Dubbo

Something about living in Australia has made Stan and I rather adventurous when it comes to sightseeing.  Melbourne is an 8 hour drive south, and we have done this drive a couple of times. Although Bain gave us the option to fly we declined and decided to drive ourselves down.  Since Stan didn’t have to be back to work until the 8^th we figured we could do a pretty cool road trip around the outback of Australia on our way down!  Our first stop was Dubbo (6 hours North West) pretty much the opposite direction of Melbourne, but famous for two things (1) The Parks radio telescope which took pictures of the moon when Neil Armstrong walked on it for the first time. That ‘one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind’ was transmitted from Australia to American TV’s because America was facing the wrong direction to transmit photo’s during that time of year-- BUT Australia was on the opposite hemisphere and had a clear shot and had no problem helping out with the American’s space effort! If you really want to see a cool movie about it watch (The Dish).  

We didn’t make it to the Telescope until late (nearly midnight) and I was pretty sure if a UFO was going to be spotted it would be spotted on our drive out to the telescope. We were driving through deserted farm land, the stars and moon were unusually bright, and we would occasionally see a silhouette of a tree or two but not much more.  The telescope had a small fence around it but other than that no security… just a sign telling  us to turn off our cell phones.  Here is the best picture I could get of Stan and the kids with the telescope…Can you see how huge it was?

The second thing Dubbo is famous for is a giant zoo with no fences. The animals are separated by bodies of water and unlike other zoo’s the animals are quite visible to the kids! The zoo is so big you drive from one animal to the next in your car. The kids loved it!  From there we set off for White cliff....(an underground mining opal mining town in the middle of Australia)!