Sunday 20th February 2011 – I met up with Nick for dinner last night and again this morning. We took the bikes out to the NASA Deep Space Communications Complex. This is where they "listen" to space.

I had a fabulous time looking at all the exhibits and taking photos of the satellite dishes. Nick, however, seemed a little restless (having been there many times before) so I suggested he could leave if he wanted and I’d go back via the Mount Stromlo Observatory.

Until 2003 Mount Stromlo housed about 5 different telescopes but they were all destroyed in a massive bushfire and now only the shells of the buildings remain – the actual telescopes were damaged beyond repair. By this time, I was on a bit of a space mission and decided I would go and find the Planetarium. As I didn’t have a clue where this was, I went to the Tourist Information Centre first only to discover it too had been destroyed in a fire in 2008!

So my space mission had to be aborted for the day and I had to content myself with going to see “127 Hours” at the pictures instead – if you haven’t seen this film, its about a guy who falls down a ravine and gets his arm trapped between a boulder and the rock face. He eventually has to cut his arm off to get free. And, yes, its a true story!