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I'm not overly certain, I remember we went on holiday to Policemans Point caravan park and being woken up early to see Halley's Comet. I was 5 at the time and wasn't as impressed as I was hoping to be.
Much later on when I was around 12ish I remember seeing on the news about a lunar eclipse that night so I grabbed my Dad's binos and went to the backyard to watch that, I was very impressed by that sight and then went on to scan the skies and came across a globular cluster and that blew me away. I couldn't tell you which one though and didn't even know what a globular cluster was, I was excited by that but met with apathy when I went in to tell my parents.
From then on though I kept track of things like meteor showers and eclipses, things I could observe with zero equipment.
I also recall watching something on telly about John Dobson and sidewalk astronomy and the lasting impression I had from that was people could actually build their own telescopes out of relatively common and easily attainable things.
Fast forward 15 or so years and I had moved into an appartment in central Brussels with my wife and I obviously had mentioned my interest in building a telescope, even downloaded plans for it but it wasn't feasible in that appartment but when we did move to a place with a yard my wife gave me a 6" reflector for my birthday and ever since then I have really got more involved.
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