My Observations of Time and Space in Port Macquarie

A model of Saturn revolving around the sun

I've been down to Port Macquarie (home of the Powerful Owl) three times this year and on the first two occasions the observatory wasn't open on the nights I was there, but I knew this time I would be there on a night it was open for viewing. 
The first time I saw the observatory in the public park was on my first trip to Port Macquarie, when I saw fire trucks with my father's old cab number (424) on them, attending to some incident at a motel across the road from the park, which I wrote about in this post -
424s Again

In August I decided to book a stay or one night at that motel that the fire trucks had attended to on my first visit that year to Port Macquarie, as it was across the road from the observatory that I was intending to visit that night I was there. 

Looking out my door at the pines from my
Best Western motel room in Port Macquarie

Then I was heading off to Sydney to watch my football team play in a semi-final on Friday night, September 23rd (my birthday) -
My Happiest Birthday Ever

Observing the stars beyond the pines?

My father passed away unexpectedly in his sleep on September 13th, and I attended yet another funeral, one week before my birthday at "the place beyond the pines", a place which I have written about in the post linked in the link below -

Mt Thompson: The Place Beyond the Pines?

A koala artwork across the road from the observatory
 with the observatory painted on it

I had not spotted this koala before on my last two trips to Port Macquarie, probably because I hadn't walked along this sidewalk before. 

But since my last meal was only a banana split in Coffs Harbour, I thought I had better grab some fish and chips before the observatory opened for the evening viewing, and that's when I found not only the koala above, but also this one below.
Shark Week in the Year of the Monkey

I think I like the other koala the best.

The observatory telescope pointed at Saturn

It had been raining for most of the day and only really cleared up around the time of the viewing for the evening, and when I went into the observatory the telescope was trained on the planet Saturn. 
I tried to get a photo with my iPod of what it looked like but couldn't get the lens of the iPod to line up with the lens of the telescope, and so I gave up trying to snap a shot, but it looked very much like the model of Saturn up the top of this post, when I looked through the lens of the observatory telescope.

It wasn't lost on me that this was the planet that represented time.

Which made me reflect on how my watch stopped the day my dad died, and my bedside clock stopped on the day of his funeral, though the times they stopped on meant nothing to me.  
Stop the Clocks? Signs?
As soon as the group had viewed the planet the rain came down again and the clouds obstructed any more viewing for the night, so the curator gave a presentation in the observatory theater.

I enjoyed the presentation, even though my belief is the Apollo moon missions were nothing but a bunch of astronauts orbiting the earth for a few days while they pretended they were on the moon, while robots like they have now, went to the moon to take photographs and collect samples, because the Van Allen radiation belts would have fried theirs asses off if they went outside the earth's protective zone a little higher than the space shuttles orbit now.
Maybe they need to show this film in the theatre?

But hey, one day they might figure a safe way through for manned missions to the moon and elsewhere, until then NASA can keep sending the robots.

A Campo del Cielo metorite in my hand

My highlight for the night was getting to hold this little baby in my hands.

A Campo del Cielo metorite.
There is definitely a strange feeling that runs through your body when you are holding in your hand an object that has been flying through space.

My poster from the observatory

I also purchased a poster from the wonderful range of posters the observatory sells in their little shop of the 'Hour Glass Nebula' AKA 'The Eye of God'.  

An old well on the Best Western motel land with
 rainwater pouring through it on the night

I ran back across the park in the pouring rain to my motel thinking how lucky I was that this night even happened, thanking the heavens for keeping the sky clear long enough for me to see Saturn in the telescope. 
I stumbled across this old well pictured above and took a picture of all the rainwater running through it, but it was only later that I found out, "Port Macquarie’s history can be anchored back to a time when the first convicts, penal colonies and early settlers made birth on its shores. 
The Best Western Plus HW Boutique Hotel was originally built on the site of the old convict gaol in 1966. 
Known then as the Historic Well Motel, it was named for the well that remains in the grounds to this very day. 
The convicts’ broad arrow markings are clear on the top layer of the wedge-shaped hand-made bricks and are a popular talking point among guests who frequent the hotel today."

The next morning as I was checking out of the motel and hitting the road for Sydney there was a pile of free newspapers for guests, if they wanted to take one, and when I saw the Shark fans on the front page, I picked up a paper and flicked through it to see if it was worth taking with me.

I saw the above stories about other crazy Sharks fans getting excited about the game I was heading to on Friday night, and so threw a paper into my car to read when I reached Sydney.

A purple page with a story about the purple one
 and day of the dead show?!

And it was rather fortunate that I grabbed that paper, as I wouldn't have seen this page above when I was reading it in my motel room in Sydney, wondering what to do for a Thursday night I had no plans for.

I found out that a show I was thinking about seeing when it came to Brisbane in late November was playing just up the road from my Sydney motel and right behind the Sydney football stadium I was going to see my team play on Friday night. 

Waiting outside the tent on
Thursday 22nd of September, 2016

I thought it would surely be sold out, but I got onto the Cirque Du Soleil website and got a ticket and I was off to my first Cirque Du Soleil show ever.

Now I was going to see the show that Halfasheep was always talking about in his videos and see if there was any merit in his claims.
But that's for a future post.

The bush turkey crossing my path in Port Macquarie

Once I left the motel, I headed down to get some breakfast at Sea Acres national park and see if I could maybe spot a powerful owl on my third visit to the park, but I got down there an hour before the park opened and the only bird I saw was a bush turkey crossing my path. 

Which reminded me of this old post -
The Shadow Side and True Colours of Liam Pieper?
And this post -
You Can Never Walk Along the Same River Twice
I was too hungry to wait for the park to open and wanted to have a walk around a town I usually bypass on my way to Sydney ... Newcastle.

New Castle? See Change?
So, I hit the road giving up on ever spotting an owl in Port Macquarie.

A picture of the Pleiades on the outside
observatory wall reflecting the beach.

But my night at the observatory was well worth the stopover in this town for me, owls or no owls.