Mt Stromlo observatory

I wanted to have a look at some real estate on the weekend, but did the touristy thing instead. I happened to be driving near the Mt Stromlo observatory, which is very close to the Canberra suburbs. So, I drove up to have a look.

I was particularly interested in this, having a passing interest in science and having lived in Warrandyte which is a known bushfire hotspot. Though, I didn’t know about the Warrandyte bushfire risk before I bought the property. The Warrandyte house was a nice property in a very pretty setting. It was irresistible. Anyway, I knew the observatories at Mt Stromlo had been hit by the fire. It was on the news Nationwide. So, it was with a sense of empathy as well as curiosity that I went up there to see the place.

Within about a week of moving into the house at Warrandyte, a bushfire broke out in the Pound Bend reserve, which is only a few kms from where we were. Fortunately the fire was controlled relatively quickly, and was a tiny fire by most standards, but the experience put the wind up me. Following that experience summer used to scare me and I was always on the look out for smoke on the horizon. This is something to consider when choosing a place to live. If you want to live in a leafy setting, you are living with a bushfire risk. If this concept is too stressful, live in a more insulated traditional suburb. Of course, you can always buy a big water pump, fire hose, and tank, to help fight the fire yourself. But what if you aren’t at home when the fire breaks out.

The observatory has been decimated. A few administration buildings remain, but rebuilding is changing the look of the place. So much was destroyed. The area must have looked like a bomb site with many of the buildings just husks of their original. Plaques have been placed against each, telling of what they used to be like and the purpose they had. Some observatories were quite old, and boasted of being the largest or the best of their type, in their day, and may have lost some of their edge through the years. But it’s still distressing. They would have been in use, providing service for researchers, students, and others.

This photograph is one of many from Coombs Photography; please spend some time looking at the others, and look here for more information, and this too is interesting. My eye caught sight of a lampshade that had melted into a weird stalactite. The heat must have been intense. One of the steel frames which supported a telescope’s mirrors or lenses had what appeared to be very thick steel supports forming part of the apparatus. These steel bars were twisted and bent as the heat had softened the once straight steel, and with the affect of gravity these hefty bars had drooped into a vertical position, with the rest of the telescope pointing skyward. What sort of inferno can soften metal allowing it to bend like putty? Sad as all this devastation was, as it can be replaced with a bit of cash, one thing that caught my attention was that the data archives, the observations that had been recorded during the service of one observatory over a period of about a century, had been stored on site and were lost to the fire. Some data may have been hand written, perhaps with a quill. Though, I expect much of this data would have been copied, computerised, by various researchers as the need arose, but now the notion of going back to the source is simply gone for ever. I felt a tear forming.

Sorry to go on about this but it really got to me. I was reading a CSIRO report about a year or so ago. Various people had related their experiences and opinions, and the thing that struck me at the time was the disorganisation and inefficiency in getting the right people into fighting the fire, when there was still time to do so. Two things that hindered fighting the fire struck me in particular. There were a number of bulldozers at the ready, to cut fire breaks. They weren’t used, or not used early enough, because they had not been washed after their last job. Washed. Do you like that? The resistance to using them centred on the risk of spreading weeds by seeds caught up in the mud and dirt on the machines from their previous work. Stuff the weeds, in my view. Spray the ground with zero after the fire, if necessary. It also seemed that fire trucks were not allowed into certain areas because the terrain and access was undetermined by officials. That’s a reasonable concern, but on some occasions the land owners were present, and despite their local knowledge their advice was ignored. That just doesn’t seem right.