 From the observatories he watched various astronomical phenomena - lunar occultations of stars, Jupiter's satellites, comets, minor planets, double stars, transits of Mercury and Venus - and his work won international acknowledgement.In 1872 he bought an refracting telescope with which he observed the transit of Venus in 1874 and in 1886 imported a Grubb refracting telescope and housed it in a substantial brick observatory building on his property at Windsor.The telescope later went to New Zealand but was returned to Australia at the time of the Australian Bicentenary and rehoused in its original location.