Friday 27th to Monday 30th December, 2024
We chose Narrogin because it’s one of the many places close to Perth that is a designated ‘Dark Sky’ destination. We also like that it is quite a pretty town, rather like some of the little places you find in Victoria and NSW, with obviously cherished old buildings and pretty parks. It has a few cafes, but at this time of year only a couple were open. Plus it is set in gently rolling hills that must be very beautiful in winter and spring when everything is green. Even now, it’s attractive. There are many walks you can do in the cooler weather.
We had lunch at Wandering, actually in the caravan park as it had shade and we were given access to the toilets. Then on to Narrogin, where we checked out the RV camping area in the town, which has a dump point and potable water available.
Our Dark Sky venue is out at the Golf Club, where stargazers are welcome to set up in the large carpark. We were intially disappointed to see the carpark surrounded by trees as we thought it would not allow for good stargazing.
Stephen set up our Celestron 6SE in the late afternoon when there was plenty of light. It’s quite fiddly to set up from scratch, but worth the effort. We’ve been leaving it set up at home so that it’s easy to just take the whole thing out when we want to stargaze in our driveway. We power it with an Ecoflow mini, just the right size to be stable underneath the tripod. We have a smaller power bank that works well, but I worry about us accidentally treading on it.
We had a meal of leftovers whilst waiting for full darkness, about 8.30 p.m. We had the little Seestar S50, which is wonderful for astrophotography. You use an app on your phone or tablet to navigate to the celestial object you want to photograph, then it uses stacking technology to gradually build up the image.
Stephen had done a landscape alignment process before sunset, but still had to do a one, two, or three star alignment before he could go to objects. That took time and was frustrating, but eventually we were tuned into Jupiter.
The SeeStar decided to act up and would not connect to my iPad. Even when I eventually got it linked it kept dropping out. Some research the next day gave me the confidence to try again on Saturday night with more success.
I would say that both telescopes were a bit of a wash in terms of stargazing. On the other hand, the location gave us a wonderful view of the Milky Way, with almost no light polution. In that sense it was a success.
Only one person turned up to play golf in the evening. He said it would be OK for us to stay overnight in the carpark. This was not official permission, but other people apparently stayed there when there was a golfing event, so he thought it would be OK. This meant that we didn’t have to drive off after packing away the Celestron in the dark. It didn’t matter that we felt very tired because we didn’t have to go back to town to sleep.
We can’t use the outside light due to a malfunction in our control panel, so we had a little lamp, the light beside the door, plus our torches. It was enough, but maybe we need to spend the money to replace the control panel.
The next day was clear and sunny, and we looked forward to another night of stargazing. We went into town for a little bit of shopping and had coffee at the all day cafe in town. Very basic, but run by hard working migrants and it was a popular place.
We then drove out to the next Stargazing venue, Yillyminning Rock, about 20kms from Narrogin. We took the opportunity to fill up on fresh water and empty the toilet first thing on getting back into the town, so could have stayed the night there. But, after a warm afternoon, either sitting outside and braving the insects, or sitting inside where we relied on the fans to be comfortable, we decided we had to move. There were quite a few branches and trees down in the woodlands around us and it was obviously a risk to stay under trees. After a good walk around it was clear that we could not really guarantee that we wouldn’t be in danger, so we decided to drive back to another free camping area in Narrogin.
The one in the main park of town appeared to have some slightly dodgy residents, so we went to the Railway Dam on the edge of town. It looked very different to the last time we visited as the water was quite low. We stayed on the bitumen as the rest of the area was pretty slopy and it’s harder to level a camper than a caravan. There were two caravans there, which helped us to feel safe.
In the evening we took the Seestar out for a little while. My research had given me an idea of how to connect the ipad, which worked. I think it may have been that we were using a different wireless connection, the Starlink, and it was wanting our home network. I was able to link it to the Starlink wifi and that will be it’s ‘home network’ from now on. We didn’t stay out for very long, but still managed to get a reasonable 6 minute image over about 40 minutes. I also did some iphone star photography, it’s surprisingly good.
We had a nice meal of steak bought from the local butcher. We still had salads that we bought from home.
In the morning we took turns to walk down near the dam, Stephen to bird watch and me to have an encounter with the long necked turtles which live on the other side of the dam. The sign says they have been fed by visitors, which is why they rushed to see me, fighting over a position closest to me. They are very small, but I was still glad to be on a high bridge, well out of the way. Zooming into the photos of them swimming towards me, they look quite creepy! Stephen and I walked back to the bridge later, but they din’t come for him. But, we saw some tiny waders that were quite beautiful. We haven’t been able to identify them, so I must post on the birding facebook page to get an ID.
Sunday was supposed to be really hot and before we left home I booked us into a cabin at the caravan park so that we could have good airconditioning in the afternoon. We had a light lunch and hot drinks at a cafe before going out to claim our cabin at about 1.30 p.m.
It was a completely cloudy day, and if we hadn’t had the booking we might have driven home. However, it was good to relax. We had a late afternoon walk in the nearby Foxes Lair Nature Reserve and enjoyed a wonderful sunset, which also happened in Perth. The whole sky became a beautiful rosy colour.
All of the cabins in the caravan park are ‘accessible’. This means that even our one bedroom unit was very spacious. It would work for Matthew, except for the bed, which was too low to allow for the legs of a hoist. I should given them feedback on this as the rest of it was ideal, including the large bathroom and under kitchen bench access for wheelchair users. We also had a large car space suitable even for our Sherwood.
I had a great night’s sleep and we woke up refreshed and ready for going into Foxes Lair for a drive through. We took a short walk to the breakaway outlook from the main picnic area and saw the claypit picnic area. Stephen took a short walk in the Arboretum. It would be good to go back in cooler weather.
It would be strange in a farming community to have a nature reserve names ‘Foxes Lair’, but it doesn’t refer to real foxes, but dates back about 70 years to a convention held in the area. The formal proceedings took place in town, but a much less formal event took place in the picnic area attended by ‘foxes’ having fun. And that’s where the name comes from.
On the way home we stopped at Christmas Tree Well off Brookton Highway for lunch. The Christmas Trees were in bloom, as well as some other native trees. It was pretty, but after lunch it was very hot, so we packed up and headed home.
We had Matt for tea in the evening. We showed him some of the photos and videos we took in Narrogin. I noticed he was much more interested in the videos, so if we want to share trips with him video is the way to go.
Our next trip starts tomorrow. We had to come home to drop off the Celestron Telescope as it takes up too much space unless we are going stargazing. The little SeeStar fits in nicely and will definitely come along.