Starry Night Tours: The Origin Story
Hello, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Starry Night Tours and this is my origin story.
On a night 50 years ago, I was looking down this telescope from London, at Jupiter, reassuring my father that I knew what I was doing and I could see the stars, the satellites of Jupiter. But I could not…
Not wanting to disappoint, I said “Yes I could! Yes I could!”, and that enthusiasm has sparked a spark and here I am today with the same telescope, with the same passion.
So what happened in the fifty years between?
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
I grew up on Sydney's North Shore, joined the navy, then the public service, then the police; in that order.
Two institutions ( I'll tell you with a perfectly straight face) that are very good at fine-tuning a certain kind of antenna. I remain, to this day, not easily fooled as a result.
Somewhere in there I took six weeks' long service leave to chase the 2004 Transit of Venus across England and the United States, the whole family, six of us, Disneyland included. (My boss didn't want to give me the leave. I offered to take it and resign instead. I got the leave.) I came back, took a redundancy, and enrolled at Macquarie University to study astrophysics… right up until the maths had other ideas and I switched to climate science.
But it was Macquarie's public outreach program that did it: running tours at the observatory, pointing telescopes at the sky, watching people's faces. That, I knew, was ‘ the thing’ Which is how I ended up on a headland at Emerald Beach.
When I moved to the Coffs Coast, I went looking for dark sky (proper dark sky) plus flat, accessible ground and shelter from the sea salt spray that quietly murders telescope optics.
I checked the car park up on Ocean Parade first. Good horizon, good facilities.
Then I drove out one night and my headlights caught a thick invisible cloud of salt hanging over the whole basin. Crossed off the list. Look At Me Now Headland ticked every box.
The headland shelters the site, the ground is flat enough for almost anyone to reach, and the dark sky is the real thing.
It's where the winter galaxy stretches horizon to horizon like a tiara, the Southern Cross at its highest point, the jewel in the crown.
There is so much happening in our Night Sky in August & September!
Read my wrap up here
Catch me from Friday August 28th back at 'Look At Me Now' Headland in Emerald Beach.
Book Your Tour here
