Deep Space and the Tidbinbilla

Saturday, August 7, 2010 – Deep Space and the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve

The temperatures have been near freezing at night all this week, but rise to the high 50's, giving the days a seasonably warm feel, but with a bite of fresh breeze to keep the chill on. I run around with only a fleece and am quite comfortable.

Katie and Phil show up about 1 PM ready to ride out to the Deep Space Complex and to the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve to see Kangaroo, Koala, and Platypus. Katie is a friend of Nicole, with whom I worked at The Marin School. She found the house where I am staying and was friendly enough to invite me out for a tour of the park area west of Canberra.

 The Deep Space Complex has been essential to the world's space program because Australia can hear signals from sections of space that the northern hemisphere can't, simply because of the geometry of a sphere and the way the Earth moves about the sun. Many Americans know about the Parkes observatory, a considerable distance from here, since it played prominently in the the movie "The Dish", but few know that "The Dish" got it wrong in one way, which, I suspect, gives Canberrans a certain bit of pride. When the first pictures from space arrived from the moon in the US, they were upside down on the TV because the Parkes technicians had failed to flip an important switch to "invert" the signal. So the US switched to the Canberran signal, which was fortunately upright, though a bit weaker. Once the Parkes astronomers got their act together, their signal was used. But Canberra actually sent the first moon-walk signals to the US for the world to see that day.

The complex, no more than a 45 minutes drive outside of Canberra, is a beautiful place, surrounded by sheep ranches and low-lying hills. The valley protects it from stray radio signals. The exhibits were wonderfully explained and demonstrated. I need to return for another look just to see it all. More pictures here.

The Tidbinbilla preserve is home to emu, kangaroo, birds of all types, a few koalas, platypi, and I am sure much more. But that's what we saw (well, everything except the platypi; they didn't seem to want to show themselves). You can see more pictures here. I was surprised that the kangaroos are so small, but I am told that the "red" kangaroo of the bush area can grow to 6 feet.

The ones here are the "eastern grays" (if I got that right) and stand no more than my height, 5' 7". We saw one with a little joey hanging out of the pouch. Kangaroos are, as you probably know, marsupials. These were not easily frightened, since they see people all of the time.

They remind of deer back home, the ones that amble through the neighborhoods and travel in small herds out in the Golden Gate National Recreational Area. They kind of look at you and wonder what you're doing in their territory.

There is a wonderful drive through the nature reserve that leads to various places of interest; one was the platypus enclosure and another the koala enclosure. The koalas were impossible to find, hidden away high up in the Gum (Eucalyptus) trees. But we were fortunate that a handler showed up as we were leaving and pulled one out of the enclosure for some visitors from the US embassy to see. We tagged along and got a couple of good shots.