Yass Junction

The next day I drove back to Sydney. I started earlier than I would normally as Jeremy and Elisse work morning shift. So I arrived at Yass a few hours earlier than I expected. Cathy was still at lunch. It turned out when I did meet her that Ingo and the kids were in town. Frank, Mietta were also passing through. While I was waiting I headed out to Yass Junction Station and took some photos.





Wikipedia says: The station is in its situation due to the refusal of the former Engineer-in-Chief of the New South Wales Railways, John Whitton to build the Main Southern Line through the middle of Yass itself. After a visit on 8 December 1871, to investigate possible routes for the extension of the line from Goulburn, Whitton remarked that "to bring the station to North Yass would increase the length of the line by about three quarters of a mile; that the cost would be considerably more than I had recommended, probably £30,000 or £40,000 for works alone; and that in an engineering point of view [a] divergence to North Yass could not be entertained. Despite continuous objections, none of Whitton's working plans or other Government surveys were not able to find a suitable route for the railway to pass through Yass. Instead, the present route from Gunning to Bowning was chosen which passed several miles to the north. After a Government Bill was passed "to authorise the construction of tramways along certain streetts and highways in the city and suburbs of Sydney and elsewhere", a tramway was built from Yass Junction to Yass Town to convey passengers. The trams departed from a small dock platform behind Platform 2 (the Melbourne-bound platform). The line opened on 20 April 1892.

Borenore Caves

My interaction with Borenore goes back a long. way. My Mother lived there for a while before she was 10. When we came back to Australia for a short while in 1964 or 1965, we stayed for a while at the neighbours place in Borenore. Since then we visited occasionally, and it is one of the places that is part of my soul. I do not remember it, but my mother thinks we went to the caves as children. She had been there, but at the time it was private property. The caves are now opened to the public. I did not have my torch, but was still able to wander through the lime stone karst.

Gospel Service at the Parkes Elvis Festival

It has been a long time since I have been at a church service. Given the photo opportunities, I could not turn down the chance to go to this one, also I have never been to a gospel service. As you can see, it was a service with a distinctly Elvis bent, and I have recorded much sound so I can make a movie out of it. But that will take a lot of work and will have to come later. The service has lots of dancing and singing.





Of course, there was Elvis and many other singers.





And then the churches. I suspect that both the Catholics and uniting church were represented but there was a third woman. I did not know where she fitted in. The movie will tell much more. Just let me say that I thought they handled the tensions and contradictions as well as I have seen it done. I think there is hope for them yet. But then I am an optimist.

Wandering the streets of Forbes

Before the others got up I went for a walk around the streets of Forbes. I did not see a single prad. We stayed in the old grandeur of the Albion Hotel. Though the rooms were spartan and cheap. On the first night we had managed to score two rooms, so I had one to myself, but owing to a miss-communication, which I put down to country town style organisation, we only had one room for the second evening.



Forbes was once the collection point for the gold from the district. So it has some very grand buildings. One friend pointed out that it is like Bendigo. I guess it is the local equivalent of Bendigo. Though buildings are nowhere near as grand they are still very impressive. It also has some more modern buildings.



Also, I went down by the Lachlan River. It is very pleasant down there in the early morning light.







We had dinner that night in Forbes at the Wan Wah Chinese Restaurant. Billy has quite a write up about it. I actually thought it was better than he did. It is good for Australia-Chinese country style food and I loved the decor.

Parkes Radio Telescope

Well, it would be sad to visit Parkes and not go to the radio telescope. So that is just what we did.

The Parkes Radiothermal Telescope, completed in 1961, was the brainchild of E.G. (Taffy) Bowen, chief of the CSIRO's Radiophysics Laboratory. During the Second World War, he had worked on radar development in America and had made some powerful friends in the scientific community. Calling on this old boy network, he persuaded two philanthropic organisations, the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation to fund half the cost of the telescope. It was this recognition and key financial support from America that persuaded then Prime Minister Robert Menzies to agree to fund the rest of the project.

The primary observing instrument is the 64-metre movable dish telescope, second largest in the Southern Hemisphere, and one of the first large movable dishes in the world (DSS-43 at Tidbinbilla was extended from 64 m to 70 m in 1987, surpassing Parkes).[2] After its completion it has operated almost continuously to the present day. The dish surface was physically upgraded by adding smooth metal plates to the central part to provide focusing capability for centimetre and millimetre length microwaves. The outer part of the dish remains a fine metal mesh, creating its distinctive two-tone appearance.

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