Star party!

The first of, hopefully many, star parties was held on Friday evening. Fenella and I lugged 'Big Bertha' onto the No.1 cricket oval at Pennant Hills Park, set it up, aligned it, and waited for the invited select group of astronomically inclined bushwalkers to turn up.

We got a nice little group of six of us - a good number for a star party (don't want long queues at the eyepiece or people drifting off and getting lost in the gloom).

Yours truly got the automated 'guided tour' going, and we were taken to Jupiter (cloud belts, two dark spots, four bright moons), Venus and Mercury (smallish disks only - they're both on the far side of the sun right now), Neptune, and everyone's favourite planet (can't imagine why), Uranus. The Southern Cross, with its Jewel Box cluster and triple star Alpha Crucis, was a bit too low in the sky to be included in the night's tour, and the Andromeda Galaxy was inconveniently stuck behind a tree again, but there was still a generous array of open clusters, globular clusters, and nebulas for our perusal. I particularly like the superb globular clusters M22 (NGC 6853) and 47 Tucanae (NGC 104), and everyone liked the big open cluster M7 (NGC 6475).

Every stunning new object was greeted with appropriate comments from our appreciative astronomical afficionados, such as "I can't see anything", "where is it?", or "it's all fuzzy!" Not true, I think it actually was an appreciative audience, and they did see lots. I was a bit flummoxed though when, after I'd taken us through the real heavenly tour, of the real objects with a real telescope, Yuko turned on her 'Google Sky Map' app on her Samsung Galaxy smart phone. She was able to hold her phone up to the sky, and right there in her hand was the virtual night sky, with virtual stars, virtual planets and I imagine, virtual globular clusters, all in exactly the right places!

N

My other backyard playground

We live on the outskirts of Sydney. In fact the bush starts right across the road, opposite the house. You can walk down over the edge and explore creeks, waterfalls, rocky overhangs....   the whole off track bushwalking experience.

Today I led a bushwalking group through this backyard playground of mine, and a jolly good time was had by all. 

I billed it as 'The Backblocks of Pennant Hills, Westleigh & Cherrybrook'. We explored Tedbury Creek and Zig Zag Creek. We had a surprise morning tea with cake and scones at our house. We then went back down to the Great North Walk and up to Refuge Rock on the Cherrybrook side, and we all fitted through the overweight bushwalker detector slot. (Last year some of my walkers got stuck!) An added bonus was the sound of the squeals of delight (maybe terror actually) from some of the new-to-off-track-walking participants when they discovered the pleasures of leeches crawling up their legs.

I think they really did enjoy it all though, and the visitors in the group all signed up afterwards as members. I was quite proud of myself today.

N

Photo credit (2nd photo): Jacqui Joseph

"They've found him, and he's ALIVE and conscious!"

"Robbie! Robbie! Robbie!" the sprightly 84 year old lady was calling out in a very loud voice as I approached. I was hoping it was a dog she'd lost, and not a child. In fact it turned out it was a 48 year old son with an intellectual disability. No food, no warm clothing, no survival skills.

It was Sunday afternoon and I'd gone walking on the Great North Walk just down below Westleigh here. They had come in from Bellamy St, Pennant Hills. She said he walks fast but usually stops every few minutes. This time he hadn't. We were at the Jungo track junction and there were several possible directions he could have gone off in. I volunteered to run up the main Cherrybrook track, and a man who came along with a baby on his back ran up the Pennant Hills Ridge track. When we got back it was time to call 000, so I did the honours. As expected I got the business with them needing a street address before listening further ("WE'RE IN THE BUSH! NOT IN THE STREET!") I wanted to tell them to send police immediately to track entrances at X, Y, and Z street locations, but they wanted one street address to send a police car to so as to talk to us and set up their rescue headquarters. So sprightly lady headed back out to Bellamy St, while I waited out the next two hours at the Jungo in case of a sighting, while man-with-baby (having taken baby home) started a big trip up the Great North Walk to Hornsby and a massive drenching from the coming storm. 

Soon a helicopter was circling overhead, I managed to convince them with sign language that I wasn't the missing person, and it started patrolling all the tracks, valley sides and creeks, until the weather sent it home for the night. I was joined by an unequipped local policeman, who persuaded me to walk out with him at dusk. By now there were lots of police cars and the makings of a big rescue headquarters being set up at the trackhead.

Over the next two days the operation grew massively, and came to involve 250 personnel including police from various local areas, Public Order Riot Squad officers (they had nothing better to do, and they looked impressive), police rescue officers (in white, with backpacks and abseiling gear), police divers, mounted police, the police helicopter, another bigger helicopter, the State Emergency Service volunteers (in bright orange - lots and lots of them), the Rural Fire Brigade and other agencies. They started slowly and often at first seemed to have no maps or local knowledge, and there was a lot of standing around, walking along well-searched tracks, and complaining about leeches (which I assured them were good for them). Over time they got their act together though, and were eventually delving deep into the bush, in a fairly orderly manner, and sometimes in the areas I'd been haranging the police commander to send them into.

There was also a second, parallel operation being carried out by the family members, me, baby-on-back man, and other local people. The police were good in that they encouraged us to do as much as we could, but left us free to prioritise as we saw fit. I spent a good part of two days surveying lesser known tracks, and then ploughing through thick off-track scrub, up and down hitherto unknown cliff lines, as well as harrassing the odd police or SES co-ordinator. 

The TV news broadcasts put out good reports on Monday evening asking for help.

By midday Tuesday things seemed rather desperate. There'd been two cool wet nights. His mother was still magnificently chirpy and optimistic, though I imagine she'd had no sleep for ages. The police were desperate enough that they even rang me officially for the first time to ask me for all the details properly! Mmmm. Fenella was out in the bush with me then, and we were soon surrounded by men in orange, men in white, and mounted horsewomen with the biggest horse either of us has ever seen!

We eventually went off to the shops to catch up on some shopping, and I got a call from one of the family members to update me. It was very noisy, but she clearly said "They've found him, and he's ALIVE and conscious! They're using chainsaws to extract him." Wonderful, wonderful news. See www.australianmissingpersonsregister.com/RobinPrince.htm   for a report of the rescue. I was relieved and delighted to find he'd been found in one of the areas I'd been pointing them to! 

We returned to the scene of the 'extraction' in time to see the ambulance and paramedics attending to him and eventually driving off with his sister in the front seat beaming broadly. I shook the hand of the police commander and congratulated him, and everything was happy and convivial.

What a couple of days it'd been.

N