After leaving Exmouth it was the day that we were to cross the Tropic of Capricorn in the west. This was to be a special thing for me - as with us, my father had crossed the Tropic of Capricorn at Rockhampton in Queensland, along with crossing it at Longreach in Central Queensland, and also north of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. He had made the comment that sadly he never made it to Western Australia and cross it also there. So ..... I made him a promise before he passed away that when we did visit WA, we would cross the Tropic of Capricorn for him. Mind you the sign seems quite paltry compared with the spire, cairn etc found at other crossings. However, we stopped and got our photo, and a word up to my father, letting him know - it may have taken some time, but we finally made it!
From here, we continued down the road and made it to Carnarvon, where will spend two nights.
After setting up the vans, we then took off to visit the Information Centre and checking out what seemed to be a very nice town. At one of their roundabouts through town, there is a lovely sculpture of numerous digeridoos - quite impressive.
There was also a beautiful mural on the wall of a local building that told of a time line for the area.
From here, we headed out to the Carnarvon Space Station that is now a very informative museum. It would appear that this centre was primarily under the control of NASA compared to the installations at Parkes in central west NSW and Tidbinbilla in the ACT. The centre has a lot of information along with it's 'dish', what is called a sugar scoop and a rocket. The following photo is of the 'sugar scoop' which we understand is for the satellite used for television, and believe it is still in use, although am not 100% sure.
There is also a board (which I could not fit in one photo) that details the time line associated with their work here.
It was a very interesting place to visit with a lot of interactive displays. Peter sat in a simulator that landed the shuttle back on earth. He had several goes at doing it, but sadly appeared to crash land on both attempts.
There was an interactive display where you can see an infrared picture of yourself - now I found this interesting as it confirmed what I have always believed, I have cold legs and feet!
After all this, we headed back to earth for a quiet night in the van.
'Til next time,
June
How interesting.
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