Thursday, February 16, 2006

Found this site while looking for information on a seemingly abandoned homestead.

The "Degree Confluence Project"
The goal of the project is to visit each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world, and to take pictures at each location. The pictures and stories will then be posted on their website.

overview
The project is an organized sampling of the world. There is a confluence within 49 miles (79 km) of you if you're on the surface of Earth. We've discounted confluences in the oceans and some near the poles, but there are still 11,801 to be found.

I checked out the site and there is one in Yengo national park near my home and there is one that I go within a coupe of hundred meters of on my way back to the motel each night from here. But they both have been photographed already.

It would make an interesting sideline to a holiday, especially with kids.


I just checked on the confluence database and there is one very close to where we will be working next (back out Cannington way) that has not been visited. I will see if it is viable to attempt it while out there.

Yesterday was a shocker.

The second day at this site the CRU (essential piece of recording hardware) at the line dogbox was playing up. It was extremely slow to read data from it's SCSI drive and since the line records about 60 stations and my remote only records 3 stations they did a swap.

Well yesterday it carked it fully!

I spent 5 hours trying to get the problem sorted and traced the problem to the CRU and most likely it's power circuitry. I packed up for the day and took the CRU and cabling to the line dogbox to test it there as they had spare bits over there I could use. Anyway it turned out to be the internal power supply that was stuffed and luckily we had a spare one. All fixed and back up and running again today.

We decided to start early today to make up a bit of lost time which meant that it was still dark when I set off for the remote (about 80km away).

I don't mind driving at night, I actually enjoy it, but driving at dawn in the Aussie outback comes with the high risk of colliding with a roo or two. While I was ruising along at 110km/hr a very large roo was busily drinking from a puddle of water from last night's rain. The puddle was on the road... The VERY large roo was on the road... I saw the roo about 100m in advance and started to slow down, the silly bugger did a 180' turn and jumped right in front of me as I went past. Made a hell of a bang, bent the bullbar, smashed the indicator light, just missed doing major damage to the steering. But the roo came off worse. Dead. Dragged him off the road so the wedge tailed eagles could have a feast without adding to the road toll and went on my way.

Early start to work today to make up for the equipment failures yesterday (more on that later). As a result I got to the remote at sunrise so I took a couple of quick snaps.






When I got down low to take a shot from a different perspective I noticed these ants hanging around a hole.



I turned the light on and took this shot down the hole :)


Note to Ally: No I didn't buy a didital camera, these shots were taken with my phone!! It still impresses me :)

Monday, February 13, 2006


Hello again,
I have been on extended break over the "silly season" and working in the Brisvegas office for a while so I have not been outback to speak of.

That has changed now though, I am now on site approximately 85km south of Cobar in NSW at a place called Shuttleton which is a ghost town... or was, even the ghosts have moved!!!


Not much left of the old town, just some rubble piles, rubbish piles (mostly rusted iron) and the remains of an old gold mine. The ground in the old town was too hard so I have set myself up in a paddock of the nearest homestead, nice soft dirt here.