Astro Tours

Greg Quicke founded Astro Tours in Broome in 1995 and ran it from a dark bush site 13 kilometres out on the Broome Highway. He called his method 'intensely practical astronomy' and built a telescope fleet of Skywatcher Dobsonians, from 5 inch up to 20 inch, plus Skywatcher 102mm refractors, so guests looked through the glass themselves rather than took his word for it. Quicke, nicknamed Space Gandalf, framed every tour around what he called Earth Turning Consciousness — getting people to physically feel the planet spinning through space, not just name constellations. He hosted the ABC series A Stargazer's Guide to the Cosmos and, in a BBC segment, learned Indigenous sky-reading from Dr Noel Nannup, working ancient Aboriginal navigation pathways into his commentary. Quicke died in June 2024, aged 62, after almost three decades on the same patch outside Broome. His family has kept Astro Tours running on the same site with the same telescope fleet — the 2026 season runs May to October, two-hour sessions timed around the moon so the full-moon week, when glare drowns the faint deep-sky objects Quicke considered the whole point, is skipped.