June 29, 2015
The Kingaroy Observatory formally opened its doors to the public on Monday after its long move from Maidenwell.
The 10-year-old business is the brainchild of astronomer Jim Barclay and his wife Lyn.
They have spent $100,000 shifting the Observatory’s buildings and telescopes to their new home near Kingaroy Airport, installing plumbing and electrics and landscaping the grounds.
The Observatory held its official opening on Saturday night, giving 40 invited guests a private tour of the new facility and a peek at the night skies through the telescopes.
Jim said the couple had decided to move the Observatory from Maidenwell last year after upgrades were carried out to the Maidenwell Sportsgrounds.
“The sportsground was levelled to make it useful for the community and now many local groups want to use it as venue for events, There’s also some talk about putting in lights, too,” he said.
Jim said while he supported the improvements at Maidenwell and was very fond of the town, the changes meant it wasn’t a good spot for the Observatory any more.
So mid-way through last year, with his lease on the sportsgrounds site about to expire, he asked Deputy Mayor Keith Campbell if the South Burnett Regional Council had a suitable alternative area he could lease.
Council offered him the use of a 1500sq m site at Kingaroy Airport that seemed ideal for the purpose.
“The SBRC was very helpful providing us with a new site, but they insisted that it be at no cost to ratepayers,” Jim said.
“So the $100,000 we spent on the move came entirely out of our own pockets.”
Relocation began in March and now, three months later, the half-million dollar Observatory is finally ready to open its doors to the public again.
It has a new name (the Kingaroy Observatory) and a new website.
And with the region’s biggest town now just 4km from its front door, a whole new market who may have never been inside an Observatory before.
Jim said modern telescopes were a lot more advanced than most people realised.
Once they were properly set up, they could be turned by computer to focus on almost any point of interest in the sky with just the push of a few buttons.
The Observatory features three $14,000 Meade LX200 14″ GPS-enabled telescopes that can magnify objects up to 1000 times.
And to demonstrate what they were capable of, he clicked a few buttons and allowed eager guests to view the rings of Saturn, the sixth planet in our solar system located 1.2 billion kilometres from Earth.
The Observatory now has several plans it wants to progress.
One of them is to stream live photos of the sun’s surface into local school science labs so teachers can show students some of the wonders of astronomy up close.
Another is for a weather station in the complex to be picked up by the Weather Bureau as an alternate reporting site for Kingaroy weather reports.
But the couple’s biggest plans involve growing the South Burnett’s tourist industry, which has been in the doldrums ever since the 2011 floods led to the closure of the Blackbutt Range crossing.
Jim said the nearest comparable observatory is in Charleville in western Queensland.
In about a fortnight, the couple plans to invite tourism operators from Kingaroy and Nanango to show off what the Observatory can do, and talk about how they can network with them to give both towns’ many visitors a new experience, and a new reason to come to the South Burnett.
For more information about the Observatory, phone Jim on (07) 4164-6194 or visit the Kingaroy Observatory website
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This is such good news for Kingaroy and the South Burnett. What a fabulous facility to have and what a marvelous “teacher’s aid” for kids of all ages – including this 65 y.o. big kid – just love gazing into the heavens!