



From Dover Heights to the Milky Way - how a little house earned national recognition


Nicole Hasham

The house today.

The house today. Photo: Danielle Smith




Birthplace of radio astronomy: the dish atop the World War II blockhouse.

Birthplace of radio astronomy: the dish atop the World War II blockhouse. Photo: CSIRO



''They have laid everything out so - especially from a distance - it looks less like a military building,'' he said.




An operations scientist at the CSIRO's Parkes Observatory, John Sarkissian, said by turning their radar instruments to the stars, the scientists could study the universe ''in much greater detail''.

''Until then, astronomy was just what you saw through a telescope with your own eyes … radio astronomy opened up our knowledge of the universe to a different range of phenomena,'' he said.

In 1951, the scientists John Bolton, Gordon Stanley and Bruce Slee decided they needed a bigger telescope. With little government funding for radio physics, they spent their lunchtimes digging a 22-metre wide, dish-shaped hole. They lined it with steel strips from old packing cases and began surveying the Milky Way, said Dr Slee, the only one of the three still surviving.

''We did it on our own initiative. We thought it wouldn't be approved. We got our first results from it and got more support then,'' he said.

The scientists identified the centre of the Milky Way, a point later designated by astronomers as the ''zero point'' of the galaxy's co-ordinates.

The facility closed in 1954 but is considered a forerunner of the Parkes telescope.

The ''hole in the ground'' is now a sports field.

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