My wife and I are both keen astronomy enthusiasts and members of the Rotorua Astronomical Society. I have a degree in Earth Sciences and additionally have significant local knowledge of the Bay of Plenty District as well as being a keen motorcyclist. I also have a proven ability to cater a message for an audience through my work with corporates as an educator. I learnt and developed this craft while working as a scuba diving instructor on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.
My interest in astronomy began as a child when I bought a small telescope and was gifted a later edition of H A Rey’s classic book The Stars A New Way to See Them by a family friend. I still have and read that book today. My interest in astronomy was rekindled when I again purchased a telescope while living in Wellington. We moved back to the Bay of Plenty at Hamurana in 2021 to discover a beautiful bortle three rated rural sky in our backyard.
And so began the addition of telescopes and accessories to a collection and many hours of finding, observing and most recently photographing the moon, planets, stars, nebulae, globular clusters, and galaxies that are visible in the dark rural skies above our home. Visitors from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the USA have joined us in our backyard and have been amazed at what there is to be seen right above our heads in a dark rural sky . Hamurana Skies Limited is the product of my combined life experiences and a full year of planning before being registered as company in July of 2024.