleading for food and drink. The kind ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Springs, castles and the end of the line

I am never happy to stop before the end of the line. It irritates me to know that there is still somewhere unexplored lying ahead. So when I only got as far as Gujo Hachiman on the Nagaragawa Railway last year I knew I needed to return for more. Especially as this private third sector railway is, by its very nature, always at threat of closure due to low patronage. But did Gujo Hachiman deserve another visit? Sure it's a nice enough town, but had we missed out on enough last time to return? Mum's trip provided the excuse. I originally planned the Oito line, which wI'll be partly closed when the Shinkansen line is extended to Kanazawa. However, when I thought of special places in Japan that deserved to be shared Gujo Hachiman was at the top of the list. Before we could go anywhere Mum needed her coffee. There was a Tully's Coffee opposite the hotel entrance, so I parked her there while I booked our seat reservations. Mum got her fast train ride on a ...
4 comments
Read more

The Carlingford Line

We close the year and the decade with a local adventure to mark the closure of a railway line. On the January 5, 2020, the Carlingford Line from Clyde will close to be partially replaced by the Parramatta Light Rail. This is Sydney's quietest line, a single track branch for most of its length from the industrial centre of Clyde to the northwestern suburb of Carlingford. According to Wikipedia, power supply and signalling issues mean that only a single four car train can utilise the line at a time. Newer Sydney trains run in fixed eight car configurations. This will be the first and last time I traverse the Carlingford Line in its current configuration. The weather of the day is certainly appropriate for an ending, the brown smoke haze lending an apocalyptic air to proceedings. I drive to Padstow and catch the T8 line to Central, followed by the T1 towards Parramatta and Penrith. The historic homes of the Inner West give way to industrial complexes, rail storage yards and t...
4 comments
Read more