• Student
  • 29/10/2015
  • Nederlands

And how are things in Perth?

I left for Perth, one of the most isolated cities in the world, almost six months ago now. Whereas all other major Australian cities are situated at the east coast, Perth is situated over 3000km away at the west coast of the country. I am doing my internship at the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA), which is part of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy (ICRAR). They contribute to the international effort to build the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the world’s largest radio telescope.

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Part of the SKA will be built in Western Australia, in the Murchison shire. This is a region of the size of the Netherlands all while having just 113 inhabitants, situated almost 800km from Perth, literally in the middle of nowhere. I was lucky enough to join one of the trips to the site, which was a very special experience. During this trip we installed one of the first antennas, several hundreds of thousands of these antennas will eventually make up the low-frequency part of the SKA.

Perth has a Mediterranean climate such that even during the past winter we had a very mild average temperature of 20 degrees. The start of the spring already has had plenty of 30+ degrees days. This makes that people are very outdoor minded, and there is hence plenty of things to do and see.

From the numerous parks, the uncountable number of white beaches, to the wildlife. This includes seeing dolphins show up in the river in the middle of the city, kangaroos at every possible location, doing a whale watching tour further down south, and of course the cute quokka’s of Rottnest Island. (Western-)Australians are very friendly and relaxed people, as proven by their unofficial motto: No worries, mate!

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