By: Kent Wallace
Rev. 1, August 15, 2005

Kent relaxing in his astro-library home in Atascadero, California
Click on the photo for a larger image

During the last 7 years I have taken 4 trips to Western Australia to observe planetary nebulae. During the 1999 trip, I was observing with my old orange C-8, an 8” f/10 SCT (photo from CalStar 2000), which I hauled along as luggage. During the 2003, 2004 and 2005 trips I was observing with a 20" /5.0 reflector which I had air freighted ahead. There are a lot of wonderful places to visit and cool things to do in Western Australia. I hope to describe some of them in this article along with a few of the pictures I took.  My photos are identified by  photo numbers  listed in this article.

The 1999 trip was from January through March. I spent most of the first week in Perth getting used to traffic driving on the left side of the road and playing tourist. Only 5 blocks from my motel was Kings Park, which covers 4 square kilometers of the best real estate in Perth. It was always interesting to see the many different types of parrots and other birds while taking a morning walk in Kings Park. There are miles of trails in Kings Park. Some are through native brush and some are through lawns and improved areas.

Perth has a free bus service for the central city area to further outlying districts. The Red Cat bus stop was only two blocks from my motel and I used it a lot to get around central Perth. Murray street and Hay street have been blocked off in central Perth to form two malls. North of these malls is the train station, the Art Museum of Western Australia, the Natural History Museum of Western Australia and the Library of Western Australia. The Natural History Museum has an amazing collection of meteorites.

The thing that really struck me is the large number of well maintained, clean parks around Perth. Three blocks from my motel was the Harold Boas Garden, which has ponds and a waterfall. To the east of central Perth is the Queen’s Garden, which as a neat old Peter Pan bronze statue and a pond with black swans in it. The nice thing is that these parks are not crowded.  There always seemed to be an empty bench nearby where you could rest your feet.

Perth is situated inland on a series of bays and is about 10 km inland from the port city of Fremantle, which is a gem of a city. The train station for West Perth was only four blocks from my motel so it was easy to hop a ride from there to Fremantle. A lot of the original old sandstone buildings have been preserved in Fremantle, which gives the city character. The Maritime Museum in Fremantle contains real neat artifacts recovered from 15th century Dutch wrecks found off the coast of Western Australia.

Maurice Clark was my contact and host during my first stay in Western Australia.  Photo # 1  shows Maurice next to his van at the east dome of Chiro Observatory. Maurice was one of four Australians that had access to Mr. Akira Fujii’s Chiro Observatory at Yerecoin. At the end of my first week in WA (Western Australia) I rented a car, loaded up my C-8 and followed Maurice in his van for a weekend of observing at Chiro Observatory.

Driving to Yerecoin was interesting. I saw my first road killed kangaroo, the first of many. Roundabouts were new to me, so I just followed Maurice faithfully. Yerecoin is roughly about 140 km north of Perth and some of the road there is a single paved lane. When you saw a car coming toward you on one of these single paved lane roads, you would get half on and half off the payment and the car coming toward you would do the same. When you met the approaching car you would give a friendly wave, the guy in the other car would give a wave and once everyone was past, you would get back on the paved lane.

 Photo # 2  is of Chiro Observatory showing Mr. Fujii’s house and the two domes on the property. There are also two walled patios, which made wonderful places for setting up my C-8. Mr. Akira Fujii is internationally known for his astrophotography. Chiro Observatory is kind of like Mr. Fujii’s summer home, which allows him to get photos of the wonderful southern skies. Maurice was able to get me into Chiro Observatory on several weekends. I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Fujii on one of those weekends, see  Photo # 3 . From left to right on this photo is myself (Kent Wallace), Mr. Akira Fujii, Maurice Clark, a friend of Mr. Fujii whom I didn’t get his name, and Timo Karhula from Sweden.

It was Timo Karhula’s article “Sub Crucem Australem” in the Webb Society’s Deep Sky Observer # 8, April 1996, that encouraged me to observe in Western Australia. I had no idea I would meet that article’s author while in WA. Chiro Observatory was named after Mr. Fujii’s beloved dog, “Chiro” who was unfortunately deceased at the time of my trip.

When the weekend ended, and Maurice had to head back to Murdoch University on Monday morning, I headed east looking for a good place to observe. I ended up at Wongan Hills, about 30 km east of Yerecoin. There is a nice hotel/motel/pub/bottle shop in Wongan Hills, which made a good place to stay. About 10 km south of Wongan hills was a very large pullout on the western side of the road, which ended up being one of my favorite places to observe.  Photo # 4  shows my rental car with my C-8 set up at this pullout.

One memorable night at this pullout, the Southern Cross (also known as Crux) (information, photo) and the pointers were high in the sky and to the south, underneath them, were distant large thunder heads which were being lit up with lightning. It was a beautiful scene. If you could have made a postcard of it, it would be a best seller. Another time, it was late at night and I was munching on these tasty vanilla cookies and they were starting to taste weird. I turned on my light and they were crawling with small ants. Evidently I had been munching ants along with my cookies for some time in the dark.

When the moon was in the sky, I would play tourist and visit the sights in WA. One amazing place I went to was the Pinnacles Desert in Nambung National Park. There are thousands of these limestone pillars in a sandy dessert right next to the Indian Ocean. Most of the pillars in  Photo # 5  are much taller than I am. I believe the Pinnacles at Nambung National Park are a unique spot in the world and I don’t think there is another place that is its duplicate.

While in Perth, I took the train to Fremantle and then a ferry to Rottnest Island. Rottnest Island is about 19 km off the coast from Fremantle and has miles of bike paths and beautiful beaches. See  Photo # 6  for one of the crowded beaches. I rented a bike and took off to see the sights. Coiled up on the side of the road I got to see my first Australian snake. It was a Dugite, one of many venomous snakes in Australia. One of the cute, non-dangerous, animals on Rottnest Island is the Quokka, a small wallaby-type marsupial.  Photo # 7  shows a baby Quokka trying to get in my backpack while I was munching on a delicious Magnum ice cream bar. The ice cream in WA is the best I’ve ever eaten.

One trip I headed east to see what observing was like way inland. I ended up at Southern Cross, a town about 370 km east of Perth. The cool thing about Southern Cross is that the streets are named after stars and constellations. People there probably thought I was crazy, taking pictures of street signs. I found out that it was just as windy around Southern Cross as it was at Wongan Hills. Western Australia is so flat that if the wind starts to blow at one end there is nothing to stop it from reaching the other end.

Wave Rock was another neat place pretty far inland that I visited, see  Photo # 8 . It is a part of a larger granite rock, called Hyden Rock. Wave rock is about 50 feet high. If you look closely, you can see a concrete wall atop Wave Rock. This is part of a water catchment for Hyden Rock. Towns around this area are desperate for any fresh water they can get. The groundwater in a lot of WA is too salty to use, so you will see pipes running along the main roads to supply these towns from reservoirs in the Darling Range behind Perth.

On February 16th, 1999 there was an annular eclipse of the sun, which had the centerline near Mullewa. I drove north from Wongan Hills that morning and was all set up and ready to go as shown in  Photo # 9 . There was a group of Japanese tourists nearby, with all their equipment. I was standing next to my scope when I was almost blown over. Luckily I was able to grab the scope and prevent it from falling over. I had been hit by a whirlwind, which had no dust in it, and so was invisible. It managed to rip in half chart 19 from my Sky Atlas 2000 and lift it into the sky. I ran after my half chart but the wind lifted it beyond my reach. It just went up and up until I needed binoculars to see it. Then it went beyond binocular range. Last time I saw it, it was heading toward the Indian Ocean. At least the Japanese got a good laugh from it.

I had never seen an annular eclipse so I was pretty happy to have this opportunity to see one. The conditions were perfect. The sun was high in the sky and there were no clouds visible anywhere. As the eclipse began you could feel a temperature drop. Also everything got darker. One of the Japanese tourists pointed out Venus to me. Just before the moon centered itself over the sun I could see the Bailey’s Beads. Then a ring of fire, which lasted for all of something like 40 seconds. It was pretty cool overall.

For my next trip I headed down south to see the underside of WA. In Bunbury I walked the Mangrove Boardwalk, which is the southern most mangrove in Australia. The next day I did three cave tours, Mammoth Cave, Lake Cave and Jewel Cave. The Diamond Tree Lookout was interesting. The lookout is 52 meters above the ground and to get there you have to climb rungs made up of concrete rebar pounded into the tree. The rebar rungs take you about halfway up the tree to a small platform with a sign that essentially said “If you think this was bad, it gets worse”. I have a fear of heights so that sign didn’t help. From the small platform there is a steep steel ladder that takes you to the lookout. There is a pretty nice view from the outlook of the surrounding countryside.

The next stop was the Ancient Empire walk, which is in a forest of giant tingle trees. Nearby is the Tree Top Walk, which is a steel walkway going out into a valley of giant tingle trees. The walkway is pretty much level and as it extends further over the valley on steel poles, you get higher and higher in the trees.  Photo # 10  shows the tree top walk and a nearby large tree.

Esperance is a beautiful town way on the underside of WA. There are large lawns with lots of parking that run just up to the sandy beaches in downtown Esperance. Up and down the coast there are large granite islands quite near to the beaches, which look pretty cool. When Skylab came down, pieces of it rained down on Australia, on a path that went through Esperance. Luckily no one was killed. The local people just gathered up the pieces, put them in the town museum and charged people three bucks to see them.  Photo # 11  shows some of the many pieces of Skylab that made it to the ground.

This first trip to WA acquainted me with a lot of sights this large state had to offer. What the sky had to offer there in WA was fantastic. You could see the blowouts on the Eta Carina star in my C-8 and one of them was orange colored. 47 Tucana became my favorite globular cluster in the entire sky. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds were loaded with lots of star clusters and nebulae. Also I managed to see my 400th planetary nebula there with my C-8.

The people I meet in WA were friendly, generous and patient with all my dumb questions. After I gave a slide show on planetary nebulae to the Murdoch Astronomical Society, their president, Jacquie Milner, presented me with a copy of Astronomy 1999. This is a yearly publication packed with articles and what is happening in the skies of Australia. In future trips I made sure to get a copy before going out to observe. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to return to WA again, but I had a great time while I was there.

As it turned out, I did return to WA in 2003 with an even larger scope. What motivated me was the death of my good friend, Thurman Silvey, who had watched my house when I was gone to WA on my 1999 trip. I had known Thurman since the 5th grade. When he died of a massive heart attack on Valentine’s Day 2001, it made me realize when your time is up and the Grim Reaper is ready to stab you in the back, the game is over. You had better done what you wanted to do, because you aren’t going to get another chance. And what I wanted to do was to go after planetary nebulae in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are satellite galaxies to our Milky Way galaxy, about 170,000 and 180,000 light years away, respectively. They cannot be viewed from California since they are closer to the celestial south pole than the Big Dipper is to the celestial north pole. They are easily visible with the naked eye from Australia. I made an inquiry about the visibility of planetary nebulae in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC & SMC) to the "amastro" group I belong to. It turned out, with the help of Brian Skiff and other members of the amastro group, that there were quite a few planetary nebulae in the LMC and SMC which were good targets for a 20” scope.

To properly survey the LMC & SMC for planetary nebulae (PNe) and to finish off the PNe in my SECGPN list, I figured I would need three or four trips to WA. Since the primary mirror is the most expensive part of the telescope, I planned on shipping the mirror from my regular 20” Starsplitter scope back and forth between WA and home. I would purchase a duplicate telescope structure for my mirror and leave the structure in WA until all the surveys were finished.

As it turned out, Jim Brunkella of Starsplitter Telescopes had a lightweight prototype structure for a 20” primary mirror, which would break down for easy portability. This would mean I didn’t need ramps to roll the rockerbox/mirror box combination out of the car. There were a few bugs found in the prototype when I got it home. The truss tubes were an inch too long. Slices had to be cut off the lower ring of the secondary structure so that the truss tube clamps would clamp properly. Weights had to be added to the front of the mirror box to correct a dynamic balance problem. Always test out your equipment way before you ship it. On the plus side, the scope performed beautifully once the bugs were fixed.

I found a way to cut the truss tubes in half, then put them together and to keep them almost as rigid as the original complete tube. The trick was to center two, one foot long right angle aluminum pieces on opposite sides of the cut and to hold them in place with four hose clamps. This acts like a splint and holds the two pieces of truss tube rigidly together. I used these cut truss tubes without any problem for the entire time the structure was in WA.

With the truss tubes cut in half, I was able to get them into the case with the mirror box. The rocker box and secondary structure fit into a second case. The primary mirror fit into a third case. I bought all three cases from Cabbage Cases of Ohio, who makes cases for shipping delicate equipment. Back in 1999 I bought a Cabbage Case to hold my C-8’s optical tube and arms for my first trip to WA, and it worked wonderfully. I shipped that case as luggage and hauled it all over WA without any problems.

My friends, Andrew and Cecilia Lockwood in Perth, kindly offered to let me store my telescope structure and my other junk in the corner of their spare bedroom while I was between surveys. They kept my stuff at their home for over 2 years and I owe them many thanks. Also Andrew and Cecilia drove out to Wongan Hills to observe with me several times.

I left on my 2003 Australian trip in mid February and would stay for almost two months. The cases were air freighted ahead and Andrew had reported that everything had arrived at his home intact. After resting up in Perth, I rented a white Holden Commodore station wagon. This turned out to be a wonderful vehicle. I had no problems with it and the scope with all my junk fit in it. A trip to the Bunning’s hardware store scored me a neat folding ladder, a folding chair and an esky, (Australian for ice chest). After loading up the scope from Andrew and Cecilia’s home, I was once again ready to brave the wheat belt of WA.

I decided to return to Wongan Hills since I had done some good observing there in 1999 and knew the area. Wongan Hills had changed since my previous trip. There had been a multi-year drought, which had hurt the wheat and sheep farming. Several shops had closed up on the main street. But Dianne West was still working at the Wongan Hills Civic Hotel and Jim and Sandra Armstrong were still pumping gas at the BP station. They were surprised to see me since it had been so many years since my last trip.

 Photo # 12  shows the 20” scope and my white Holden Commodore station wagon at the pullout on the western side of highway 115, about 10 Km south of Wongan Hills. This was a good spot to observe but there was some traffic on 115 and then they started dumping truckloads of gravel there at night for the railroad. I needed and alternative site and started to hunt one up. While driving around I found an abandoned pea gravel quarry, on the west side of Smith road, about 1 km from the Piawaning Waddington road which seemed a perfect spot for observing. The pea gravel quarry was about 19 km from Wongan Hills, west of Mt. Matilda. This became my preferred observing location.

Life was quiet at Wongan Hills during an observing period. In the morning I would go across the street from the hotel to get a copy of the West Australian newspaper at the News Agency. The West Australian published wonderfully unflattering pictures of their politicians and some of the political cartoons were very funny. For lunch I would often get a bucket of chips at the little restaurant just down from the News Agency. They had this stuff they called chicken salt that they put on the chips which I really liked. On this trip I met Graham Peterson, the science teacher at Wongan Hills, and gave his 7th grade class a slide show of various neat astronomical objects. The 7th graders had a lot of good questions for me. Graham and his son Jordan came out quite a few evenings to look through my scope.

Valerie Semmler, the president of the Astronomical Society of Western Australia, invited me to attend their Dryandra Forest AstroCamp, which was being held on February 28th through March 2nd. Not only did I attend but I also gave a workshop on my breakdown 20” scope. Dryandra State Forest covers 270 square km and is a remnant of the open eucalypt woodlands, which once covered much of the wheat belt. The telescope observing area was enormous. It used to be a sheep paddock cut out the forest. Now it is a great observing area, see  Photo # 13 . We slept on bunk beds in large Quonset huts. The only problem is that in the early hours of the morning while you are trying to sleep, the possums liked to run on the roof and make a real racket. It was fun to meet different amateur astronomers from all around Western Australia there at the AstroCamp.

When the moon was getting back up into the evening sky, I headed back to Perth to give slide shows to the Astronomical Society of Western Australia and the Murdoch Astronomical Society. Also while in Perth I went to the Aquarium of Western Australia which was really cool. They have this large Plexiglas tube with a moving walkway at the bottom of a really big tank. You can see sharks and rays swim right over your head. The Sea Dragon tank was very neat. Sea Dragons are really big seahorses with all sorts of appendages growing out of them so they look like seaweed. They are really beautiful.

Next I headed north to Geraldton. The St. Francis Xavier Cathedral there is quite an impressive building made of native stone. The new Western Australian Museum there has a lot of artifacts recovered the Batavia, a 15th century Dutch ship that ran aground off Western Australia. The next stop was Kalbarri in the Kalbarri National Forest. There are some pretty nice lookouts along the coast on the way to Kalbarri which show the cliffs at the edge of the Indian Ocean. The Rainbow Jungle in Kalbarri is a breeding and conservation facility for Australian native parrots. There they have the largest walk through aviary in Australia. It was real neat to have all these colorful parrots flying around you.

South of Kalbarri is Red Bluff road which is made of 400 million year old mud stone and goes right into the ocean. There are some cool rock formations. There are a series of trails along the cliffs south of Kalibarri. I remember walking one of those trails and the flies were driving me nuts by trying to crawl up my nose. Then these swallows started snapping the flies around my head. You could actually hear the swallows crunch the flies, they were coming that close to my head. Good swallows! The flies were pretty bad during my last three trips to WA. I would definitely recommend getting a fly net, which would go over your head, before setting off into the country there.

I rode my first camel in Kalbarri, see  Photo # 14 . The ride from my camel was much smoother than previous horses I had ridden. Also I took a flight over the Murchison River Gorge and along the coastal cliffs south of Kalibarri. I’m really not much of a flier but they needed one more person to fill the flight and I got it for just over half price. The cool thing was that I got the shotgun seat next to the pilot. We took off from the local airport east of town and pretty much stayed at about 1000 feet up for most of the trip. The views of the Murchison Gorge were pretty neat.

After leaving Kalbarri I headed north to Shark Bay. At the southern end of Shark Bay is the Marine preserve of Hamelin Pool, which contains the world’s best known colony of stromatolites. There is real nice elevated walkway at Hamelin Pool, which takes you right out among the stromatolites, see  Photo # 15 . I know that they don’t look like much but their fossils go back over 3 billion years.

For my next adventure I backtracked down the coast to Geraldton and then headed east, way out into the desert, to Mt. Magnet. Just north of Mt. Magnet is The Granites, which contains some interesting rock structures and aboriginal rock paintings. The day I arrived at The Granites it was very hot and the flies were really bad. You had to wear a head net or they would drive you crazy. The problem was that as hot as it was, it was far worse under a net. The aboriginal rock paintings were not pointed out by any signs, so it became a type of Easter egg hunt to find them. I did manage to find a large hollow rock with some painting in it. A rock overhang also had an outline of a hand inside of it. And that was about all I was able to find there.

I returned to Wongan Hills the next day to continue my hunt for planetary nebulae. While there I took the Mt. Matilda trail, which was about 10 km long. This walk has some nice lookouts showing a lot of the wheat belt around Wongan Hills. During the walk I came a cross a Thorny Devil, which is an ant eating reptile, somewhat similar to the Horned Lizard we find in California but with a lot larger spikes on it. It was a beautiful yellow and brown color. It was sitting so still in the trail, I almost stepped on it. The funny thing was, it wasn’t scared of me at all and completely ignored me. I of course didn’t bother this beautiful little lizard, instead I took a picture of it and continued on my walk.

At the end of March a storm dumped around 4 inches of rain on the Wongan Hills area. There is so much clay in the soils there that rain doesn’t easily sink in. Instead it runs to the lowest spots and forms a lot of little lakes and actually washed out the shoulders of some roads. At the pea gravel quarry off smith road where I was observing a little pond had formed in one corner. The neat thing was, within a couple of days of forming, the little pond had frogs croaking in it. My Australian friends called them motorcycle frogs because of the rrrrrrrr sound they made. Within a week the pond was all dried up and the frogs were gone.

My second trip to WA was coming to an end so I got up at four AM of the day I was leaving Wongan Hills for Perth and drove south to the pullout to see what the bulge of the Milky Way looked like when it was overhead. It was fantastic. M 7 was directly overhead. Antares was north of overhead. You could see our Milky Way’s dark lane from stretching from the Southern Cross to Cygnus. You could see the zodiacal light in the east with Venus embedded in it. It was a view I’ll remember for the rest of my life and a wonderful one to finish my second trip to WA.

My third trip to WA in 2004 was scheduled to be from early January to the end of February so I could hit planetary nebulae in the Small Magellanic cloud while it was still pretty high in the sky. Once again I spent a few days in Perth recovering from the flight and getting over jet lag. My rental car was a Holden Commodore station wagon again but blue in color. Once everything was loaded into the Holden, I headed out to Wongan Hills.

 Photo # 16  is of Andrew and Cecilia Lockwood at the pea gravel quarry on Smith road. Andrew’s 10” reflector is also shown. While I was setting up my 20” scope, Andrew and Cecilia’s Scottie dog, Mc Duff, ran over and licked my primary mirror.  Photo # 17  shows Andrew and Cecilia scowling at a bad Mc Duff. Actually the dog slobber dried out quickly and didn’t hurt the mirror.    Photo # 18  shows yours truly and my 20” scope set up at the pea gravel quarry on Smith road.

January was a good observing month. I was able to pretty much finish off all the planetary nebulae I wanted to go after in the Small Magellanic Cloud. When the moon started to get in the way, I left Wongan Hills to play tourist again. Back in 1999 I had wanted to go to Kokerbin Rock but I never got around to it. I decided that it would be the first place to visit on this trip. Kokerbin Rock is supposed to be the third biggest monolith in Australia. It was a real big rock. I spent a good part of the day climbing all over it. You could actually drive about halfway up the rock. At the top of the rock was a monument about 3 feet tall with a round plate embedded horizontally in the top of it. The plate had arrows pointing to different cities in Australia and their distance. The view of the wheat belt from there was wonderful.

Other sights I took in around the Kokerbin Rock area were Mt. Sterling, Gorge Rocks, the Corrrigin Dog Cemetery and the giant Ram Statue with anatomically correct testicles in Wagin. I spent a few days in Perth and then headed north for a day at the Pinnacles. Next I headed back to Wongan Hills to give a slide show to the local Rotary Club. Walga Rock was supposed to have some of the nicest Aboriginal rock paintings in that area of WA so I headed there the next day.

The way to get to Walga Rock is first to drive to Mt. Magnet. Then drive another hour north to the old mining city of Cue. There is a dirt road going west of Cue, heading out into the desert. If you drive about 40 km on this dirt road you will arrive at Walga Rock. I was really worried about driving on this dirt road because I was told how easy it was to loose your way with all the side roads coming in. Also I was told there were monster sized mining trucks that would crush your car like a dead tinny, (Australian for empty beer can).

Actually the dirt road out of Cue was well graded and marked. There were no monster mining trucks about and I don’t think they could get through the cattle guards that I saw on the road. I did scare a couple emus almost to death when I came around a corner. They had come through a hole in a wire fence. One emus ran back through the hole. The other emus missed the hole and hit the fence head on. The poor thing bounced into the air and hit on its back. But it got right back up and made it through the hole on the second try. When Walga Rock came into sight, it was around noon and very hot. I was thankful my esky was full of ice and soft drinks.

The Aboriginal rock paintings are located near the western end of Walga Rock. There is a large overhang on the rock, which protects most of the paintings from the weather.  Photo # 19  shows a small part of the rock paintings. They appear to be very old since they were painted before the granite has fallen off in what looks like a normal erosion process. It was quite easy to walk to the top of Walga Rock and look out over the very flat desert. Once in awhile, another large granite rock could be seen far in the distance. They looked like islands in an ocean.

I spent the night at Mt. Magnet and then headed for the coast to visit a new independent country. The Hutt River Province Principality was formed in 1970 when an angry wheat farmer seceded from the state of WA and the commonwealth of Australia. Prince Leonard and Princess Shirley produce their own postage stamps and coins. Also they will stamp your passport for your visit. Prince Leonard kindly gave me the grand tour of his country and was quite interested in my 20” telescope.  Photo # 20  shows a bust of Prince Leonard gazing benevolently over his country.

After returning to Wongan Hills, I started observing again at the pea gravel quarry off Smith road. The moon was rising later and later and I was getting in more hours of viewing each night. Then a stretch of bad weather hit. I lost almost a week of prime viewing time to cloudy weather or high winds. I had been used to losing a couple of days to rain and high winds on a trip but I had never lost so many consecutive days before. Thank goodness the Wongan Hills Thrift Store has a lot of cheap paperback books which I was able to read during my wait.

Once the weather finally cleared up, I was able to resume my observations of planetary nebulae. I had pretty much hit all the PNe in the LMC & SMC that I thought were visible in my 20” scope, so I continued to work on ones in my SECGPN list. Also I had a list of other objects that I wanted to look at. Soon the end of February was approaching, so once more I packed everything up and headed back to Perth for the long trip home.

My 2005 trip to WA was from the end of February to the end of April. While in Perth I loaded up on used books from the different used bookstores. Then I took the train to Fremantle and got even more used books. I wanted plenty of reading material for my stay in Wongan Hills. My rental car was a silver Holden Commodore station wagon this time. I stopped by Andrew and Cecilia’s home to load up my 20” scope and then headed out to Wongan Hills.

March ended up being pretty horrible. I ended up getting only four good nights and one of those was pretty windy. Also I got a couple of partial nights before being clouded out.  Photo # 21  shows the type of weather I had to deal with. It was quite cold and rained a lot. South of Wongan Hills, 100,000 sheep died of hypothermia according to the West Australian. On top of it all, my favorite restaurant had folded up and I had to go to the Shell Roadhouse to get food.

Since the weather was so bad, I decided to drive about 40km west of Wongan Hills to visit the town of New Norcia, which is almost entirely composed of an old Benedictine Monastery. It is really surprising to see all these large buildings in the middle of nowhere. It still has an active monastery but it has far fewer people than at its height of power when it controlled over one million acres of land. Today it is known for its bread and olive oil that the 20 remaining monks produce. At the visitor’s center in the St. Joseph’s building is an art gallery and a museum. The art gallery has some old religious paintings dating back to the 18th century.

If you take the walking tour you get to see all the chapels in the different buildings. There were two chapels in the main monastery. The Abbey Church has wall paintings done by aboriginal members of the church. There is a neat aboriginal nativity scene with a kangaroo and an emus attending the birth of Christ. There are additional chapels in the St. Ildephonsus and St Gertrude’s buildings.  Photo # 22  shows the outside of the St. Gertrude’s building. New Norcia is definitely worth a visit if you are in that area of Australia.

I decided to visit some of the local towns and Toodyay (pronounced 2J) end up being a real little gem. It has a neat main street with lots of old buildings and hotels with those cool second story verandahs, see  Photo # 23 . Connor’s Mill is a restored flour mill, which is next to the Toodyay visitor’s center. For a couple bucks you can take a tour of Connor’s Mill and see how complicated it is to turn wheat into flour. Also Toodyay has the Old Goal Museum where the criminal, Moondyne Joe was kept. It seemed that Moondyne Joe was a lousy thief but was a great escape artist. His escapes became legendary. Yearly now, they have a Moondyne Joe festival in Toodyay, which brings in people from all over.

Since the moon was up I decided to visit Yanchep National Park which is north of Perth. They have a Koala Zoo there, where you can watch the Koala bears feed on their favorite gum leaves.  Photo # 24  shows one of the little guys at his feeding station while another Koala sleeps above. Unfortunately most of the trails in Yanchep National Park were closed during my visit. An arson set brush fire had burnt most all of Yanchep National Park and now the trees on the trails were a safety hazard. Burnt gum trees have a bad habit of dropping limbs without any warning. They had a ranger badly injured by one of these falling limbs.

On another trip I decided to drive way east of Wongan Hills and then drive north on dirt roads to reach two large granite rocks in the desert. Beringbooding Rock has the largest rock water catchment tank in Australia, holding over two million gallons of water. There is a nice short aqueduct with three supporting pillars going from the rock to the tank. Climbing to the top of the rock, a wedge tail eagle was circling around me quite close. At the top of the rock was a large monument made piled up of flat pieces of granite. On the western side of this rock, about half way up, is a huge gnamma hole, see  Photo # 25 . Gnamma hole is an aboriginal term for holes in the rock, in which rain collects to form pools of water.

The other rock I visited was called Elachbutting Rock. This rock is unique in that it has a tunnel called Monty's Pass, formed when a very large curved piece of granite broke off and moved away from the main rock.  Photo # 26  was taken about half way through Monty’s Pass, looking toward the exit. This rock had quite a few gnamma holes, all filled up with water from the recent rains. There is also a type of wave rock formation very similar to the Wave Rock at Hyden. This finished my tourist phase for this trip and I headed back to Wongan Hills.

April turned out to be a lot better than March for observing. I still lost nights to clouds, rain and wind but I was able to finish off my SECGPN list. One evening as I turned into the pea gravel quarry off Smith road, I startled a young kangaroo and its mother as they were drinking from the small pool of water there. Later, a flock of pink and gray Galahs landed to drink at the pool, even though I was pretty close. I’ll always remember sitting back in my folding chair, listening to old time rock and roll on Radio West and sipping on a coke while waiting for it to get dark at the pea gravel quarry.

This was my last trip to WA with the 20” scope. My survey of PNe in the LMC and SMC was finished and I had finished off my SECGPN list. I had accomplished everything I had set out to do. Next all the equipment had to be cleaned and packed back into their cases for air freighting back to California. Andrew and Cecilia Lockwood were starting a massive remodeling of their home so they were probably happy to get all my junk out of their bedroom. All my equipment was left with my shipping agent, Paul O’Donoghue, near the Perth International Airport on Thursday, April 21. The next day I turned my Holden back to the car rental company. The rest of the time spent enjoying the Perth area until I had to leave early on Sunday morning for my flight back to California.

Kent hard at work during a CCAS star party
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