It started with a lie

It was Christmas 1975….
Gordon Nurse was twelve years old, standing on his grandfather's driveway in Surrey, England, in the southwest-facing dark. His father was at the eyepiece of an old brass telescope, made by Broadhurst Clarkson, acquired at a car boot sale for ten pounds ( though the family story holds it belonged to a Royal Navy ancestor)
Gordon's dad was trying to show him the moons of Jupiter.

"Can you see them?" his dad kept asking.
Gordon couldn't see a thing. But he didn't want to disappoint him.
"Yes," he said. "Aren't they brilliant?"
That small, kind fib lit the tiniest spark. Fifty years later, Gordon is still going. 

"I always credit that moment. It was just around Christmas time, 1975. I've been doing this now for fifty years."

The telescope he still has

Gordon still has that old Broadhurst Clarkson scope, polished brass, properly antique, currently in need of a clean and still being used.
He also still has his first telescope, a Tasco on a German equatorial mount with a wooden tripod, bought for Christmas 1978 when he was fourteen.
Between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, he spent three months surveying sunspot activity, pointing it at the rising sun each morning from his parents' home.
He was probably failing his HSC at the time……he remains unbothered by this.

A life in between

Gordon grew up on Sydney's North Shore, attended a mainstream church, joined the navy, then the public service, Centrelink and the police, in that order.
Two organisations ( he'll tell you with a straight face) that are very good at fine-tuning a certain kind of antenna. He is, to this day, not easily fooled.

He met his wife, Karen, on the second of October, forty years ago this year. They were married 18 months later and have four children.
In 2004, when the Transit of Venus was coming and he had finally accumulated enough long service leave, he told his then boss he was taking six weeks off. His boss didn't want to give it to him
Gordon's response was simple: give me the leave, or I'll take it and resign.
He got the leave.
He took the whole family (all six of them) to England and across the United States.
They went to Disneyland. It was, he says, the best trip they ever did as a family.

When he came back, there were redundancies on offer.
He took one and enrolled at Macquarie University to study astrophysics.
The maths, he will admit, was not quite what it needed to be, so he switched to climate science.
But he also found his way into Macquarie's public outreach program, running tours at their observatory, talking to scout groups, families, and curious strangers, pointing telescopes at the sky and watching people's faces.
He knew, then, that this was the thing.

"There was a guy there, Dwayne, who said I had something special. That was really nice."

Why Emerald Beach?  Why Look At Me Now Headland?

Gordon moved to the Coffs Coast and began scouting for locations.
He needed dark sky.
He needed accessibility, for families, for people with mobility limitations, for anyone who wanted to come.
And he needed to be sheltered from sea salt spray, which ruins optics fast.He checked the car park at the top of Ocean Parade first
Good horizon, good facilities. But he drove out one night and his headlights caught the air: a thick invisible cloud of salt spray hanging over the whole basin. He crossed it off the list.

Look At Me Now Headland, at the end of Dammeral Crescent in Emerald Beach, met every requirement.
The headland itself shelters the site from the spray.
The flat, accessible ground means almost anyone can get there.
The dark sky is the real thing.
Gordon sets up here, and the galaxy in winter stretches from horizon to horizon like a tiara with the Southern Cross - at its highest point in the sky - as the jewel in the crown

What actually happens on a tour?

Tours start around an hour after sunset, while there's still just enough light to navigate from the car park to the site safely. By the time everyone has introduced themselves, shared where they're from and what they're hoping to see, and Gordon has begun talking - the sky has gone dark without anyone quite noticing.

The telescope is already set up. The hot chocolate is on its way.

Gordon uses a green laser pointer to trace the constellations. He makes a lightsabre sound when he turns it on.If he doesn't get a reaction, he says, “tough crowd” ( He almost always gets a reaction)

Then come the stories. Gordon has been collecting them for fifty years — Greek mythology, Indigenous astronomical knowledge, the slow physics of why Venus only transits the sun twice a century. He tailors what he shares to the group in front of him. He is not trying to teach. He is trying to open.

"We're not interested in limiting people. We're interested in opening people."
The moment that gets people, reliably, every time?
Saturn's rings through the telescope. Adults go quiet. Children say Wow!
Gordon has been watching this happen for years and it hasn't gotten old.

Who is this for?

Gordon's answer to this question is: the sky's the limit. He means it literally and otherwise.
His tours are for families, for couples, for solo travellers, for locals who have lived under these skies for years and never stopped to really look.
He has had guests in wheelchairs, and if he knows in advance, he can arrange photos or recorded images through the telescope for anyone who can't get their eye to the eyepiece.
The only demographic he is slightly uncertain about is four-year-olds, who, he notes, are not always well-suited to standing in the dark for ninety minutes….. But under Five-year-olds “travel free”
What he asks of everyone who comes is an open mind.
Because the universe, he believes, is doing something to you when you stand under it.
Something at a very deep level. Something you won't realise until later.

"By merely observing, we change things. If people get that in their heads, they can always see things slightly differently - and the universe is a great backdrop for that."

His invitation to you

Go out on the next clear night. Stand there. Do nothing. Empty your mind and just drink it in. See what happens.

Better yet.. come to Look At Me Now Headland on a Friday or Saturday night (Tuesday through Saturday during school holidays), about an hour after sunset, and let Gordon show you.
He'll have the telescope ready, the hot chocolate on, and at least one story about Orion that you haven't heard before.

Book your night sky tour at starrynighttours.com.au