©2013-
Above left: male King Parrot, Red Hill Lookout. Main picture: view over Canberra from Red Hill Lookout. Parliament House dominates the middle ground. To the right, across Lake Burley Griffin and at the head of Anzac Parade, lies the Australian War Memorial. Behind that is Mt Ainslie. Further to the right is a dominating, pale blocky building -
Due to our swimming commitments there wasn’t much time to get out of Canberra and into the surrounding mountains but we did manage to squeeze in one walk, in Namadgi National Park. It started in the Orroral Valley (left) and followed the Granite Tors track to a lookout at 1320 metres above sea level.
There we found the remains of the Orroral Geodetic Observatory (right). It was built in 1974 as part of the USA-
In the 1980s its primary function became the tracking of artificial satellites, as part of the large Orroral Tracking Station that had been built in the valley below (far right).
The entire facility was closed in 1997 and moved to a newly-