 Right, so that's me, the barefoot astronomer. You know, you forget to wear shoes one time, and that's what happens. I blame it on my childhood. You know, shoes kind of always seemed an obstacle in the way of exploring and discovering and getting out there and tinkering. But enough with the shoe anecdotes. What I'm really here to talk about is astronomy. So, assuming the mind conspiracy theories are not correct, this is pretty much what the world will look like in 2016. You know, business as usual. But given our special occasion today, I think we should change things up a little bit and have a look from a different perspective. So what I'm going to talk about is a particularly southern hemisphere bent on astronomy. So if I were to ask you, where do you suppose the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere is? Well, it's right here. The southern African large telescope, or SALT for short, it has an astronomer, acronyms are key to our science. You know, you have to come up with a good acronym before you're doing anything else. So SALT is kind of nice and snappy in rolls of the tongue. This was built by an international consortium but led by South Africa, and it really has an innovative design that delivers massive aperture for a relatively modest cost. So moving on, how about the most sensitive radio telescope in the world? Where would that be? Myocat, with 64, 12 meters in tenors, due for completion by 2016, this will be the most sensitive radio telescope in the world when it is done. And it's in a really remote, distant place in the crew, which makes it ideal for doing radio astronomy. Because if there's one thing radio astronomers hate, it's people talking on their cell phones while you're trying to do an observation. So to get away from them is ideal. Okay, so radio, that's good. How about the southern hemisphere's largest gamma ray telescope? I wonder where that could be? Ah, Namibia, deep in the Namibian desert. What you could call a high-energy stereoscopic survey system, sorry, rather, I prefer to call Hess, which kind of rolls off the tongue. It's a little bit easier to say. So we've got 3.8, not too bad. How about the largest millimeter telescope in the world? I wonder where that could be? Oh, Chile. Well, you know, 3 out of 4 is not too bad. And I think as a southern hemisphere, we kind of got to stick together here and defend ourselves against our northern brothers. So, you know, we'll take that one for the south as well. So this is the picture in 2016, you know. The southern, you know, southern Africa is this kind of smorgasbord of multi-wavering astronomy. It's a one-stop shop to come as an astronomer and get your data. And I think it's going to be a really fascinating time. But I'm just going to talk about one aspect of this and this is the radio astronomy. So why radio astronomy? Why do I love radio astronomy? And I think in some ways it's the inner child because really these epic massive grand facilities that we build when we're doing radio telescopes really just kind of get you right in the gut. You know, you go to these things and you sit at your computer and you command them to do these magical dances across the sky. And it really just fills you with excitement to do it. So it's a bit of a childish aspect, but, you know, I really like it. So 1936, the Venerable Khrotribe built the first dish with a 9-meter antenna and he quickly discovered that there's not a lot of radiation coming out there from space. So you need to build bigger dishes. And so you build a 50-meter dish and you build it bigger and bigger. And the engineers will tell you that 100-meter antenna is about as big as you should go. But, you know, I kind of think that's a bit of nanny state thinking, you know, people covering their butts. Well, this is what happens to 100-meter telescope when you wake up one morning and find it's looking a little second hand. So this becomes a problem. If we want to do bigger and better things, we need ways to get past this limit. And so instead of building big radio telescopes, you build lots of little ones and glue them together. And that's exactly what we're doing in the crew right at this moment. The first seven elements of MIRCAT, so this is the pathfinder from MIRCAT, are complete in actually doing science in the crew as we speak. Imaginatively, we've called it the Karoo Array Telescope Dash 7 or CAT 7, yet again with these wonderful snappy acronyms that just roll off the tongue. And this is all kind of on the road to an even bigger project. Briefly, the square kilometer array will see 3,000 antennas sprouting, mushrooming out of the fertile soil of its host nation. This is a two to three billion euro project with a 50-year lifespan, not just some backyard effort. And currently, ourselves and our perennial competitors, those erstwhile Australians are in a bidding war to host the square kilometer array. And we should have a decision on that within a month or two. So it's going to be even more exciting. But what it's really about is science. That's why we build these telescopes, you know? Even a simple instrument, a modest instrument like CAT 7 that we have in the crew at the moment can still do science that can put a smile on your face. These images are kind of blobby and don't look too exciting, but when these rolled off the telescope, you know, the wild jubilant celebrations that ECHO Drana offers, you know, we were in nerds, that's why we were doing it. But, you know, if you look at that one on the right there, that's a galaxy that's 240 million light years away. And the coolest part of it is the actual galaxy is just a single pixel in the middle of that psychedelic blob. You know, it's 100 billion stars into one pixel. The rest is all the gas that this thing is spewing out into the void. You know, that's really good. And onwards to the big fundamental questions of, you know, what is the structure of our universe? What role does dark matter and dark energy play in shaping this structure? Answering questions about can we look for telltale signature events from the real dawn of time to understand our universe? Where did magnetism come from? On a cosmic scale, we don't really know these things. This is big, important science. But I think for myself as an African, you know, for us on this African continent, the benefits of doing these things are not just in the science. The benefits of doing these things are in the direct investment of foreign capital. The benefits are in the international collaborations and alliances we form when we do these things. It's in the prestige. It's in a whole range of spin-off effects, technology that drives our economy. But for me, what this really is about is people. People who chose to turn their backs on the high priests of finance and join us on this voyage of truth and discovery. Children who for the first time have dedicated mathematics and science teachers. Students from across our continent of every race, colour and creed who come together and learn and study as they've never dreamed they could do it before. These people are my colleagues, my friends, my inspiration. And this is why we do it. And I think we stand at a unique time now. We have an opportunity to change the narrative. We can retell the story of Africa, not as a place of poverty and disease, but as a continent of opportunity. A place where you can come and do strong, competent scientific discovery that stands shoulder to shoulder with the best art there. So look out, world. Here we come. Thank you very much.