Reminiscences

Abstract

I would like to take up something that John Whiteoak said at the symposium yesterday in relation to Cowra or Parkes as the possible site for the 64-m telescope. In my memory, what really happened was that E. G. (Taffy) Bowen was determined to locate the telescope on the Nepean River near Camden. It would have been a very beautiful, but very noisy site, and most people were resigned to having the telescope there. But I argued very strongly that it should go 'over the mountains'. Taffy was good enough to arrange a meeting of radio the result that a group, an unlikely team consisting of B. Y. (Bernie) Mills, W. N. (Chris) Christiansen and me, set out to look for an alternative site, and we finished up at Cowra. We were going to recommend Cowra but Chris had second thoughts, and said he would like to push on a little further-and he found this magnificent site near Parkes. So it was really Chris's discovery. was left to Kevin Sheridan, Frank Gardner and me, with the aid of a low-flying aircraft, to do some tests to make sure that the site did not suffer from interference from industrial noise from the town of Parkes itself.