Coonabarabran (the last a is silent)

A lot of travel today. As requested by our intrepid leaders Tim and Elise, we were at the level 3 door to drop off our suitcases at 5:50 (yes, AM), and then enjoyed a full but speedy version of the delicious Four Seasons breakfast buffet and got on the bus at 6:30. Our trip to the airport was uneventful and the group check-in was easy; security screening was tsa-precheck level (except for belts off) and then we had an hour in the small domestic terminal to walk around and look in the shops. I found a very nice striped linen shirt in a shop called the French Connection, so that is my Sydney souvenir. 

Our flight to Tamworth was mostly our tour group and boarding went smoothly, but the flight was quite delayed because one of the apps on the cockpit iPad wasn’t working. Eventually they gave up and got a paper copy of whatever it was, and we took off. It was a short (1 hour) and relatively smooth flight, and the snack was a large and tasty hunk of banana bread with macadamia nuts. Way better than pretzels. Tamworth is the Nashville of Australia, hence the official welcoming committee poster.

Our giant white bus and new driver Sasha were waiting for us outside, so along with our Australia guide Elise who joined us this morning in Sydney we headed to Coonabarabran for lunch and a tour of the Siding Springs observatory. Our lunch was at a small and pretty hole in the wall called Tibuc Gardens – it was maybe a mile up a dirt road, part of which was almost washed out, and it was clearly not designed for tour buses. The food was meh, although my lemon tart was amazingly tart and delicious. The big problem was that we’d been on the bus for 2.5 hours and the restaurant had exactly two toilets, one of which was in a separate building out back that (fortunately) I found accidentally.

Our bus kneels, but we were parked facing downhill and between the kneeling of the front of the bus and the hill it was quite a challenge to get back to our seats! From there it was a fairly short drive up the mountain to the Observatory. Our driver Sasha drives rally cars in his free time, and I don’t think any bus has ever taken mountain curves like that before. It made the mild turbulence we had in the plane seem very tame. Along the way to the observatory there is the best ever scale model of the solar system. We missed seeing Pluto in Tamworth (and half the bus thought that was fitting, while the other half, myself included, are part of the Pluto is a Planet society and were sad to have missed a chance to show our support) but found the sign for Neptune, which is a half-size billboard with a large half sphere colored like Neptune sticking out of it. We continued driving and saw Uranus and Saturn (very large) and Jupiter. They were spread very far apart. Then Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury, all much smaller and coming fast and furious. The sun is the dome of the 4 meter telescope, and everything else is scaled to it. It gave a sense of the relative sizes and distances better than anything I’ve ever seen.

The View from the Top

We were rather rushed at the observatory as they were closing about an hour after we got there, but we did get to go inside the big dome and look at the big telescope (I’ve seen bigger) and also drive up to the top of the mountain for Scenic Views. In the big dome Dave found a picture of longtime family friend Uncle Olin, who was the director both of Siding Springs and earlier of Mt Stromlo, the observatory where his dad went on Sabbatical for a year when Dave was 9. Up at the top of the mountain there’s a memorial rock in Olin’s honor, and it was a little sad to think about him and Dave’s dad and mom and all those times. 

The view from the top is astonishingly beautiful; the mountain is in the Wurrabungle mountain range which is part of the eastern continental divide. They are old mountains with sharp volcanic bits that have stayed as the softer rock has eroded.  Unfortunately the weather was not cooperating; it was cold and cloudy and we were pretty well chilled by the time we got through up there.

Then it was back on the bus for a short stop at the visitor’s center, and then the drive to our motel. I don’t know if I was used to Sasha’s driving or if Tim and Elise heard the screams on the way up and had a word with him, but the drive down didn’t seem as frightening. It’s also possible that the fact that we saw lots and lots of ‘Roos – both the common eastern grays and the endangered rock wallaby made him drive more slowly to avoid a collision – the bus doesn’t have roo bars, after all. They are a lot like deer in that way.  Our motel, the Matthew Flinders Motor Inn, was quite a change from the Four Seasons! Coonabarabran (as much fun to type as it is to say) is a tiny town, and they are nor really set up to handle groups of 40 people. I really do love this place though, with its cinder block walls and amazing bathroom tile. We ate at their restaurant, another place that is not used to serving 40 people at once. We’d all pre-ordered our dinners but they had been without power until about 2 hours before dinner, so the kitchen was pretty stressed. I don’t know if the food would have been better if they’d had more time to prepare it, but I suspect not. We sat with Mike and Judi, and added Helen of Helen and Steve to our group of astronomy wives.

While we were driving from Siding Springs to our hotel the sky had looked like it was trying to clear up, and during the meal we got the OK from Donna the Astronoma’s husband at the airport to come out for an hour of observing. I decided not to go, even though I haven’t seen the southern stars before. I’m hoping the weather will be clearer tomorrow night. I spent a little time writing up the blog and then Dave got back – apparently when they got to the airport it was completely clouded over and they just turned around and came back. We had a fairly early bedtime.