Hi Alex,
Thanks for the response and wonderful you enjoyed reading the post.
It's hard to believe now as you wait at the traffic lights at one of
the busiest stretches of road in the country that it once housed an
internationally important sky survey observatory.
These days it is magnificent in its own way because of the towering
Sydney Blue Gums. I must admit I look beneath the canopy and ask
myself if anyone has the foresight to plant the next generation beneath
them. They are all about the same height and I would assume will all
die around the same time.
Whilst looking for information on the net, I stumbled across the images
of the solar eclipse at Goondiwindi, the images of the
astrograph being transported and its setup there but little else in way of
a surrounding narrative, but that will be out there somewhere.
But it must have been a helluva logistical exercise moving that thing
and not without a great deal of trepidation.
It's a bit like saying, "Yeah, I am coming up to Queensland Astrofest
but first let me dismantle this giant telescope, get a bunch of horses,
carts and drivers, I will get some block and tackle and hoist it up,
drive the horses up Pennant Hills Road to Hornsby railway station,
more block and tackle whilst I load it on a train - hang on - you do have
a carriage long enough? - go 740km, unload it off the train, build an
observatory, build temporary accommodation then hope like hell it is
not cloudy or raining for the eclipse. The eclipse lasts a few minutes and
I pack it all up and ship it back down to Pennant Hills again.
I recollect you were involved in real estate? There must be gems of places
across the north shore that would be fascinating to peek inside.
"Hanging judges" as you mentioned and ancestral homes built on
family fortunes in manufacturing, retailing, trading, pastoral barons
from the early days and so forth. Not quite the historical legacy of
somewhere like England, but a fascinating insight nevertheless into
money and power from the early days of the colony and Australia as a nation.