Thursday 16 October 2003

Hidden Valley

Arriving in Darwin was interesting. The humidity was quite high, but having been in the Kimberly for some months it didn't hit us as hard as it did our friends from Perth. Setting up in the blazing sun was an interesting experience, one which I don't recommend. After all the pain in Crossing Falls, setup was a doddle.

I'd just had an article about our project hit the front-page on slashdot.org, so I was approached by several geeks at the race-way asking if I was that guy. We had several journalists visit us to take photos and the team did their bit to spice up the Sungroper Internet Cafe.

One journalist asked us if we could just pick-up the dish and move it to the front of the complex so she could take a photo there. She was a little taken aback that the whole thing weighs about 600kg and that moving it would require us to dismantle it, stow it, move and reverse the process. She finally gave up on the idea and took a nice shot that made it to the NT News on the inside-cover - I think that's where they traditionally have the pin-ups :-)

This was the first location we used a generator to power the dish and it made no difference whatsoever.