G'day everyone.
A couple of months ago I accompanied Alex Massey (Gondwana Telescopes) to the Queensland Astrofest where I had great opportunity to try the telescopes he makes.
Since then Alex asked me to write a review based on my experience with the Marana telescope. So here are my humble observations.
The scope was a 12" Dobsonian reflector, no Servocat, no any pointing device, pure vanilla push-to Dob.
You can see Marana here
I got my first impression when I saw his 3 telescopes in the boot of his Outlander. The box for Marana is as thin as my box for eyepieces, very compact for a telescope, I recon he could put 7-8 Maranas over there without any problem.
At that time I couldn't figure out how everything is packed inside, all that looked very impressive and quite secure at the same time.
I must say that I'm relatively new to the Amateur Astronomy, I had only 3-4 scopes, and most of the time (about 2 years) spent with my full metal 14" Orion push-to Dobsonian, it could probably be used as a rocket launcher due to it's big weight and stability.
Fast forward to the second day in the camp, Alex had a presentation of it's new scope Marana, where he showed the guts of the box, all bits and pieces, all is neatly located inside, - that's really nice feature, you don't need to have a dedicated box for your scope parts, everything including the telescope is securely packed within the telescope itself.
The assembly took reasonable time, it was not much faster than assembly of my scope for example, but it takes less effort to assemble Marana due to it's small weight.
I was surprised to see the secondary mirror on a magnet and honestly was doubtful of it's ability to hold a collimation properly, but it turned out to be a very solid piece and it hasn't changed it's position once during the night session.
The next comes a small secondary mirror heater powered by a 9v battery, very important piece of equipment. It's painted black, small and completely unnoticeable.
Just remembered my last night at Katoomba when dew was the heaviest I ever saw there, we were constantly using a 12v hair drier. I was using my scope and Alex were drawing a sketch next to his 17.5 so the Marana were standing alone for a while and at one moment I said to Alex "mate why there is no dew on the Marana's secondary, I remember we never used a drier on it?! is it has some kind of special coating? Alex said "... mate, there is a heater on it.. " ..arrgghhh.. I've been laughed at for the rest of the session :-/ so you will forget that you have a heater on your secondary, believe me!
OK, eventually the night at Astrofest began and so my dance under the stars with Marana. She was very light, her movements were graceful, fluid, I felt that connection between other worlds and me was "cleaner", there were less interference, more freedom, we easily glided from one location to another numerous times.
I found the focuser though rather short was positioned wisely so I didn't have any problems with my eyepieces, I used 20 mm Nagler, 13 mm Ethos and 20 mm ES 100°. The counterweight that comes with the telescope helped me to restore balance with the ES bomb, was very happy about it. that combination gave me one of the best views with the telescope - a wide field view that is achievable only with a smaller aperture.
The "tube" upper assembly is light and there is almost no friction, that probably will be a problem on a windy day with a shroud, but that would be a the case with any lightweight scope.
I liked the carbon poles and the wood upper cage, they are not as freezing cold as metal parts, won't steal pleasure from your sky gazing.
In overall the telescope left me with the very positive impression, the performance of the scope is really nice, it's light and sturdy at the same time, each feature is well thought and wisely implemented. The views were not spoiled by clumsiness of the telescope nor by flimsiness nor by inability to focus, nor by due, collimation or anything else, only the size of the mirror limited my experience, but then with the bigger mirror I wouldn't get those wonderful wide-field views.
I believe Alex put his heart and his soul into his work, if you get one of his scopes you will get a piece of his heart too.
I'd like to thank Alex for letting me play with his masterpiece.
And thank you all guys for reading!
Have a look in the pictures below, 
