It is very exciting for everyone today as we are heading to snow country. Lisa has only seen snow when she was a 7 year old, and of course the kids have really only heard about it or seen it on tv. The idea of snow has had Rowan beside himself for days now.
We managed to pack up in good time, and got ourselves on the road early in the hope of missing peak hour traffic through Canberra this morning. How bad could it be? I have been told that there was a great deal of planning and fore thought that went into Canberra. What there isn't a lot of is street signs. And when you do eventually find yourself on the road that you want, it mysteriously changes on you without any notification.
We eventually managed to find our way out to Tidbinbilla which doesn't appear on the map or the GPS, where the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex is. This is a joint venture facility between the CSIRO and NASA.When we entered, we were asked if we would like to book our seat, and how long we were staying as it was first in best dressed today...bit weird. It was later we realised that today was very important on the calendar of CDSCC.
The third robot to be landed on Mars (Curiosity) was due to touch down around 3:30pm today. The CDSCC is a major tracking and reporting station for NASA and plays a role in receiving and relaying the information sent back from the robot.As you can see by the clock, there wasn't very much time remaining for the 18 months that it has taken to get there. Unfortunately we were not going to stay long enough to see the landing.
The entire building is full of cool space stuff...like this fragment of Moon rock which was collected on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon by Buzz Aldrin. There is a lunar module landing thruster on display, and several other great historical space uniforms and artefacts.Half of the building today was dedicated to the landing of Curiosity which had attracted a decent following of people even in the early morning.
We lingered for quite some time soaking up the atmosphere, and reading all of the displays. There was also an interactive area for the kids to explore the history of space flight.
The model here was a life size replica of Curiosity, and we paused for a photo with old mate here prior to collecting ourselves and driving on to Jindabyne.
Outside the building are the giant radio telescopes. There were 5 that I could see around the grounds, including this bohemoth of 70m across the dish. Later in the day we checked up to see that the module had landed safely. I imagine that there would be quite a celebration underway at the CDSCC.NERD PARTY!!! Ok, so I'm envious.
It wasn't too far to drive to get back onto the Monaro Hwy, and soon we were driving South again, towards Cooma and the Snowy Mountains in earnest. Another border crossing, and little else of interest on the drive. In fact the landscape is quite barren. Yellowing grassy fields, and no foliage on the trees We drove across the causeway at the Snowy Mountain River Dam. It is a very long way to the bottom of the dam, and I can't fathom (Pardon the pun) how deep Lake Jindabyne must be.
We tried to park the caravan, but after 15 minutes of trying I declared that it just wouldn't fit onto the site that they had allocated us. A bit of rejiggerating, and they offered us a different site which low and behold the van went onto first go. My ego was taking a battering until then. One quick trip into town got us kitted up for the snow, and we have purchased lift tickets, and lessons for the kids. I am extremely excited to be getting onto the snow again, and look forward to reporting the myriad of injuries and lost clothing over the coming days.
Lisa has secretly gone and bought half a shop worth of Thermal Underwear to keep warm. I keep telling her they serve hot chocolate next to the fireplace at the lodge. Only $25 a cup. Now she is giving me the evil eye.
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