Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Alice Springs Telegraph Station
Telegraph operators typing up a received message and sending a reply!
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Travel within Australia
I have often thought about the size of this country, but have never truly appreciated it before I travelled to the "Centre" and then on to Darwin returning to Canberra via Brisbane.
What struck me first was the fact that we actually experienced two films en route and also that the size of the aircraft used was similar to those used internationally for short to medium hops!
A Boeing 737 is common enough on a domestic route but a Boeing 767? That's a major increase in size and distance.
On previous occasions when I have travelled outside of Austalia I was often dimly aware that for a say an eight hour flight to Singapore the actual journey involved a lot of hours in the air over Australia and indeed the concept that we were actually in the last leg of the flight when we crossed the Australian mainland and entered the Timor Sea was something that only dimly registered.
This time flying from Darwin to Canberra with a required stop over in Brisbane simply set the scene in a way that could no longer be denied - this place is BIG!
Anyway - enough of musing about travel in planes!
Central and northern Australia is something that simply has to be seen to be believed. I have one correspondent who has remarked that the pictures I have posted elsewhere are for him reminiscent of Arizona and Utah in the USA.
I am afraid that having been to both those areas in my past travels I could not disagree more!
I am absolutely in agreement about some things, Arizona surely has some majestic canyons and plenty of red ochre colours. Utah has it's salt flats. However it is here that the comparisons end - at least in my view. Utah's salt flats are surrounded by mountains that are often covered in snow and their mountain streams rage with torrents of water in the spring. The "mountains" of Northern Australia are millions of years older and are way too small to be covered in snow and ice during the winter. In addition they are so incredibly different in look and feel. The vegetation alone, such as it is, would be staggering for someone who had only experienced vegetation in the Northern Hemisphere.
These days of course we are not only blasé about such things - having seen them in photos or in paintings. However I just have this fantasy sometimes about the early white explorers of the continent as they set out and found nothing that was really similar to anything they had heard of before or seen for themselves in their wanderings around the other half of the world.
I suspect that even today - one of the reasons that people come to the Northern Territory is to see a landscape that completely unlike anything else that they have seen - and all from the comfort of their five star hotel.
Bargain!
What struck me first was the fact that we actually experienced two films en route and also that the size of the aircraft used was similar to those used internationally for short to medium hops!
A Boeing 737 is common enough on a domestic route but a Boeing 767? That's a major increase in size and distance.
On previous occasions when I have travelled outside of Austalia I was often dimly aware that for a say an eight hour flight to Singapore the actual journey involved a lot of hours in the air over Australia and indeed the concept that we were actually in the last leg of the flight when we crossed the Australian mainland and entered the Timor Sea was something that only dimly registered.
This time flying from Darwin to Canberra with a required stop over in Brisbane simply set the scene in a way that could no longer be denied - this place is BIG!
Anyway - enough of musing about travel in planes!
Central and northern Australia is something that simply has to be seen to be believed. I have one correspondent who has remarked that the pictures I have posted elsewhere are for him reminiscent of Arizona and Utah in the USA.
I am afraid that having been to both those areas in my past travels I could not disagree more!
I am absolutely in agreement about some things, Arizona surely has some majestic canyons and plenty of red ochre colours. Utah has it's salt flats. However it is here that the comparisons end - at least in my view. Utah's salt flats are surrounded by mountains that are often covered in snow and their mountain streams rage with torrents of water in the spring. The "mountains" of Northern Australia are millions of years older and are way too small to be covered in snow and ice during the winter. In addition they are so incredibly different in look and feel. The vegetation alone, such as it is, would be staggering for someone who had only experienced vegetation in the Northern Hemisphere.
These days of course we are not only blasé about such things - having seen them in photos or in paintings. However I just have this fantasy sometimes about the early white explorers of the continent as they set out and found nothing that was really similar to anything they had heard of before or seen for themselves in their wanderings around the other half of the world.
I suspect that even today - one of the reasons that people come to the Northern Territory is to see a landscape that completely unlike anything else that they have seen - and all from the comfort of their five star hotel.
Bargain!
Monday, May 14, 2007
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