162 – 164. Crocodile Pizza, Outback Pale Ale and the Sydney Observatory

162. Crocodile Pizza
We had been planning to go the Observatory for ages but with all the rubbish weather we’d put it off on the assumption that we would see very much with the recent dense cloud cover. Eventually however, we took a gamble and decided to book ourselves onto the 8:15pm tour on a Friday night.

This gave us time before hand to get a quick bite in and we found ourselves in the much recommended Australian Hotel in the Rocks. This place is famous for it’s gourmet pizzas (which are all the rage in Sydney). In various restaurants so far I’ve had pumpkin and goats cheese, Thai prawn and Moroccan lamb to name a few so when I saw Saltwater Croc Pizza on the menu I knew what I’d be having.

I’ve never tasted crocodile meat before and it’s kind of hard to describe. Everyone says “it tastes just like chicken,” but I don’t think that they’ve got it quite right. It’s more of an absence of taste and although this was basted in Thai spices it really didn’t hold the flavours well. As for the consistency, well it was somewhere between prawns that had been over-cooked and chicken that had been undercooked but still quite chewy. I’m not sure I’d order it again but I can’t help thinking that a big steak of it done on a BBQ in some kind of barbeque marinade would be awesome.

163. Outback Pale Ale
Smoothness 5
Cost 4
Piss-Factor 4
Aftertaste 3
Coolness 4

This drink scored high and I can honestly say that it’s the most rapidly disappearing beer I’ve drank here. If it’s possible to describe a beer as “more-ish” then this is it. After the first mouthful the rest was positively inhaled in a flurry of hoppy frothiness. An absolute delight and best of all was that it was recommended on the menu to go with Croc Pizza so a bit of a fluke in finding this one. Mind you, since it’s sooo good it’s probably on there to distract you from the blandness of the pizza – did a good job!

164. The Sydney Observatory
This was fascinating. Isla had been going on about it for a while and I have to say that I was expressed only half-hearted interest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as absolutely intrigued by the goings on in space as the next person but the observatory is in the middle of the city and I thought there would be no way we would see anything due to Sydney’s light pollution. I was completely wrong.

We had a great tour guide called Jeff and at the start he took us outside and we did some stargazing from the Observatory grounds. He had a ridiculously powerful laser pointer that allowed him to point out the different constellations and everyone in the group was gob smacked with the things he showed us. We saw the Southern Cross and the Pointer Stars, we could see Orion (although he’s doing a handstand down here!) and he showed us Sagittarius and Scorpio including the heart of Scorpio which is an orange sun called Antares (which means “Rival of Mars” in Greek so named due to its similar colour). We also saw Star 1 which is Alpha Centauri – the closest star to the Earth, a measly 4.35 light years away.

Next we went into the South Dome to look at one of the oldest working telescopes in the world. This 4 meter long refraction telescope had to be manually positioned and took a lot of tinkering but still it was fascinating to look through. One of the interesting things we saw was that Alpha Centauri is in fact 2 stars (A and B) and they are so close together that the naked eye sees them as one. There is actually a third star in the Alpha Centauri group called Alpha Centauri C but its orbit around the other 2 is huge and is actually much closer to us than A and B hence its other name Proxima Centauri. At 4.22 light years away it’s still ridiculously far although the width of our galaxy is 1000 light years so that makes it seem a stones throw.

Next we wondered into the North Dome and had a look at a modern Reflection Telescope. This was totally cool as it was plugged into a PC and you just had to select the star you wanted to see and it automatically moved to the correct position. Not only that but it tracked the object across the sky so despite the rotation of the earth you never lost what you were looking at.

Through this we were able to see a cluster called the Jewel Box which was unusual as it had many colours in it. Normally things seen through a telescope are black and white as there isn’t enough photons to generate colour and your retina cannot build up what little photons there are. The photos you see of stars which are in colour have been taken with long exposures and multiple light filters (and some dabbling on Photoshop I’m sure!). The suns in the Jewel box are so powerful that they emit enough colour for us to see – blue for new stars and red/orange for older ones with white in the middle.

Finally we were shown Jupiter and 4 of it’s moons which was mind blowing. You could make out the dark bands of the equatorial rings and with the eye of faith you could even see the red (grey) spot and all this through a tiny 1 metre long reflection telescope. What was most breath taking was seeing the moons in a perfectly straight line, 3 on one side of Jupiter and 1 on the other which must have been startling to the first astronomers to look at it. In fact Galileo almost got hung for his heresy when he first observed these moons orbiting Jupiter with therefore negated the theory that Earth was the centre of the Universe and everything revolved around it. I wonder if Londoners are aware of this fact yet?

Finally we went to the little 3D cinema they have there and saw some fascinating photos that have been taken over the years including the one that was generated when the Hubble Telescope was pointed into a supposedly empty part of space for two and a half days. The end result was a picture of thousands upon thousands of galaxies going on and on and on. It really was quite difficult to fathom and certainly a museum that gets you thinking. If you ever get the chance then go visit an observatory like this one and I guarantee you’ll be impressed.