Broken Hill and Silverton, New South Wales, 28th-30th March 2015
Broken Hill …
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Silverton …
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For more information on these images, see the colour posts on Boolcoomatta Station.
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Boolcoomatta Station, South Australia, 28th-30th March 2015
On the way in to Boolcoomatta Station.
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Old wheel, Boolcoomatta Station.
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Kangaroos in the evening, Boolcoomatta Station.
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Mawson’s wheel, Boolcoomatta Station.
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Oonartra Creek.
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Oonartra Creek.
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Salt bush country near Oonartra Creek.
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Nighttime lights, Mundi Mundi Lookout (?).
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Dawn vista, Boolcoomatta Station.
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The yard of old cars, Boolcoomatta Station.
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The yard of old cars, Boolcoomatta Station.
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The yard of old cars, Boolcoomatta Station.
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The yard of old cars, Boolcoomatta Station.
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The yard of old cars, Boolcoomatta Station.
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Old farm machinery, Boolcoomatta Station.
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White’s Whim and Well.
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Near White’s Whim and Well, looking towards The Saddle.
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At The saddle.
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Mawson’s wheel and moonlight view.
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Boolcoomatta Station Woolshed.
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The yard of old cars, Boolcoomatta Station.
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For more information on these images, see the colour posts on Boolcoomatta Station.
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Silverton, NSW, Australia, 30th March 2015
Before driving back to Canberra, I stayed the night at Silverton, not far from Broken Hill and once a prosperous mining town. I stayed at the hotel. The grey beetle at the front is a Mad Max reference, because Mad Max 2 was filmed around here.
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Three donkeys wandered up for a drink at the hotel. Their ancestors probably worked in the mines.
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This was behind the hotel, beside a stage that was at the time unused. Multiple owners over the years. At least three, I think.
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Opposite my unit was the remains of the original hotel, from 1884. It allegedly sold nineteen tons of beer in the first four weeks of operation and was abandoned after a fire.
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It was late afternoon and I went for a walk, though everything apart from the pub was closed. John Dynon’s gallery …
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… and his car, which he did not appear to be using. Perhaps he lives in the back of the gallery so doesn’t usually need the car.
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There are many relics of the nineteenth century mining town
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and even a Mad Max Museum.
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The cafe was closed (as with everything else).
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Here we have the remains of half a house
You can see what I mean from the historic photograph taken from a notice board at the site. Apparently, in the Depression, people could register a plan for a full house but if they were short of money they might only build half of it, in the hope that they could afford more later on.
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Another gallery was accompanied by some colourful accoutrements.
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This outhouse and the previous ute are illustrated with what appears to be a rural legend (well, it can’t be an urban legend can it?) of a flying dunny.
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Old beetles are ubiquitous, it seems.
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This old house with a kind of a rail scooter beside it had an open door at the back.
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This is the view looking through one of the windows.
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The wall paper seems recent (as in last hundred years or so).
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You may be able to read the frame of the bicycle if you click on the image. This is a Silverton bicycle, as something of an art exhibit.
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Nearby, another old car.
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Silver was discovered near here in 1875 by two men drilling for a well. The town was founded in 1885 and reached a peak population of 3,000 in the 1890s. After that, the town was eclipsed by Broken Hill and also the silver lode ran out. Now there are about 40 inhabitants.
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Somone put a lot of work into that stonework once.
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This is the Silverton Jail, built in 1889 and now a museum..
Broken Hill, NSW, Australia, 30th March 2015
Back in Broken Hill, I had an hour or two available so I decided to check out some of the artifacts of the mining past.
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… which is not this image. This is the big chair, overlooking Broken Hill, about six to eight feet high. The chain around it is because someone fell off it and sued the Council.
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As a mining centre, rail was very important to Broken Hill. There must be something of a repair facility below because there are lots of wheels and axles staked by the tracks.
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This is the mining deaths memorial, recording the names of over 700 workers. Broken Hill was a great centre of the labour movement and there were severe disputes in 1892, 1909 and 1919.
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Slag heap and the town beyond.
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Coming back down from the hill above Broken Hill, this is an old mine no longer in operation.
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Taken over the fence of a museum, which was not open at the time.
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This is a working mine but I didn’t record its name.
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Nearby, this is Browne Shaft, an old mine no longer in operation. It operated from 1886 to 1928 and 1946 to 1972. There was a very severe fire 550 feet down in 1906.
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I went up to the Browne Shaft Mine and from there saw the North Shaft Mine, which operated from 1905 to 1993.
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Turning around, these great steel vats are at the Browne Shaft Mine and they are visibly sitting on top of the lead lode. The lead, zinc and silver lodes rose almost vertically through the ground and appeared above it.
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I then became fascinated by the textures and pattern on the surface of the vats….
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Boolcoomatta Station, South Australia, 29th March 2015
We were due to go for a drive later so we needed to consider which vehicles to drive in
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but first there was some farm machinery to contemplate.
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Marvels of modern technology whatever it was they were used for.
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This must have been a relatively recent one judging by the tyres.
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Here we have a template for making and repairing wagon wheels.
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… and the rim of such a wheel lying against the fence.
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This looks like the Swiss army knife of agricultural contraptions
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and this is the shearers quarters where we were staying (although to be precise you are looking at the kitchen and common room).
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Somewhat later we took off and for a while dark matter invaded the sky.
In the last post there was an eagle sitting on a rock. This is not the same eagle though.
She has a puzzled expression on her face, wondering how a Steller’s Sea Eagle can suddenly be transported from the sea north of Japan to the middle of Australia and at the same time lose what colour she did have.
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And now, looking out from Dome Rock, everything loooks more normal
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and the plains are flat
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and they stretch endlessly
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in many directions.
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Occasional features pop to the surface, perhaps as some kind of mineral lode.
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At White’s Whim and Well there are many relics of the past to consider.
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The mighty highway known as the Wiperaminga Track stretches out towards The Saddle
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and from the same place, another snatch of saltbush country.
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Here we are now at The Saddle
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and somewhat further on, this is a little glade of native fruit-bearing trees of great value whose name I forget.
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Boolcoomatta Station, South Australia, 29th March 2015
Some time after breakfast we headed off along the Kalabity Track and the Dome Rock Track. Here is a view of some salt bush country with even some hills in the background.
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We stopped at the Dome Rock Copper Mine, in production from 1908 to 1969, producing 250 tonnes of copper over that period. This trench was used in processing the ore. First they crushed the ore and separated it into piles. Then they pumped acidic water from the bottom of the mineshafts over the piles. This caused copper to separate out in solution at the bottom of the piles. That liquid was then removed to a concrete vat and combined with ribbon iron to form a copper cement. Transport costs were high from such a remote location so this allowed them to transport a more concentrated copper product.
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I haven’t tried to present an overview of what the mine would have looked like because in many ways there is not a lot left. One unfortunate event that happened shortly after Heritage Australia purchased the property was that former farm workers or managers stripped the mine site of metal to sell as scrap.
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A few of the rocks lying around spectacularly show the presence of copper.
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The whole area is very geologically rich, part of a large geological entity called the Curnamona Province. This includes Mt Isa and also the Broken Hill lodes which are the largest accumulation of lead, zinc and silver in the world. For example, there was a side road to a working gold mine on the way in to the homestead.
The rocks in the region are 1.7 million years old, then buried to a depth of 15 to 25 kilometres and subjected to great heat and pressure, before rising to the surface again due to mountain building events.
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These last two stones were cemented into a structure at the site.
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The Day Shaft, the main shaft at 220 feet deep (66 metres) is still there though boarded over and you can walk over the top of it and peer down though of course there’s not much to see down there.
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We went further on to Dome Rock itself. I thought that was an interesting rock structure on the top and then I realised it was an eagle. I changed to a long telephoto lens just before the eagle flew off but couldn’t get a shot in focus. Then I realised I’d accidentally knocked the camera into macro mode. Ah well, you can’t win them all.
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Here is our little group: Myself, Jenny, Ingret, Jacqueline and Boris. (Photograph by Boris).
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From Dome Rock, the countryside stretches away, very flat.
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Next we visited White’s Whim and Well. This is the remains of the well, used to provide drinking water for cattle. Someone had to live out here for many months of the year to operate it. The well was dug by hand to a depth of about 25 metres (82 feet).
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A horse walked around a capstan to draw the water up. This is the yoke for the capstan.
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We proceeded along the Wiperaminga Track and this is the saddle between the Wiperaminga and Eremophila tracks.
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Kangaroo footprints in the sand.
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After dinner and after the sun had gone down, we returned to the woolshed. This is Mawson’s wheel with the homestead and the stars in the distance.
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Inside the woolshed by night.
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This was our final night for the workshop (though this is not the last post).
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Boolcoomatta Station, South Australia, 29th and 30th March 2015
On the Sunday we got up again before dawn to photograph the sunrise.
I could make this image of the homestead look like it was full daylight but that wouldn’t make much sense because it was in the gloom before the sun was up.
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Probably still before dawn, looking to the far distance.
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After dawn we visited the station’s car showroom and some of the vehicles appeared to be previous year models.
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These were an interesting pair. Look at the flared front mudguard of the one on the left and the chassis which are telescoped towards the front of the vehicles.
These are not trucks, more likely some kind of racing vehicles. Perhaps they were used for local drag racing in the 30s or 40s.
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The paintwork could do with a polish here and there.
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And since we had some time on our hands, why not a quick burn around the fields?
Well, OK maybe not so quick and there weren’t actually any fields.
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With the engine so exposed perhaps it’s been done up to be a hot rod.
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Nice curves.
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Handling might leave something to be desired.
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Perhaps a bit down in the horsepower.
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Oil pressure seems a little low.
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Nice details on the duco, though.
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Tare 1 ton 17 cwt, speed 25 mph.
So that gives a weight bearing capacity of one imperial ton and seventeen hundredweight (at eight stone or 112lb (= pounds) per hundredweight).
That is equivalent to 1.88 tonnes or just over two American tons.
Speed is 40kph.
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The odometer, sitting on top of the dashboard.
It says 72,000 miles (116,000 kilometres) but who knows how many times round the clock since it turns over at 100,000.
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May be more suited to going round right hand corners.
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Seems to be needing a head…
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Says it all, really.
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The context.
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Starting to rain…
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So originally it was Truck No 5 of the City of Brighton.
Then it was bought by M J Halliday of Meningie who painted it blue or grey and put his name on it.
The rust has brought out the underlying lettering. Meningie is a South Australian town on the coast below Adelaide about 500 or 600 kilometres away.
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Austin S 60 N may mean something to someone. Overall it looks like an Austin WF from the mid 60s.
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And I came back the next morning, our last, to take a few more.
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… of the once sleek lines of the cars…
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… and the trucks….
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Boolcoomatta Station, South Australia, 28th March 2015
Here we have some infrared renditions of scenes from Oonartra Creek, where we visited in the last post, plus a few from the surrounding countryside.
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Boolcoomatta Station, South Australia, 28th March 2015
Before dawn at Boolcoomatta Station…
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The light was coming up and here is the rest of our party and the station in the background.
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Here comes the sun….
(It’s alright but no Beatles in sight and it’s autumn, not winter or spring).
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After dawn, we visited the old woolshed. Probably obviously enough, this is where the shearing was done and the shorn sheep were dispatched outside through the sliding metal doors on the left wall.
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Inside it was dark, apart from a few shafts of light and the open door at one end. Spiderwebs in the light were harder to catch than one might think because the changing light meant patterns were quickly gone.
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In a side room there were some interesting wheels. Perhaps this is the wheel of an old motorcycle.
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And this, apparently, is the wheel of Mawson’s truck. There must be a further story behind that but I don’t know it.
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After breakfast we headed off along the Noonflower Track and the Oonartra Track and stopped at the Oonartra River near the Oonartra Waterhole.
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The Oonartra River was dry, as is usually the case, though historic photos with boats show that this may once have been different. Magnificent river gums line the bank of the dry river.
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Here is a tree with a tenacious hold on life, still alive notwithstanding losing most of its lower trunk. The waterhole was close by. I did not photograph it because it was dry, though there were places where kangaroos had been digging for water in the sand.
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A tree growing parallel to the ground and only just above it.
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Salt bush country on the way back.
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Much later we went somewhere north of the station for an evening meal under the stars, perhaps Mundi Mundi Lookout. Sunset is approaching.
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It appears as though lighter but this is now after dark by the light of about a half moon (which rose before sunset). You can see a few planets or stars in the sky. It’s a 30-second exposure. Any more and they would be streaks.
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Boris organised a kind of a fireworks display for us with burning steel wool. You can see him in the centre.
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Moonlight exposure with moon.
Boolcoomatta Station, South Australia, Australia, 27th March 2015
We met for the workshop, all five of us, at a café in Broken Hill around noon. After lunch we headed off over the border to South Australia. We stopped briefly at what was once a schizophrenic pair of conjoined border towns but now a couple of buildings with hardly any inhabitants. Soon after the border we turned right onto Mingary Road towards the Station but you had to know where it was to even know there was a road.
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After a while, we stopped at a dramatic rock outcrop, including this one seemingly balanced on a few pebbles.
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Beyond it the flat country stretched out endlessly to the horizon.
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Just below the rocks I found this feather from a wedgetail eagle. It is 53 cm long (or 21 in or for that matter over half a million microns). It seemed to me unusual in shape and unlike a couple of other eagle feathers I have picked up over the years. One edge is almost flat against the shaft and the feather looks aerodynamic when viewed edge on. I suspect it is from the leading edge of the left wing.
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I also amused myself with some patterns in the rocks.
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Somewhat later on we arrived at Boolcoomatta, which some time ago was a thriving sheep station. There are still many interesting artifacts of its history lying around.
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As the light grew low I found patterns in the trees and water around a large dam.
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The sun has just gone down.
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And now kangaroos come to the dam to drink.
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Mainly they are eastern greys although the one on the left is a red. There was also a swamp wallaby but I’m not showing you an image of him (or her).
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And finally, some of the trees on the edge of the dam with the Milky Way in the background.
(As always, you can click on an image to see it larger).
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Murray Foote 