[Kunama]

Great weekend with great company at Phil's beautiful property, thanks to all in attendance, especially to Karen and Mark from Florida, Andrias from Faroe Islands and Sean and Kiyoko (hope I got the spelling right) from Tokyo.
Good to also see the younger observers, Emilie, Jordan and Alex, in attendance.

It was fantastic to have the variety of Takahashi scopes to compare on the same night. Allan was very busy demonstrating some rather fine eyepiece pairs on the TOA130NS.

Mark's and Andrias' comments on seeing the southern objects for the first time made me realise how lucky we really are to have these beautiful sights above us.

New to Tak ownership, Colin (Atmos) went home with the 'door prize' FC100DL refractor, a scope I am sure he will enjoy for years to come and our thanks for the Porta-trailer towing.

This morning was a beautiful sunny morning, being an early riser I managed to finish off the Mumm Champagne, brought by Phil, while waiting for the billy to boil. (John, Andrias and I proved one can live a couple of days on biscuits, water and coffee and still be sociable).

After packing up and conducting an 'emu-bob' Andrias and I left the property in JohnG's capable care and collected our new friends Karen and Mark for some sightseeing around the historic town of Yass and the Yass River Gorge. We then took Karen and Mark to catch their ride at Yass Junction and said our goodbyes.

The rest of the day Andrias and I toured the Mount Stromlo Observatory and the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Comms Centre to watch the 70metre DSS43 tracking Voyager II, before meeting up with John 'The Mekon' for the next leg of Andrias' travels.

My new Tak and the Blunderbuss will be there again next year......
Clear skies,
Matt