On the Bottom Half

Cheap poo, radiotelescopy, camels, and 'Bungles

You will find all of these things travelling a single highway route in Aus!

These pictures are a kind of highlight tour to whet your appetites for subsequent posts. So, presented in no particular order:

Couldn't pass this picture up: we hit a town called Campbelltown shortly after leaving Sydney to get food; however, Campbelltown has one unique feature - once you enter, you can't leave! It took the better part of an hour to actually find a route out of the town back onto the freeway. Cheap! And good for the flowers...

Next up is right up (one of) my alleys: it is the radiotelescope in Parkes, NSW. A 64 m dish that is still on the vanguard of radiotelescopy after being constructed in the early 60s. You all need to see the movie 'The Dish' - it was filmed on site here and features, among other things, a game of cricket played inside the dish... This place was used as the primary feed for live television during Apollo 11 and beamed much of that footage to the millions of T.V. sets tuned in for the Moon landing in 1969.

After the bulk of the outback NSW tour, we ended up in Port Macquarie where we spent two glorious days on the beach. The first day, the waves were so big that that even the surfers weren't out. Wow - big waves. So, we went for a camel ride instead. How often does one get to ride a camel on a beach in the Coral Sea?

I'll show the camels later, but at least that explains the helmet.

Before the camel ride on the beach, we were in one of the coolest small towns in Australia: Coonabarabran - that's Coon-a-bear-a-bran. Its a place were everyone is obsessed with stargazing and nearly everyone knows someone who is in a observatory. A whole town of up-lookers! Anyway, just outside of town is Warrumbungles National Park, where one of Australia's largest optical telescopes is located. Beautiful drive through this. Pretty well everything in this picture is related to volcanism - volcanoes, volcanic necks, dikes.

Long weekend this past weekend for Queen's Birthday. Went to Werribee Mansion & Shadowfax Winery with Bruce and Helen, then spent all of today exploring the east side of Melbourne around the Melbourne Cricket Ground and some beautiful gardens and conservatories. A most interesting day! This evening, I made a pumpkin soup with Zac's organic pumpkin that he can't eat (long story), then made another soup for supper - red lentils are great as a thickener. Success with my guinea pigs in the other unit says that I'll try it again, but next time with a little bit of onion powder. Humpf.

Love you guys.

posted by Kyle @ 19:16