Leaving Sydney

Ten days ago the removers came and took all of my worldly possessions to send them to Germany. I had spent the week before taking apart all my Ikea furniture to keep the shipping-volume down. By the end of the week I was sleeping on the sofa and living out of a suitcase.

They took four hours to pack up all 75 boxes / thingies and take them away. It was pretty stressful watching my things bump around in the back of the ute on their way up to the van.

After that I moved into George's spare room which he had kindly offered for my last week. It was surprisingly tidy, I suspect that the imminent arrive of Sha may have had something to do with this :) The last week was good fun, every night we were drinking and eating somewhere with friends. Jono and I even managed a last Pizza Tuesday.

I had the traditional pulsar farewell at Fusion before Dick left for Parkes. It was nice that so many people could come to say goodbye (and avoid the cafeteria). I sold my car and returned the house so that I could spend my last weekend in Sydney having fun rather than messing around with moving.

On my last weekend we had a little BBQ around at George's house. That day he was busy taking Sha to Manly (well there's a double entendre for you - but since it's George that I'm talking about, Manly clearly refers to the place). Anyway, Vik helped me go shopping and grab food, beer and fuel for the BBQ but we forgot to lock the house and we found Anna tidying when we returned.

I really enjoyed the BBQ. Anna burnt down George's garden, George played a duet with Sha, Sha and Jono beat everyone else at mahjong and Jo kicked my butt at Tetris.

The next day George, Sha, Jo, Vik and I headed off to Watson's Bay for nice boat ride, a short walk and a great view of the city. It was a stunning (to borrow George's favourite word) day - sunny and cloudless but not too warm.

We had fish and chips at the dock then walked around to the head. We passed a nudist beach which was a little disturbing with blokes standing around butt-naked but Sha and Jo seemed interested! We walked around the cliff-top and enjoyed views of the waves breaking against the rocks below. Vik managed to find a way down and we walked around exploring the rock-pools before the rising tide made it time to go. George, of course, managed to get wet.

Mike kindly gave me a lift with my huge bag from George's to the ATNF on Monday. I had a final morning tea and said goodbye. George, Jono, Mike, Vik and Neerag waved me off when the taxi arrived. "You're a very popular guy," said the taxi driver. They just wanted to make sure I actually left :)

Unfortunately, on the way to the airport the taxi hit a plastic bollard which then jammed under the car. We had to pull over in one of the tunnel's emergency stopping areas to remove it and check the tires. I thought this might be ominous but other than that it was a pretty smooth trip. My bag weighed 31.4 kg (which means that George's scales are accurate to within 0.2 kg) but I wasn't charged any excess.

I managed to sleep well on the flight and arrived in Frankfurt rested. I spoke German for the first time in ages when buying my train ticket. It was easy stuff but I has quite pleased with myself until I turned to leave and said 'Merci', immediately followed by 'Bollox'!

The train travelled along the bank of the Rein all the way up to Bonn. There were lots of little villages nestled between the valley sides and the river and it's really quite picturesque.

I got to MPIfR just before 0900, got set up in the guest-house and then was ready for work. I managed to stay awake until 2200 and had a very good night's sleep.

A last trip to the telescopes

Last week was spent on one last observing trip to the telescopes. First up was a few days at Narrabri observing with ATCA. I drove up with Vik in one of the work Priuses. I'm not the exactly the biggest fan of the hybrids but they're ok, naturally I'd prefer the usual V6 Commodore which has plenty of grunt. However the box of batteries has enough power to overtake the B-doubles and made it all the way on one tank.

Using ATCA we were observing at millimetre wavelengths over a long baseline. I'm more a of a low-frequency single-dish kinda guy so this was new territory for me. At these frequencies we actually had to worry about the seeing and pointing errors, it's practically optical! Also we were using the brand new CABB system which replaced the old correlator that I was used to. Surprisingly the set-up wasn't too difficult and (with a lot of help from the locals) the observations went smoothly despite the occasional wind-stow.

After I'd said goodbye to ATCA I drove off down to Parkes where Ramesh and Jonathon had already started our PPTA observations. I love that drive, there's little traffic, the Warrumbungles are beautiful and there's plenty of long straight bits to overtake on. I did have a near miss when a large section of angle-iron fell off the back of a truck but otherwise it was a relaxing drive.

I arrived at Parkes just in time for the wind to drop and observations restart. They went pretty smoothly and I took the opportunity between scans to turn on the floodlights and take some photos. I also visited the visitor centre several times to stock up on Parkes related merchandise :-). Marta and Maura were there and we had fun recounting Parkes stories in the evenings.

We also had a PULSE@Parkes run but this was from VSSEC so Rob, George and Jono (as in Jonathan not Jonathon) had gone down to Melbourne to cover it. On this run we had the students tweeting what they were doing. We had several astronomers following and even had a bit of press interest. It seemed to go very well and the kids were very enthusiastic.

It was an uneventful drive back but I stopped to take a photo of an old analogue railway signal sat all on its own by the side of the road. I always look out for it between Bathurst and Orange.

I was a bit sad leaving Parkes for the last time before I move to Germany. But I will be back before too long, counting the minutes until shift change! Still it won't quite be the same.

A Manly Walk

Last weekend George, Vikram, Saikia and I went for a walk in Manly. Like all of George's weekend activities it involved the loss of a precious lie-in so we could catch an early train. From Meadowbank we took the ferry down the river to Circular Quay. It was another beautiful winter's day in Sydney, the wind was cool but the sun was shining.

After my sailing trip on the harbour some time ago I had bought some drugs to try and combat the seasickness. I decided that I'd test them out on this trip under controlled circumstances.

We got to Circular Quay and had a hearty breakfast of doughnuts and coffee while we waited for the Manly ferry to arrive. The Manly ferry is infamous in Sydney for being a rough ride as you pass the Heads so I decided to take one of the pills.

The crossing wasn't bad and we arrived in Manly in time for fish and chips at Shelly beach. It was then that I discovered a side-affect of the drugs - drowsiness. Despite being midday and sunny I was about to fall asleep!

After lunch we went on a leisurely walk around North Head. We had great views of Manly and visited what George calls 'The Hidden Lagoon' but is really a big puddle on the top. Vikram did his best to scare George by trying to fall off the cliff while George spotted a couple of dead cuttlefish that he tried to persuade us were still alive.

George wanted to get wet so insisted that we sit up front on the ferry for the crossing back to Sydney. After watching the ferry crashing through the waves I took another pill. There were some decent waves and we all got wet so George was happy.

I managed to get home just in time to become comatose. I'm not sure how good these drugs are at preventing seasickness but they're very good for insomnia!

Kayaking in Sydney harbour

Today George, Dominic and I went kayaking in Sydney harbour. It was another beautiful winter day, not too warm but sunny. We went from the Spit bridge which is surrounded by little coves full of boats moored at very expensive houses. We were told that there were two types of kayak on offer, one stable but slow and the other fast but "a bit tippy". We all decided that "a bit tippy" was probably a bad idea and chose the slow, stable option.

We made our way under the Spit bridge towards a series of coves. Within minutes Dominic managed to break his rudder peddles but after a brief stop in the middle of the waterway he managed to fix them and we were under way again. We dodged boats large and small and headed towards a little rocky outcrop. There we found a swam of moon jellyfish. They're common in the harbour but still fun to watch. George and I spent some time taking photos of them. George is convinced that he also saw a sea cucumber but I think it was a bit of tree.

As we set off again there was a loud splash as Dominic capsized - totally on his own, no boat or rocks in sight. Apparently he was attempting a sharp turn but just ended up spinning on the wrong axis. Thankfully he appeared moments later laughing his head off with the look of a man who knows that by Monday morning everyone is going to have heard about it. Thankfully it wasn't far to the shore and George and I helpfully took photos while Dominic emptied his kayak.

The next cove we went into had the clearest water. We could see to the bottom and there were occasional schools of fish. I spotted a small ray resting on the bottom. I managed to get a few photos before it raced away.

Dominic was nearly dry again by the time we made it back, his ego may take longer to recover. We finished off our trip with a fish and chip supper before heading home.

The Parkes open day

I spent my second weekend in a row at Parkes, this time it was the Parkes open day. Given all the visitors, helicopters and media broadcasting the RFI environment was bound to be terrible but George managed to persuade Vik and me that it was worth trying to get some observations for one of our projects.

As we gathered for the briefing on the Saturday morning there were already people queuing to get in. Some had come from Victoria and Queensland. It wasn't long before the line for the telescope tours was stretching around the telescope and was 3 hours long. Despite that everyone seemed to be very cheerful and enjoyed the tours. We were in the control room, one of the last stops on the tour and we became expert in explaining what we were observing in 60 seconds or less! George, Vik and I took turns talking to the relentless tours, doing the observations and checking e-mail.

There were stands from local groups, science outreach people from further afield, shows in the 3D theatre, walks around the grounds, science talks in the marquee and even a bouncy castle!

I gave a live interview on ABC radio in the morning. I was surprised that it lasted 5 mins or more rather than the usual sound-bite. Later a punter from Dubbo told me that he'd heard this fella on the radio talking about pulsars - fame at last! There was a lot of media interest with all the major TV stations sending at least one crew. The ABC arrived in their helicopter.

By the end of the first day we were all knackered. There was a BBQ and bonfires at the woolshed for the volunteers. We stayed late drinking beer (purely medicinal, to sooth our sore throats), telling tall stories and jokes.

The next day I had a talk to give at the main marquee and it was nearly packed. There were lots of good questions and interest and another visitor had heard my radio interview. It was great to meet so many people who are genuinely interesting in what we do.

Later on I took a helicopter ride around the telescope. It was a tiny thing with bubble like windows, you could feel every tweak of the controls and gust of wind. It was great to see the telescope from a different angle. It looked much more steeply curved than it does from the ground. I took a few photos and even some video. It was a great trip and has got me thinking about flying lessons again.

We drove through the night on Sunday to get back to Sydney and I decided that Monday morning just wasn't going to happen. It was a long, exhausting but fun weekend. More than 6,500 people visited and more than 3,000 of those took the tour through the telescope. And we may even get some data out of it!

A surprise visit to Parkes

I had a quick and unexpected trip to Parkes this weekend. I wasn't expecting to be going but Dunc and Maura had managed to get hold of the director's time during the weekend. As they're in the US and John was busy I volunteered to cover the observations. Luckily I managed to get a car and a room in the lodge despite only having a day's notice.

I arrived on Friday evening and found that the Italian contingent were doing their polarisation survey that requires the dish to make repeated slews across the sky. Above-left is a 60 second integration (sorry, exposure in camera speak) taken towards the end of one of the slews. The scene is lit by the nearly-full Moon at the bottom left of the picture. I took several other photos (e.g. above-right) that were more carefully composed but that first one is still my favourite.

I left on Sunday evening and had a very quick drive back through the night. There were a few close encounters of the roo-kind but thankfully no collisions.

A trip to Western Australia

OK, so this post is a bit out of sequence. This trip was actually about six weeks ago but I've only just uploaded the photos.

We had the Orange 2008 pulsar conference in Perth in 2009, somewhat late and geographically confused. The conference was hosted at Curtin university. Megan is now at Curtin and it was great to be able to catch up again.

Mike, George, Alberto and I had decided to take a few days extra at the end of the conference to go and see a bit of Western Australia. On Friday afternoon, after the conference ended we took a ferry to down the river to Freo. We arrived as the sun was setting and made our way to a lighthouse near the entrance to the port. We watched the sun set over the Indian ocean and it was pretty spectacular. We had dinner and a few beers before heading home. The train ride from Freo to Perth was surprisingly remanisient of the movie 'The last train from Freo' but with a couple of transport cops on-board there was no trouble.

The next day we checked out and headed north from Perth towards the pinnacles. None of us had had breakfast, planning to stop on the way. But places to stop are pretty few and far between once you leave Perth, so we kept driving through the bush into dark skies and lightening strikes. Just as the rain hit we saw a sign to the AIGO visitor's centre (the Australian gravitational wave detector). Since there was likely to be food and coffee there we followed the sign down a small road that's not on my GPS. We ordered some food and drinks and sat down. Moments later the power went out. As they couldn't open the till or make our orders we had to choose the cost equivalent in soft drinks and ice cream. So we sat in a gravitational wave visitor centre in the middle of nowhere, in the dark eating our breakfast of ice cream and Coke as the storm raged around us.

After breakfast we continued up to the coastal town of Lancelin. The weather was clearing and we took a walk along the beach. As we did we saw several dolphins swimming very close to the beach catching fish. We followed them up the beach we found a pub which was very reminiscent of an English country pub. George was feeling wealthy and had half a lobster. We had lunch in the garden looking out to sea before getting back on the road.

That evening we finally made it to the pinnacles. It was an amazing sight, a forest of rocks poking out of the sand. The first people to find it must have thought they'd landed on another world. We wandered around for ages taking more photos of pointy rocks that anyone could possibly want. Then we took our hire car on the driving route through the site. We weren't sure if we had pinnacle-damage cover but decided we'd probably be alright. We stayed and watched the sunset over the ocean before going to Cervantes to find somewhere to stay. Alberto, jelous of George's lunch-time lobster, had an enormous seafood platter for dinner. After after more beers we ended up lying on the beach looking at the stars.

On the last day George wanted to go and see the stromatolites, rock formations formed by bacteria over hundreds and thousands of years. So we headed off down a (very) corrugated road to a little lake where there were some short round rock formations. George was very excited by these and we walked around the whole lake to make sure we'd seen them all! After the exhilaration of stromatolite watching Alberto was in the mood for a swim so a final trip back to the beach before the long drive back to Perth.