Planet Earth is the cosmological equivalent of a provincial town.

HDH Pope Alice mission statement

I am a tourist in my own town.

Luke Roberts 1982

ALPHA, my birthplace in Central Western Queensland, shaped my worldview. It has been the centre of my universe. It was there I first heard of New York, Pyramids, ‘We of the Never-Never’ and saw the original Russian satellites. It was there I first encountered mysteries, which the Church and Hollywood did their best to explain.

Hidden histories incorporate Alpha in a journey from Stone Age to Space Age. Little emphasis was given during my childhood to the fact that other eyes once gazed at the skies of Alpha long before mine.

“The less we remember, the less we are.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafon,  novelist

Two encounters changed my adult view of Alpha; the work of Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe (1850-1928) at the Queensland Art Gallery and an 18th century boomerang from Alpha in the Museum of South Australia. Both sightings profoundly affected me. Somehow I felt more complete.