When I started my house build back in 2009, the first task was to build a shed! Of course it was to be no ordinary shed, fully insulated to house the big dob for example. Fortunately for me, there is a local bespoke shed designer around the corner, and its owner, Tim Pumpa, was sufficiently polite when I explained how said shed was to house amongst other things, one of Australia’s largest telescopes 🙂 (Actually he rather took the piss, but that was to be expected).

A few months later, out of the blue, I received a phone call from Tim saying how he and a group of like minded members of the Surveying community would like use the Transit of Venus (ToV) as promotion of the surveying industry in general. Did I have any ideas?

Me! Ideas? Oh Yes…

Two years on and the team had raised an incredible $40,000 and placed over 400 solarscopes into schools. Our broadcast reached 20 Million viewers on the day and we melted down both our own and the University of Queensland’s web sites. to say it was a success was an understatement. I am naturally proud as hell for the part I played in producing the broadcast, but the fund raising and outreach was 100% the work of a potty team of Land Surveyors with a great idea and the determination to carry it through.

We leave behind a website: http://www.transitofvenus.com.au/HOME.html which has been Archived in the National Archive of Australia in the hope that he observers of the ToV on the 11th of December 2117 can make use of our observations.