Just Like Buses

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Day 68

I was up and at’em early this morning as I wanted to get in to the spa baths at 7.00am, I unsuccessfully tried to rouse she who must be obeyed but to no avail, she groaned she was tired and wanted an extra half an hour in bed.

I trundled down the road and waited for the gate to be opened at 7.00am, as soon as it was I jumped in to one of the four pools they had, the 35 degree one, Mmmm!! I stayed in the 35 for 15 minutes and then went in to the 39 degree pool for 5 minutes. Finally and this is what its all about I got in to the cold pool and the sensation was excellent.

The temperature in Moree, was hot, hot, hot, close if not on the button of 40 degree’s C, The camper trailer is nice and cool as we leave all the openings undone and the mozzie nets done up so a cool breeze can blow through.

We packed up the trailer and I had promised Caroline that we would drive in to the town of Moree and have a nice big breakfast as a treat as the last time we did this was probably 5-6 weeks ago when we came off Fraser Island. The truck was parked in a provisional car park that has to take up 2 bays, we got out and the heat was already searing and it was only 10.00am.

A nice café was found and we had the Australian works, Bacon, Scrambled egg on toast, Hash Brown, and coffee, I’m sure that they split a pig between the two of us, I couldn’t eat it all, and Caroline said it was the best bacon she had ever tasted and asked after its origin, it was local, so I am sure that it was as fresh as it could be.

As we were sitting on the main street eating our breakie, it was just a truck fest going both way’s with road trains everywhere, we didn’t know which way to look, Kenworths, Mack’s, Freightliners, pulling 2x 40ft trailers. A guy we were speaking to in Mooloolaba a while ago said that in Toowoomba, the road trains added a 3rd 40ft trailer to head up north. We are so wanting to see these bad boys of the road.

We saw a cattle truck and his UHF call sign was “Cowz with Gunz” and his trailer had the “Beef Bus” sign written on it

After breakfast we walked up the main street, a lovely town of around 15,000-ish, we went to a store for a pair a flip flops, and came out with a pair of shorts as well (and a pair of gaiters each). I have only had a pair of trousers on once since we have been here, when we went out for a curry in Brisbane (Why?).

As the computer was still awaiting repair, we needed to do the blog for the day before, so we went into Moree library, and asked if we could use their internet access, which was free, the lady said we could use it for an hour, so she logged us on.

Not having a trusty laptop is like loosing your eye site, we absolutely depend on this piece of kit and hope that Wayne the Dell engineer will meet us in Narrabri on Thursday as It has been nearly a week and our readers are getting restless, apart from that it is a pain in the butt always looking for places to type up the blog directly online, instead of typing it over a cup of tea whenever we fancy, then uploading.

Doing it our way gives us time to talk about the previous day a put feeling in the adventure and make it a true account with all the little aspects that make it fascinating, typing it in the library is to cram as much as we can from our written notes in to the time we have. However it is better than nothing so we are grateful for the excellent library facilities.

We left Moree just after lunch, Caroline had taken some photo’s of the town and was pleased, so we headed south to Narrabri.

The journey South was easy today, just 100 kilometres and a 1 hour drive.

When we arrived in Narrabri we found a good camp site (with a swimming pool), just out of town, set up the Trailer then took off for the Australian telescope at Wee Waa.

The radio telescope consists of 6 22mtr dishes, which is run by (CSIRO) the Commonwealth and Industrial Research Organisation, which give it the combined power of a telescope 6 kilometres in diameter which would be impossible to build, it was a fantastic site, you could only see 5 of the radio telescopes as they are spread over a length of 3 Kilometres of train track, so they can move them about. The other two telescopes involved in this group of 3 are Mopra and Parkes (The Dish), we hope to be at Coonabarabran by Thursday and Parkes sometime next week after a 2 day stop in Dubbo.

Those who knew us knew about our telescope in our loft and our interest in the night sky, though our knowledge was in its infancy we did share the same passion, which is gaining momentum in Australia as their clear night sky’s are fabulous, though we are having some difficulty with the Southern Hemisphere, especially as we hadn’t got to grips with the Northern that well.

Inside the building there were no people around and you could read about the history of Paul Wilde who was a British scientist from Sheffield who had this array named after him, for his contribution to Science in Australia.

I just love these honesty boxes, I had 3 post cards, the famous image is one of Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin standing on the moon’s surface on the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969, (I believe the greatest thing man has ever achieved) the picture taken by Neil Armstrong, using a Hassleblad camera specially designed for the moon missions, can be seen taking the picture in a reflection on Buzz Aldrin’s sun Visor. If you had a post card they asked you to put the 50 cents per card in the box, which we did.

We stayed at the array for a couple of hours as we just wandered round unhindered, the fact being that we didn’t see another soul anyway.

When we were driving down the long road from the array, (Probably 4 kilometres) it was around 5.30pm and there were loads of Kangaroo’s starting to become more active towards the end of the day.

The plural for lots of Kangaroo’s is a mob, and their were loads all bounding in unison. Its like buses, you don’t see one then they all turn up at once.

We drove back to our camp site and showered and shaved, well I shaved, as we fancied a bit of R&R and were going to the pictures to see the film “Bedtime Stories” with Adam Sandler. We paid our money (12 Bucks each) and went in to cinema No 1.

We sat and waited, 8.00 came and went and nothing was happening, Caroline laughed and said I expect the lad who served us with sweets is rushing round now to go and set the film up. Just as I got up to go and check that we were in the right cinema, Caroline said don’t worry he is just loading the film. I turned around to look into the projection room and there he was, the same lad who served us the sweets was loading the film.

Caroline and myself had the complete cinema to ourselves for the whole movie, it was excellent.

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Photos

In Abundance
This common sign is a warning to look out for Kangaroos, sadly a lot of them do get hit by the traffic, we do our best to keep an eye out.

22 Metre Antenna
This is just one of the 6 dishes at Australia Telescope in Wee Waa

Paul Wilde Array
at Wee Waa

5 Dishes
There are 5 dishes on one axis and 1 on another

Moved
After I took the last photo, they moved!