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I can understand the Australian and UK readership and, to some extent, the US. The rest confuses me! All up I'm told that my BLOG has had 17,326 visits over the years.
AS
Wednesday 25 April 2012
BLOG Views
Google now enables the owners of BLOGS to track their readership. Here's mine and I must say the the distribution of readership astounds me!!
I can understand the Australian and UK readership and, to some extent, the US. The rest confuses me! All up I'm told that my BLOG has had 17,326 visits over the years.
AS
I can understand the Australian and UK readership and, to some extent, the US. The rest confuses me! All up I'm told that my BLOG has had 17,326 visits over the years.
AS
Saturday 21 April 2012
And Under Ground
During our visit to Lightning Ridge we went under ground twice. On the first occasion we had to descend 113 steps down a circular and metal stair-case - there aren't any lifts in these mines! The shafts are mostly circular because that shapes is regarded as most stable. Amazingly, these circular shafts often do not even have a ladder - merely hand-holds to haul the miners up and down.
However, the second shaft here is more square and has a ladder to the top.
The underground tunnels are mostly square and excavated by drills like the one I'm holding here.
Occasionally, the mines have narrow apertures through which miners squeeze ... like this one here. It's rather claustrophobic and I'm clearly not cut out for the job.
And here are the three intrepid explorers!
On the Surface
The surface areas around Lightning Ridge is pock-marked with piles of rubble, mine-shafts, caravans and shacks, quarries, mechanical systems to haul rock to the surface and rusting equipment - including trucks and cars. In short, it's messy and moreover it seems that any planning controls are suspended! The following pictures give a good impression of the area.
Max, by the way, had a glorious time fossicking among the piles of rock for shards of opal and managed to find quite a few sizeable pieces. Lightning Ridge opals are among the most valuable in the world, but we only found pieces at the lower end of the quality spectrum.
The following picture shows a closed off mine-shaft.
Material from the quarry below found its way to the pile of rock Max is sifting through in the first photo.
This equipment below hoists rock to the surface for washing and sifting for possible opal.
AS
Max, by the way, had a glorious time fossicking among the piles of rock for shards of opal and managed to find quite a few sizeable pieces. Lightning Ridge opals are among the most valuable in the world, but we only found pieces at the lower end of the quality spectrum.
The following picture shows a closed off mine-shaft.
Material from the quarry below found its way to the pile of rock Max is sifting through in the first photo.
This equipment below hoists rock to the surface for washing and sifting for possible opal.
AS
Cranky Rock
Our return trip from Lightning Ridge to Armidale took us past a nature reserve called Cranky Rock, which I've seen sign-posted many times but never had the time to visit. This trip we had time to spare and made the detour. The outcome was spectacular as the pictures show. It was delightful to see the rock formations and the local wild-life.
Wednesday 18 April 2012
Strange Characters
I mentioned in yesterday's post that Lightning Ridge has more than its share of strange characters. This image was cloaked in reality to day when we ran into the town's strange history and visited some bizarre places. I discovered that the LR district does indeed have a population of 2600, but that something like 2000 of these people are scattered around the township in a heap of shacks and impermanent accommodation amidst the large number of mining claims. More amazingly, a large number of these people are outside the formal economy and society. A lot do not pay taxes (or not much), are not on the electoral register, and are somewhat itinerant. They live among the mullock heaps scattered around the huge number of mine-shafts - though that's the story of my next post. I gather, too, that planning permission is virtually unknown out here and anyone can build anything anywhere. The landscape is also littered with the remains of mining machinery, trucks and cars, and rusty barbed wire. So out here we're somewhat on the fringes of society.
Anyway, lets have a look at the contributions of some the local identities. Here's a photo of a whimsical camper van taking off like a plane from a local caravan park and the van is decorated by a celebrated bush artist, John Murray, whose work appeared last year in a post on Warren.
This little hut, now rather decrepit despite its status as a museum, was one of the first buildings erected in what is now Lightning Ridge nearly a century ago. Called Cooper cottage, it was built in 1916 in the idiom of the day - corrugated iron - by Ben Buren, a Swedish immigrant. The facilities, as the third picture shows, were antiquated, though Max was interested in seeing a Canberra oven.
The next two pictures show Amigos Castle built by an immigrant Italian over the last 30 years. The architect and builder (both the same Italian gentleman) used local materials and had no assistance whatsoever from anyone. All the cement was prepared in a little wheelbarrow and the castle is still under construction with an unknown completion date! I guess progress depends on the flow of income but, since the builder is now elderly, the income flow is slight. The castle is decidedly grandiose compared with most al fresco structures in the town.
The next exhibit (two pictures) is an astronomical built by a Polish immigrant, Szperlak, who was a disciple of Copernicus and Newton. Alas, Mr Szperlak was killed in a house fire before its completion, but he left an impressive monument to his heroes. By the way, this structure doesn't seem to function as an observatory as far as I can tell. It is purely whimsical.This reminds me belatedly that the town of Lightning Ridge claims to be home to over 50 different nationalities despite its meagre 2600 inhabitants. Adjacent to this Polish inspired creation is a small structure made of bottles (see the 6th picture). This type of construction would not be difficult in a place given to heavy drinking because of its extreme heat in summer.
You can probably recognise the four flags 'flying' over the bottle house. Next I present two images of Fred Bodel's house on 3 - mile flat. It was also built in 1916 by Fred and his brothers, immigrants from Germany. He died aged 90 in 1973 - nearly 40 years ago and the place is much as he left it. It might be quaint, but its occupant, Fred, was a millionaire!
I could go on and on about the town's identities and their often strange abodes, but I'll leave it at this point. Even Max was quite taken by these exhibits, even though he was far more enthusiastic about fossicking for opal.
Anyway, lets have a look at the contributions of some the local identities. Here's a photo of a whimsical camper van taking off like a plane from a local caravan park and the van is decorated by a celebrated bush artist, John Murray, whose work appeared last year in a post on Warren.
This little hut, now rather decrepit despite its status as a museum, was one of the first buildings erected in what is now Lightning Ridge nearly a century ago. Called Cooper cottage, it was built in 1916 in the idiom of the day - corrugated iron - by Ben Buren, a Swedish immigrant. The facilities, as the third picture shows, were antiquated, though Max was interested in seeing a Canberra oven.
The next two pictures show Amigos Castle built by an immigrant Italian over the last 30 years. The architect and builder (both the same Italian gentleman) used local materials and had no assistance whatsoever from anyone. All the cement was prepared in a little wheelbarrow and the castle is still under construction with an unknown completion date! I guess progress depends on the flow of income but, since the builder is now elderly, the income flow is slight. The castle is decidedly grandiose compared with most al fresco structures in the town.
The next exhibit (two pictures) is an astronomical built by a Polish immigrant, Szperlak, who was a disciple of Copernicus and Newton. Alas, Mr Szperlak was killed in a house fire before its completion, but he left an impressive monument to his heroes. By the way, this structure doesn't seem to function as an observatory as far as I can tell. It is purely whimsical.This reminds me belatedly that the town of Lightning Ridge claims to be home to over 50 different nationalities despite its meagre 2600 inhabitants. Adjacent to this Polish inspired creation is a small structure made of bottles (see the 6th picture). This type of construction would not be difficult in a place given to heavy drinking because of its extreme heat in summer.
You can probably recognise the four flags 'flying' over the bottle house. Next I present two images of Fred Bodel's house on 3 - mile flat. It was also built in 1916 by Fred and his brothers, immigrants from Germany. He died aged 90 in 1973 - nearly 40 years ago and the place is much as he left it. It might be quaint, but its occupant, Fred, was a millionaire!
I could go on and on about the town's identities and their often strange abodes, but I'll leave it at this point. Even Max was quite taken by these exhibits, even though he was far more enthusiastic about fossicking for opal.
Tuesday 17 April 2012
A Hot Encounter
As we are hosting Max for nearly two weeks, we headed off today on first adventure to a spot we thought would interest him greatly. And it seems our instincts were correct insofar as our destination is proving a hit.
We've arrived in a tiny town called Lightning Ridge which is a long way from anywhere in the remote outback. It's a traditional Australian mining town full of odd characters toiling away at holes in the ground looking for, and hopefully digging up, opals. The mines are small scale - none of the corporate actors like BHP, Rio Tinto, Xstrata, or Vale are here - and the operators come from dozens of different countries to try their luck. When we drove into town, I pointed to a church with funny writing on the building and it turned out to be Serbian Orthodox - in a remote outback town of perhaps 2600 people of all places on the planet!
The reason to come here is to 'fossick' for gem-stones (especially opal), savour a lifestyle reminiscent of a century ago when Australia's numerous mining towns were rip-roaring frontier affairs, and soak in the hot spa baths. The last time Max and I had a spa bath was two years ago at Leukerbad in the Swiss Canton of Valais, a much more up-market experience than Lightning Ridge, though the latter was in a sense more interesting sociologically. Max, by the way, loves collecting rocks, especially crystalline ones, and he has a very sharp eye for anything that sparkles. So we expect him to have some success in his fossicking over the next two days.
The only thing that jarred Max so far was the trip. The journey from Armidale to LR is about 380km in a straight line. Alas the trip was anything but straight and we took something like 560km to get here. One of the problems was that the Collarenebri to LR road was closed due to flood-waters and that added 70km to the distance as we had to detour via Walgett. The roads were often awful due to pavement damage caused by the year's heavy rainfall and serious flooding, the latter still hanging around 4 months after the event. Despite that, the speed limit our here is 110 kph and drivers regularly do 130 kph (80 mph). Max was not greatly enthused by the scenery - the dead-flat landscape and the endless trees and grasslands, all interspersed by the huge fields the farmers run. One today looked to be in the order of 10 sq km (4 sq miles), but others I could not accurately estimate looked a lot larger. The first picture shows the beautiful cloudscape and the scenery half way between Moree and Collarenebri on the Gwydir Highway,
Max perked up greatly when we saw a massive field of cotton (at least another 10 sq km of white bushes) and then some wild emus and other large bird-life. His enthusiasm grew when he found out that LR has a spa baths complex which is open 24/7 and is free. That was the first place we headed to after a hard day on the road and the next two photos show the large and small pools respectively, all out of doors - which is fine given the hot and generally dry climate. The waters were at the upper end of human tolerability and fed by deep bores into the underground artesian aquifers. The first of the two shows me and Max in the smaller pool designed for children. The large pool has very deep water in places. Both pictures were taken at dusk at a time of high usage by the local population.
Expect a few more posts in coming days.
AS
We've arrived in a tiny town called Lightning Ridge which is a long way from anywhere in the remote outback. It's a traditional Australian mining town full of odd characters toiling away at holes in the ground looking for, and hopefully digging up, opals. The mines are small scale - none of the corporate actors like BHP, Rio Tinto, Xstrata, or Vale are here - and the operators come from dozens of different countries to try their luck. When we drove into town, I pointed to a church with funny writing on the building and it turned out to be Serbian Orthodox - in a remote outback town of perhaps 2600 people of all places on the planet!
The reason to come here is to 'fossick' for gem-stones (especially opal), savour a lifestyle reminiscent of a century ago when Australia's numerous mining towns were rip-roaring frontier affairs, and soak in the hot spa baths. The last time Max and I had a spa bath was two years ago at Leukerbad in the Swiss Canton of Valais, a much more up-market experience than Lightning Ridge, though the latter was in a sense more interesting sociologically. Max, by the way, loves collecting rocks, especially crystalline ones, and he has a very sharp eye for anything that sparkles. So we expect him to have some success in his fossicking over the next two days.
The only thing that jarred Max so far was the trip. The journey from Armidale to LR is about 380km in a straight line. Alas the trip was anything but straight and we took something like 560km to get here. One of the problems was that the Collarenebri to LR road was closed due to flood-waters and that added 70km to the distance as we had to detour via Walgett. The roads were often awful due to pavement damage caused by the year's heavy rainfall and serious flooding, the latter still hanging around 4 months after the event. Despite that, the speed limit our here is 110 kph and drivers regularly do 130 kph (80 mph). Max was not greatly enthused by the scenery - the dead-flat landscape and the endless trees and grasslands, all interspersed by the huge fields the farmers run. One today looked to be in the order of 10 sq km (4 sq miles), but others I could not accurately estimate looked a lot larger. The first picture shows the beautiful cloudscape and the scenery half way between Moree and Collarenebri on the Gwydir Highway,
Max perked up greatly when we saw a massive field of cotton (at least another 10 sq km of white bushes) and then some wild emus and other large bird-life. His enthusiasm grew when he found out that LR has a spa baths complex which is open 24/7 and is free. That was the first place we headed to after a hard day on the road and the next two photos show the large and small pools respectively, all out of doors - which is fine given the hot and generally dry climate. The waters were at the upper end of human tolerability and fed by deep bores into the underground artesian aquifers. The first of the two shows me and Max in the smaller pool designed for children. The large pool has very deep water in places. Both pictures were taken at dusk at a time of high usage by the local population.
Expect a few more posts in coming days.
AS
Sunday 8 April 2012
Glen and Emma
We were invited to a wedding yesterday of Glen Jones and his bride, Emma. We were invited because Dot is a very good and long-time friend of Glen's mother, Lorraine and indeed Glen used to know Emily and Rebecca, being the same age as them. The wedding was a civil ceremony held outdoors in the lovely grounds of the former Armidale Teachers College, now part of the University of New England, and there were well in excess of 100 guests present. Although we didn't know it at the time, the bride's father turned out to be the guy who sold us our recently installed new carpet - such is the way with small communities.
The ceremony itself was impressive with six bridesmaids in attendance, two tiny flower girls, and six groomsmen in addition to the best man.
This formal part of the event, conducted by a female marriage celebrant, lasted perhaps forty minutes before, after which the guests mingled on the lawns and admiring the scenery before shuffling off to the reception.
The final picture here, below, shows the very happy couple with Lorraine.
The reception was held in a private auditorium at the local Bowling Club and lasted a long time, maybe getting on for 6 hours. There was abundant finger food, a lovely meal, free drinks, energetic conversation, all the usual speeches and the cutting of the cake, the bridal 'waltz' (which was hardly related to the classic 19th century conception of the dance), and lots of gyrations on the dance floor by the younger set aided by strobe lighting.
By good luck, or astute direction on the part of the organisers, we were located on a table amidst Dot's friends who were all of our age group, so the conversation was pleasant and time passed rapidly - all in all a very pleasant event.
AS
The ceremony itself was impressive with six bridesmaids in attendance, two tiny flower girls, and six groomsmen in addition to the best man.
This formal part of the event, conducted by a female marriage celebrant, lasted perhaps forty minutes before, after which the guests mingled on the lawns and admiring the scenery before shuffling off to the reception.
The final picture here, below, shows the very happy couple with Lorraine.
The reception was held in a private auditorium at the local Bowling Club and lasted a long time, maybe getting on for 6 hours. There was abundant finger food, a lovely meal, free drinks, energetic conversation, all the usual speeches and the cutting of the cake, the bridal 'waltz' (which was hardly related to the classic 19th century conception of the dance), and lots of gyrations on the dance floor by the younger set aided by strobe lighting.
By good luck, or astute direction on the part of the organisers, we were located on a table amidst Dot's friends who were all of our age group, so the conversation was pleasant and time passed rapidly - all in all a very pleasant event.
AS
On My Bike
Some of the best exercise I get these days is riding my bike around Armidale. It's a hilly town and that provides extra reward for my efforts. Cycling on a flat route is rather boring and less challenging, though perhaps somewhat faster. My last two rides have been fairly typical and I recorded distance, elapsed time and therefore speed.
Good Friday's was a shorter route and I managed 13.8km (8.625 miles) in 36 minutes at an average speed of 23.1 kph (14.4 miles per hour). I wouldn't make the Olympic team on those times, but I did encounter the odd red traffic light or main road during the ride, slowing me down a little.
Today, Sunday, saw me ride a little further - about 20km (12.5 miles) and that took about 54 minutes (or 22 kph; 13.9 mph). The weather, like Friday's, was beautifully warm and sunny - very pleasant indeed. And the slightly slower time reflects not so much the extra distance as a large number of sometimes very steep hills. The great thing about climbing a hill is going down the other side when I sometimes reach speeds in excess of 50 kph - the in-town speed limit. I wonder if the local fuzz have ever booked a cyclist for speeding and what the penalty would be!
I might be a little short of 67 years old and a cardiac patient, so it's a little surprising that I can often keep pace with lycra-clad cyclists who abound in this town. And, when it comes to cycling to work with a 15kg back-pack containing my portable office, I feel embarrassed for all the students I overtake during the 6 km (3.75 mile) trip. It's rarely the other way around and I keep wondering why that's the case. This picture was taken almost two years ago exactly, but the scene this morning was no different - even down to the falling leaves1
AS
Good Friday's was a shorter route and I managed 13.8km (8.625 miles) in 36 minutes at an average speed of 23.1 kph (14.4 miles per hour). I wouldn't make the Olympic team on those times, but I did encounter the odd red traffic light or main road during the ride, slowing me down a little.
Today, Sunday, saw me ride a little further - about 20km (12.5 miles) and that took about 54 minutes (or 22 kph; 13.9 mph). The weather, like Friday's, was beautifully warm and sunny - very pleasant indeed. And the slightly slower time reflects not so much the extra distance as a large number of sometimes very steep hills. The great thing about climbing a hill is going down the other side when I sometimes reach speeds in excess of 50 kph - the in-town speed limit. I wonder if the local fuzz have ever booked a cyclist for speeding and what the penalty would be!
I might be a little short of 67 years old and a cardiac patient, so it's a little surprising that I can often keep pace with lycra-clad cyclists who abound in this town. And, when it comes to cycling to work with a 15kg back-pack containing my portable office, I feel embarrassed for all the students I overtake during the 6 km (3.75 mile) trip. It's rarely the other way around and I keep wondering why that's the case. This picture was taken almost two years ago exactly, but the scene this morning was no different - even down to the falling leaves1
AS
Saturday 7 April 2012
Rebecca Gets a Gong
The photo below shows a gong that Bec received, ostensibly on Australia Day back in January, but which has only just been advertised on Facebook. It's self explanatory, but the the medal in the box looks identical to the Distinguished Service Medal I received from the Australian and New Zealand Regional Science Association 12 years ago in Hobart. Presumably there was a delay in distributing such awards.
AS
AS
Sunday 1 April 2012
Costa del Armidale
Have a look at the three photos above and tell me where they were taken! Down on the coast? On one of Australia's major inland waterways?
Actually, they were taken at the Costa del Armidale at a height of about 1182m (roughly 3850ft) and precisely 30.17.03 South and 151.44.10 East. Find it on Google Earth.
We're now firmly into Autumn according to the schedule of seasons, but the first of April dawned brilliantly clear and heralded a warm day. Indeed today's forecast maximum temperature was an amazing 23C, especially given our altitude and time of year, so we decided to head for the Costa del Armidale. This is where local residents go sailing, canoeing, swimming (if you're brave) and fishing.
The water body in question is Lake Malpas, which is impounded by a dam of the same name. This lake supplies Armidale with its water, and it is so large that it could keep supplying water for about 5 years even if there were to be no rain. In practice, it has never failed, for Malpas is on the Guyra plateau whose rainfall is both high and reliable. The following pictures show the surrounding hilly terrain, the dam, and the little Gara river which flows from beneath the dam wall. Nice scenery! And gorgeous location. The only problem is the chilly temperatures in Winter, which officially starts on 1 June and lasts for 3 months. However, Lake Malpas is about the same latitude as Cairo (a little over 30 N or S in both cases), so Winter temperatures hardly equate to the Cairngorms! One of the main peaks there, Beinn a' Bhùird, tops out at 1196m. The little of Guyra is itself higher than Ben Nevis, the highest spot in the UK.
AS
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