Coonabarabran

After an early start from Uralla (and a friendly chat with a couple of Aussie bikers who knew where Loughborough was) we hit the road for the 3 hour drive to Coonabarabran. The scenery en route was a surprising mix of rust-coloured barren soil and autumnal-coloured trees. Travelling west through the healthiest Australian koala population we were hopeful of seeing one, but no such luck. We did however pass through Moonbi and their giant fibreglass chicken, and Tamworth and their giant golden guitar (this all had a bit of a Route 66 feel to it). The closer to Coona we got, the longer and straighter the roads got and, sadly, the more dead kangaroos on the roadside we saw.

Coona itself was quite similar to Uralla but felt like slightly more "country" (comparatively, Uralla seemed quite cosmopolitan). As Australia's only dark sky reserve, we booked in some telecope viewing for the evening before heading out to Warrembungle National Park and the Anglo-Australian Telescope of Siding Spring. Ben was in his element...I learnt physicists are unimaginative as I read about the Extremely Large Telescope and it's cancelled successor the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope.

In the park proper, we headed to the visitors' centre, where I topped up my stationary collection with a kangaroo pencil, before heading to White Gum lookout. On the way, we were greeted by so many kangaroos who all stopped to look at us as much as we looked at them, making for great photos.

After dinner (at which we learnt young people in Coona have nothing to do other than sit in Subway) we drove - slowly - along a dark and kangaroo lined road to Warrumbungle Observatory. We were treated to spectacular night skies and a PowerPoint presentation which included half the slides Ben teaches from. We saw Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, plus nebulae, clusters, binary stars and even another galaxy (plus more than a few shooting stars). Ben was able to get some lovely shots again including one attaching his camera to the big telescope.Read more