A Drive South

I was woken early yesterday by the sound of thunder, unusually long rumbles which had me confused for a while as to what it was. The day didn't start out too promisingly but by afternoon it had cleared up, so on the way home we couldn't resist going for a drive down south through the tiny village of Tharwa and towards Namadgi National Park.

If we could have made an earlier start I'd liked to have gone further. We haven't explored very much down that way apart from driving through, and occasionally visiting the old space tracking station sites, and we haven't been to those since before the 2003 bushfire, so definitely overdue for a visit. Honeysuckle Creek was where the first pictures of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon were received. The dish was relocated to the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla in the early 80's where it continued to support space exploration until just last year. The old site sadly was vandalised and the buildings were subsequently demolished, but the foundations were left and signs explaining the site's significance erected.

Yesterday we only drove a little beyond the visitors centre. The countryside is looking so lush and the paddocks seemed well stocked. The low level bridge showed evidence of having been submerged during the recent rains.