Virtual Reality implemented in the scale model in front of these ladies, by wearing that pair of goggles, they were able to interact both with the model, and the surrounding space, mapped to satisfy and entertain their curiosity. Pleasant surprise from a pavilion that, besides that, has much to envy to other national exhibitions.

During the depression, money was hard to come by, and most people had to barter (trade) what goods and services they might have to get food and survive. Building materials back then were commonly Wood products, as metals were expensive, and later used in WW-II.

This was a typical shed/building that was built and used in the 40's-50's to store farm tractors and implements to keep them out of the weather and provide a comfortable place to work and do repairs.

Many of these old building have been left to the elements and have or are falling down. This one is still in fairly good condition, and was found along side the highway ;-}}

©2011 Ray Hanson All Rights Reserved.

Copying, Printing, Downloading, or otherwise using this image without my expressed written permission is a violation of US and International Copyright Laws. If you would like to use/purchase this image please contact me via Flickr Mail.

All in the name of "development".

The construction of a new fire station to replace Gipton and Stanks fire stations and removal of 24 fulltime posts from the establishment by way of planned retirements.

Key Points:

 Gipton is classed as a very high risk area and Stanks as medium risk area.

 Stanks fire station is poorly located at the outer edge of the local community and access/egress from the site is problematic.

 In the 5 year period between 2004/5 and 2009/10 operational demand in these areas reduced by 28% (there has been a reduction of 61% of serious fires) . 2

 WYFRS has piloted a new type of vehicle (Fire Response Unit) to deal with smaller fires and incidents to free up fire appliances to respond to more serious emergencies.

 The pilot has been successful and it is believed that a District based Fire Response Unit will handle in the region of 3,000 calls per year.

 The new fire station would have lower running costs.

 The two Killingbeck fire appliances would be supplemented by a Resilience Pump for use during spate conditions.

 Targeted community safety and risk reduction work would continue.

1. Foreword

1.1 This proposal forms one of a number of similar initiatives developed by West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service (WYFRS) as part of its plans for the future provision of a highly effective and professional Fire and Rescue Service.

1.2 Each proposal is based on sound and comprehensive research, using real data from past performance and predictions of future demand and risk. Multiple sources of analysis have been used, allied to professional judgment and experience, to form the basis of robust business cases for change. The proposals are also reflective of the significant improvements in fire and community safety achieved over the past 10 years and represents a return on the investment made by the Authority on behalf of the public of West Yorkshire.

1.3 The proposals also incorporate a number of new and innovative approaches to addressing the challenge of maintaining high standards of performance for an emergency response service, within ever tightening financial constraints. The proposals have been developed as a package of inter related initiatives, representing major capital investment in local communities, whilst at the same time delivering annual recurring savings.

2. Introduction

2.1. Gipton fire station was constructed in 1937; it provides the initial emergency response cover for the residential and commercial areas of Gipton, Harehills, Burmantofts, Killingbeck, Halton Moor and Oakwood.

 The fire station area covers approximately 8.45 square miles.

 There is a population of 75,316.

 There are approximately 2015 commercial properties within the area.

2.2. Stanks fire station was constructed 1973; it provides the initial emergency response cover for the mainly residential locations of Whinmoor, Swarcliffe, Whitkirk, Colton, Halton, Crossgates, Scarcroft, North Seacroft, Wellington Hill, Manston, Barwick-in-Elmet, Scholes and Thorner.

 The station area covers approximately 14.39 square miles

 There is a population of 42,452

 There are approximately 663 commercial properties within the area.

2.3. Gipton has been classified as a very high risk area using the WYFRS Risk Matrix methodology. During 2009/10 there were 2196 operational incidents within this area including 86 dwelling fires and 33 Road Traffic Collisions. Stanks fire station area has been classified as medium risk and during the same period there were 688 operational incidents in the area including 34 dwelling fires and 12 Road Traffic Collisions. 1

2.4. Three fire appliances currently provide the initial fire and rescue coverage for Gipton and Stanks and are constantly crewed by 60 whole-time firefighters. The operational demand in these areas has reduced by 28% between 2004/5 and 2009/10 (there has been a reduction of 61% of serious fires) yet the provision of operational resources has remained the same over this period of time. 24

3. Community Impact Assessment

3.1. The following statement is taken from the 2011-2015 Community Risk Management Strategy and emphasises our commitment to deliver an efficient economic and effective range of services, “Every area within WYFRS will be considered in order to provide a better service at reduced cost”.

3.2. To enable WYFRS to deliver against this commitment a wide range of analysis and modelling tools have been used to determine the current and predicted levels of service delivery, together with their associated costs. These tools have also been used to undertake four separate impact assessments in regard to WYFRS proposals which will seek to:

 Identify options which minimise reductions in service delivery standards and where there is scope for service delivery improvement.

 Develop measures that will mitigate any negative impact upon service delivery and where possible maximise opportunities to achieve improvements.

3.3. WYFRS has developed a risk matrix which allocates a separate score/rating for hazards within communities. It is possible to use this risk rating in conjunction with the costs for providing services to each fire station to compare the cost of fire and rescue cover for each area. Gipton is one of the more cost effective stations in West Yorkshire but Stanks is almost 50% more expensive proportionate to the risk. 6

3.4. For most parts of the day the operational demand on resources based at the new station will be comparable to those of equally resourced fire stations. Figure 1 compares the predicted average operational activity levels for the new station with those of two other fire stations provided with two appliances. It indicates that although operational activity levels are generally comparable they are slightly higher during the evening hours due to the occurrence of smaller nuisance fires. 7

3.5. A Fire Response Unit has been piloted in Leeds District; this unit will attend small fires, car fires and certain fire alarms. These types of incident occur frequently in the East Leeds area. Figure 2 shows the level of activity in the new fire station area with the incidents the Fire response Unit attends taken out of the activity levels. The benefit of the Fire Response Unit can clearly be seen. The activity levels for the new station have been reduced considerably compared to other stations; it also shows that the new station will be less operationally active during the evening than the other local stations.

3.6. The new station in East Leeds will have a comparable level of activity to other fire stations provided with two appliances. 7

Figure 2 - Activity Timeline of Incidents Excluding Secondary Fires and Some False Alarms

Site Locations

3.7. An extensive review of emergency response cover has recently been completed and this has included the use of evaluation tools alongside local knowledge and professional judgment to identify optimum locations to build new WYFRS fire stations.

3.8. A site search mapping system has identified a number of appropriate areas across the County to build new fire stations and a number of sites have been identified within these areas which would provide the best solutions. A new fire station site must first be available for purchase and also provide access to road networks, it must not be located within flood plains and it must meet local planning permission requirements.

3.9. Analysis has been undertaken using the Fire Service Emergency Cover (FSEC – see also para 3.15) toolkit, together with the Phoenix/Active resource modelling toolkit.

3.10. The optimum area for a fire station between Gipton and Stanks has been identified as being situated on the A64 in the vicinity of Killingbeck police station. This proposed site is approximately 1.6 miles from Gipton Approach and 2.2 miles from Sherburn Road. The presence of a large site owned by West Yorkshire Police at this location may also present some potential to co-locate resources.

Determining where resources should be located

3.11. Independent research has assisted WYFRS to determine the potential impact that the implementation of each proposal would have on fire appliance attendance times to operational incidents. A simulation model has been used to identify the performance impact of moving resources to the new fire station. This modelling measures how the location of a new fire station would have performed if it had been in existence and responded to the actual incidents that did occurred in this area between 2007/8 and 2009/10. 4

3.12. Models have been run for locating a two fire appliances at Gipton and closing Stanks, and then run again for locating a two fire appliances at Stanks and closing Gipton, both these options provide a significantly lower level of response performance than would be achieved by locating

3.13. The proposals has a small reduction in performance in fire appliance attendance times against the Risk based Planning Assumptions for all incidents across the whole of West Yorkshire of approximately 0.3% for first appliance and 0.1% for the second appliance. 4

3.14. Local Impact – Figure 3 identifies that:

 There is a reduction in response performance against the Risk Based Planning Assumptions in the Gipton station area. The main reason for this is simultaneous activity. This change will be greatly mitigated by the Fire Response Unit. The predicted response times still represent good performance and are appropriate for the. Further impact will be achieved by targeted risk reduction activities.

Fire Service Emergency Cover (FSEC) toolkit

3.15 The FSEC software toolkit has been developed by Central Government (Department for Communities and Local Government) for use by Fire and Rescue Authorities in determining appropriate fire and emergency cover. It enables the relationship between dwelling fire casualties and the social demographics of small areas in the county (super output areas) and the location of response resources (fire stations) to be determined. Four demographic benchmarks are used to demonstrate this relationship and to represent predicted risk associated with a range of appliance response times.

3.16 Analysis of the FSEC outputs (which is a cost benefit analysis in regard to property and life risk) predicts that the relocating the fire station to Killingbeck will:

 Reduce the risk to the community.

 Result in significant efficiencies. 9

3.17 The FSEC modelling suggests that the impact of the Killingbeck proposal would be less than other relocation options

3.18 The Phoenix/Active software tool is another analysis tool used to identify the impact of any changes of the Risk Based Planning Assumptions referred to above. It predicts that locally there is likely to be a small adverse impact on the performance against Risk Based Planning Assumptions. Across the Brigade the impact is negligible. 10

Predicted Risk Level

3.19. A new fire station located, within the Killingbeck area would attract the same risk classification as the Gipton fire station area therefore the new fire station would be classified as very high risk. Targeted risk reduction activity will help to reduce the risk, with the aim of reducing it sufficiently enough to re-categorise the area as high risk in the future. 1

3.20. Isochrones (travel distance) can be drawn around the proposed location of the new fire station (Section 8). These indicate the distance the appliance would be able to travel within the Risk Based Planning Assumption time of 7 minutes.

3.21. Section 8 also illustrates that for this area of West Yorkshire a single fire station in the new location provides fire appliance coverage which is more proportionate to risk than the current arrangements.

Risk Reduction

3.20 During 2010 a comprehensive and integrated framework for service delivery was developed, this is outlined in the Community Risk Management Strategy 2011-15. This was implemented in 2011 and is proving a very effective means for targeting resources and reducing risk and is an essential method for reducing any negative impact of change in fire cover. Fundamental to this approach is the introduction of District Risk Reduction Teams and Local Area Risk Reductions Teams.

3.21 The location of a fire station in the Killingbeck area will enable targeted community safety activities such as Home Fire Safety Checks to continue.

4 Firefighter Safety Impact Assessment

Risk and firefighters gathering risk information about premises.

4.1 One of WYFRS’s risk indicators is dedicated solely to “Firefighter safety” and has taken cognisance of the following statement within the 2009 WYFRS Firefighter Safety Strategy; “Effective gathering and analysis of information prior to operational incident attendance is of critical importance”.

4.2 The firefighter safety indicator captures the following information to reflect this statement:

 The predominance of specified commercial properties within each fire station area.

 The availability of associated risk information held for commercial properties.

 The predominance of high-rise properties within each fire station area.

4.3 The swift arrival of supporting resources can have a beneficial impact upon the safe management of operational incidents and this is the rationale for this information being captured by the indicator.

4.4 Following the 2009/10 evaluation process the firefighter safety risk bandings for Gipton and Stanks have been determined as high and very low respectively. 1

8

4.5 The targets for operational risk information for the 2012/13 IRMP Action Plan will be set in a proportionate manner, with areas of higher risk levels receiving a greater number of operational risk information inspections. More inspections will take place in areas such as Gipton to increase the availability of risk information available to firefighters via the Mobile Data Terminals (MDT’s) and as more information is made available the corresponding risk level will be reduced.

4.6 The Premises Data-base currently indicates that there are a total of 1650 commercial properties within the Gipton and Stanks area that have not been made subject to an operational information inspection. A high priority has been placed on firefighters in Gipton visiting the premises where incidents could potentially occur. 11

4.7 It is therefore anticipated that the availability of risk information via the Mobile Data Terminals (MDT’s) for properties within all areas will be considerably improved by 2015, by which time the corresponding firefighter safety risk banding will have been reduced to Medium

The arrival times of the 2nd fire appliance

4.9. During 2009/10 there were a total of 333 operational incidents within the areas of Gipton and Stanks which required the attendance of more than one pumping appliance (one every 1.1 days). 12

4.10. Currently the North and East Leeds area has two fire appliances based at Gipton, Moortown and Leeds with one at Rothwell, Garforth, Stanks and Wetherby.

4.11. Increased second pump arrival times require the first attending crew to manage the initial stages of certain incidents in isolation; there is some potential for fires to become more developed in these initial stages.

4.12. The proposal improves the second appliance attendance times into Garforth station areas and there is little impact for the others local station areas.

5. Equality Impact Assessment

5.1 The new Public Sector Equality Duty places a requirement on the organisation to ensure where changes affect service delivery to the community or employees WYFRS assess those changes for any possible negative impact on equality. In this context equality refers to the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010, race, gender, disability, religion and belief, sexual orientation, age, gender-reassignment, maternity and pregnancy and marriage and civil partnerships.

5.2 This Equality Impact Assessment has been completed by using information drawn from the Office for National Statistics in regard to this area and has been used to determine whether the removal of a fire appliance from the area will lead to an adverse or disproportionate impact upon any sections of the population. 13

5.3 A 2008 report provided by the Communities and Local Government (CLG) department analysed the correlation between dwelling fires and socio demographics. This report has been used to provide an indication of whether any particular groups within the population are at heightened risk from fire. The report indicates that sick/disabled persons, lone pensioners and Black Caribbean/African groups were associated with a greater incidence of dwelling fires.

5.4 The Gipton and Harehills population was estimated as being 24,904 during 2001 with a fairly equal gender distribution. The predominant ethnic group within the population is White British with Asian/Asian British representing the next major group, followed by Pakistani, Black British/Caribbean and Asian/British Bangladeshi.

9

5.5 Approximately 49% of the resident Gipton and Harehills population are Christians, 23% are of Muslim faith and 25% declared no religious preference. In 2001 16% of the population was aged over 60 and 20% of the population had a limiting long-term illness.

5.6 The WYFRS Prevention strategy contained within the 2011-2015 Community Risk Management Strategy emphasises that risk reduction activities will be focussed toward areas of the county identified as being at higher risk from dwelling fires, deliberate fire setting and road traffic collisions and that an appropriate and proportionate allocation of resources will be made available for District Risk Reduction Teams (DRRT) to achieve this.

5.7 Although the Ward statistics indicate that the communities of Gipton and Harehills are very diverse the findings of the Equality Impact Assessment are that this proposal will not lead to any negative changes in the delivery of Prevention, Protection and Response services and consequently there will be no anticipated impact upon any under-represented groups. The Equality Impact Assessment also confirms that there is no negative impact on any employee group.

6. Organisational Impact Assessment

Efficiencies

6.1 This proposal will enable WYFRS to manage some of the financial deficit caused by reduced government funding.

6.2. The proposal has considered the less than optimal positioning of existing fire stations and appliances together with the reduced operational demand placed and associated costs. The most cost effective solution to these issues is to provide a new fire station and ensure that two fire appliances will be crewed by nine firefighters who will respond to emergencies in less than two minutes from being mobilised.

6.3. This can be achieved by reducing the staffing at Gipton and Stanks by 24 posts; this will be done by way of planned retirements. The staffing and duty system at the new fire station will remain the same.

6.4. The removal of posts that coincide with forecasted retirements will achieve significant revenue savings.

6.5. Although capital investment will be required to construct a new fire station, part of these costs will potentially be off-set by the sale of the two existing fire station sites.

6.6. There will be other associated savings delivered by this proposal, including:

 Reduction of Personal Protective Equipment.

 Reduction in consumables and station maintenance costs.

 The new station will be more environmentally friendly and have energy efficiency technology.

6.7. The analysis undertaken for Gipton and Stanks has identified that there is considerable overlap in the existing Risk Based Planning Assumption isochrones (footprints) for these areas. This overlap represents a duplication of resource coverage and therefore one of the objectives for providing a more efficient service within these areas is to reduce this overlap. 14

10

Impact across West Yorkshire and Resilience

6.8 The reduction in pumping appliances in this area does have a small impact upon attendance times against the Risk Based Planning Assumptions across West Yorkshire for all incidents; performance is reduced by 0.3% for first appliances and 0.1% for second appliances. 4

6.9 In order to maintain WYFRS’s operational resilience, the fire appliance currently sited at Stanks will be relocated at the new fire station. This fire appliance will not be continually staff but will be activated during periods of anticipated or unanticipated high levels of operational activity and in response to significant events which could affect emergency response; such as wide area flooding, bonfire night, periods of bad weather or when attending very large incidents.

6.10 The use of Resilience Pumps supports WYFRS strategy of staffing the appropriate number of fire appliances for normal levels of activity and having the mechanisms to add further fire appliance when required. This strategy is important in maintaining an excellent fire and rescue service whilst meeting the efficiencies required by the reduction in public service budgets.

7. Conclusions

7.1 The existing fire stations at Gipton and Stanks are 3.7 miles apart and consolidating resources at a new fire station at a central location is an economic, effective and efficient way of providing fire and rescue services for these areas.

7.2 The provision of two front-line fire appliances constantly crewed by whole-time firefighters is still deemed appropriate for this area despite the success of previous year’s risk reduction activities.

7.3 Targeted risk reduction initiatives co-ordinated by the Leeds Outer North East, Inner North East and Outer East Local Area Risk Reduction Teams will be undertaken.

7.4 It is expected that the targets established for gathering safety critical risk information, will mitigate the impact upon the safety of WYFRS firefighters resulting from the removal of a pumping appliance from this area.

7.5 The introduction of a Resilience Pump will maintain three appliances in the area and support WYFRSs resilience arrangements

7.6 The consolidation of Gipton and Stanks resources at one central location together with the addition of a Resilience Pump will deliver significant efficiency savings whilst maintaining a high level of service delivery and providing employees with vastly improved accommodation facilities.

Found at the end of a farm driveway in Oak Harbor, WA

Sing lyrics

This is a call for the national implementation

Of mother to child transmission prevention

Programme in all the maternity hospitals

In South Africa

Sing, my sister... sing!

Let your voice be heard

What won't kill you will make you strong

Sing, my sister... sing!

You don't need

To disrespect yourself again

Don't hide your light behind your fears

My women can be strong

You've known it all along

What you need

Is what you haven't found

So...

Sing, my sister... sing!

Let your voice be heard

What won't kill you will make you strong

Sing, my sister... sing!

Women are the mothers of the world, my friend

I tell you womankind is strong

Take your beautiful self up to the heights again

Back to the place where you belong

So...

Sing, my sister... sing!

Let your voice be heard

What won't kill you will make you strong

Sing, my sister... sing!

C'mon my sisters now

Sing loud and sing proud

Sing my sister... sing!

Use your voice to call out

Let your voice be heard

Use your voice

For freedom

Let your voice be heard

Everywhere you go

For freedom

Yes freedom

The generics...

We know azt globally

Call ... azt we know it. it is protecting children from hiv globally

Response ... globally

Call ... mtct

Response ... protection

Call ... we know nevirapine. it is protecting children from hiv globally.

~ Annie Lennox

My Cable Car , officially the State Cable Transportation Company My Cable Car, is the public company responsible for the administration of the La Paz - El Alto Cable Car urban transport system, which links the cities of La Paz and El Alto , as well as a line tourist in Oruro in Bolivia . The first of its lines began operations on May 30 , 2014 . At the end of the first three lines, it became the longest urban transport cable car network in the world. [On March 9, 2019, the last line corresponding to the second phase of implementation was inaugurated: the Silver Line, which closed the circuit called the Metropolitan Integration Network, and became the tenth line in operation. The system was raised in response to various problems in the metropolitan area of ​​La Paz , made up of the cities of La Paz and El Alto that had a precarious public transport service that did not respond adequately to the increasing demand from users and significant expenses in time and money involved in mobilizing between the two cities, in addition to the chaotic traffic and with high levels of environmental and auditory pollution they generated, the growing demand for gasoline and diesel, which are subsidized by the state. The service allowed the effective connection of the city of La Paz at an average height of 3600 meters above sea level, which has an intricate topography, surrounded by mountain ranges and diverse rivers with the city of El Alto settled on a plain located at 4100 meters above sea level. , reducing travel times and costs.

The cost of the ticket on each line is 3 bolivianos per person. When transferring to another line, the cost is 2 Bolivians. The service allows you to transport bicycles paying an extra ticket except on weekends on the Green and Yellow Lines.

Wikipedia

Old gardening implements.

In the late 1960s, around the time the Transport Act of 1968 was being implemented along with various PTAs and PTEs, there was a flurry of activity in Liverpool, backed by the City Council, to develop a transport strategy for the city and the soon to be formed Metropolitan County of Merseyside. One key component of this was the development of sections of underground railways in Liverpool city centre that was designed to utilise existing, mostly third rail electrified, railways that would allow for two main outcomes.

Firstly, better penetration of the central area than the existing lines could offer - most notably in the case of Exchange station that was arguably on the northern fringe of the centre by building the 'Link' line from Moorfields through Central and on to the Garston lines. This cleverly made use of some tunnel sections that the 'Loop' line would free up as we shall see.

Secondly to improve capacity on the existing 'Wirral lines' that, using the original Mersey railway tunnel, terminated in a reversing tunnel at Central station. This was to be achieved by a single line 'loop' via Moorfields, Lime St and back to Central, that allowed 'through running' as well as better connections and that was complemented by a new birrowing junction to segregate the running lines under Birkenhead at Hamilton Square.

Backed by the DoE and the PTE the British Railways Board undertook the works for both schemes and work started in c1972 and mostly completed by 1977. Sadly, two other components of the wider scheme, the Edge Hill spur and the Outer Loop railway, were cancelled leaving just the third rail operated Wirral and Northern lines of today - with the City line out on something of a limb in many senses.

The network created by these works has been expanded, with some extensions and new stations, although some of the wider ambitions seen in these three publications are still discussed to this day.

The third publication is a typewritten information sheet issued by British Rail on the Liverpool Mersey Railway scheme and the Construction of the Link Line. Undated it appears to have been issued around 1975 and I have included the pages and map on "other third rail electrification schemes under consideration" - these being within Merseyside as well as looking at connections north and west, to Wigan and towards Warrington, as well as south to Chester and Wrexham. Many of these schemes have had many proposals, discussions, delays and cancellations since this document was produced. Admittedly, some of the western proposals have seen improvements by the slow expansion fo 25kv AC overhead electrification, but others...

Leica M6 || 35mm f/1.2 || Ektachrome 200

This is a close up of an Ostrich Feather from my duster on a stick.

I'm heading on toward the city dump.

11/28/2024

Farm implement near McBaine, Missouri. Photography by Notley Hawkins. Taken with a Canon EOS R5 camera with a Canon RF15-35mm F2.8 L IS USM lens at ƒ/4.0 with a 239-second exposure at ISO 50, processed with Adobe Lightroom CC.

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www.notleyhawkins.com/

©Notley Hawkins. All rights reserved.

In 2013 I went on holiday to Helsinki but on one of the days we went to Tallinn, Estonia as it is only an hour or so across the water. When you enter the old part of the city (which is an UNESCO World Heritage Site) you can't help but see the imposing Alexander Nevsky Cathedral as it crowns the hill of Trompea. Which is one of several places where according to legend the Estonian folk hero Kalevipoeg's father Kalev is said to have been buried in the cathedral.

The cathedral was built in the late 19th century Russification and was so disliked by many Estonians as a symbol of oppression that the Estonian authorities scheduled the cathedral for demolition in 1924...but this decision was never implemented due to lack of funds. As the USSR was officially non-religious, many churches including this cathedral where left to decline.

Ironically the church has been meticulously restored since Estonia regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The term "Kadayawan" is derived from the Mandaya word “madayaw”, a warm and friendly greeting used to explain a thing that is valuable, superior, beautiful, good, or profitable.

Long time ago, Davao’s ethnic tribes residing at the foot of Mount Apo would converge during a bountiful harvest. This ritual serves as their thanksgiving to the gods particularly to the “Manama” (the Supreme Being).

Various farming implements, fruits, flowers, vegetables, rice and corn grains were displayed on mats as villagers give their respect and thanks for the year's abundance. Singing, dancing and offerings to their divine protectors are the highlights of this ritual.

Although times have changed, this practice of thanksgiving or “pahinungod” is still very much practiced by modern day Dabawenyos. This tradition flourished and evolved into an annual festival of thanksgiving.

In the 1970’s, Mayor Elias B. Lopez, a Bagobo, initiated tribal festivals featuring the lumad and the Muslim tribes of Davao City where they showcase their dances and rituals of thanksgiving.

Later in 1986, a program called "Unlad Proyekto Davao" was initiated by the government which was aimed to unite the Dabawenyos after the turbulent Martial Law era. At that time, the festival was called "Apo Duwaling," a name created from the famous icons of Davao: Mt. Apo, the country's highest peak; Durian, the king of fruits; and Waling-waling, the queen of orchids.

“Apo Duwaling” was meant to showcase the city as a peaceful destination to visit and to do business after 1986 EDSA Revolution.

Finally in 1988, City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte renamed the festival as "Kadayawan sa Dabaw" to celebrate the bountiful harvest of Davao’s flowers, fruits and other produce as well as the wealth of the city’s cultures. To this day, the festival continues to honor the city's richness and diverse artistic, cultural and historical heritage in a grand celebration of thanksgiving for all of Davao City's blessings. - taken from www.kadayawan.com

Photo taken during the Indak-Indak sa Kadalanan (Street Dancing) last August 21, 2010 from the streets of Davao City, Philippines.. Entry of Capitan Tomas Monteverde Elementary School.

Some farmer folk art or the last pieces in and implement junk yard.. Needing to get back to some Iowa art. Several years ago we did the western side of the state. Lots of barns, old windmills and hills from the Loess Hills area along the western border of the state. I haven't processed any of these (about 900/6000 keepers). Though I'd start mixing these in to breakup the Arkansas shots. Enjoy the Loess Hills.

Luminance HDR 2.6.0

Tonemapping parameters:

Operator: Mantiuk06

Parameters:

Contrast Mapping factor: 0.3

Saturation Factor: 1.6

Detail Factor: 5.2

------

PreGamma: 0.55

Brief History of Mt Gambier – the second city of SA after Adelaide (region population nearly 35,000, urban 28,000).

Lieutenant James Grant aboard the Lady Nelson sighted and named Mt Gambier in 1800 after a Lord of the Admiralty. The first white man to traverse the area was Stephen Henty of Portland in 1839 when he sighted the Blue Lake. He returned with cattle and stockmen in 1841. He later claimed that had he known the lake and volcano he had discovered in 1839 was in SA he would have immediately applied for an 1839 Special Survey. But Henty thought he was squatting on land in NSW and he was not an official SA settler so the government ordered him off the land in 1844. Thus the first official white settler of the South East and the Mt Gambier district became Evelyn Sturt, brother to Captain Charles Sturt, who took up an occupational license in March 1844 and a property he named Compton just north of the present city. In April 1844 Governor Grey and a party of assistants including the Assistant Surveyor General Thomas Burr and artist George French Angas explored the South East naming Robe and doing the first surveys. Evelyn Sturt became the first to have an occupational license to squat and the first purchase freehold land near Mt Gambier which he did in 1847- a section of 77 acres when 80 acres was the norm. He left the district in 1854 selling his freehold land to Hastings Cunningham who in 1855 subdivided some of this land thus creating the town of Gambierton. The town lands were adjacent to the site of the first police station selected near what is now Cave Gardens by the government in 1845. A small bush inn also operated at this spot. The first streets were named after early locals such as Evelyn Sturt, Compton, Ferrers and Crouch (built the first general store before the town was created) etc. The town grew quickly because of the mild climate, fertile soils, plentiful water and the influx of settlers from across the border in what was to become the colony of Victoria. Cunningham himself was a great benefactor and donated land for the first school in 1856. In 1861 the town name was changed by act of parliament to Mt Gambier. The Hundred of Mt Gambier (along with three other hundreds) was declared in 1858 and began the closer settlement of the South East.

Unlike other areas of SA the South East was seen as paradise for pastoralists and the optimistic pastoralists flocked to the area with their flocks in 1845. The large runs locked up the land and prevented farmers from settling in the region except for the fertile lands around Mount Gambier. Here small scale farmers had small properties and grew potatoes, hops, and later had dairy cows as well as growing wheat and oats. Land acts in the early 1870s designed to break up the big runs only partially succeeded in the South East where most station owners bought up their lands freehold. It was after 1905 before the big pastoral estates were really broken up for farmers and closer settlement, except for near Mt Gambier. Apart from Evelyn Sturt the other early white settlers of the South East in 1845 were Alexander Cameron at Penola, John Robertson at Struan, William Macintosh and George Ormerod at Naracoorte, the Austin brothers at Yallum Park (later John Riddoch), the Arthur brothers (nephews of Governor Arthur of Van Diemen’s Land) at Mt Schanck( now Mt Schank) and the Leake brothers at Glencoe. In fact in 1845 nineteen leasehold runs were taken up in the South East with a further thirty runs in 1846 and most had several 80 acres sections of freehold land near the main homestead. Most had got to the South East from Casterton and Portland in Victoria as the swamps near the coast were too difficult to traverse except for the country near Robe. Many of the estates were huge. Evelyn Sturt on the Compton/Mt Gambier run had 85 square miles as well as his freehold land; Robertson had 135 square miles at Struan; George Glen (and William Vansittart) of Mayurra had 110 square miles; the SA Company had 159 square miles on the Benara run; the Leake brothers had 194 square miles on Glencoe; Hunter had 56 square miles on Kalangadoo; Neil Black of Noorat Victoria had 45 square miles on Kongorong run and 101 square miles at Port MacDonnell and the Arthur brothers had a huge run at Mt Schanck. By 1851 almost 5,000 square miles of the South East was occupied by Occupational License and most licenses were converted to 14 year leases in that year. A third of all leasehold land in SA was taken up in the South East because of its higher rainfall and suitability for pastoralism and a third of all sheep in the colony were in the South East. When Hundreds were declared in the South East in the late 1850s and early 1860s pastoralists bought up the land. In one case John Riddoch of Yallum Park owned the entire Hundred of Monbulla. Another pastoralist W. Clarke who had purchased Mt Schancke station from the Arthur brothers in 1861 owned SA land valued at £1.25 million when he died in 1874 and he had 120,000 acres freehold in Victoria, 75,000 acres freehold in SA( Mt Schank) and 50,000 acres freehold in each of NSW and Tasmania! Mt Schanck was changed in Schank in 1917 when German place names in SA were changed as Schank without the second “c” is an old English name!

In the 1850s Mt Gambier was a shanty village as the South East was a region of large pastoral estates and little agricultural farming and very low population numbers. It was far from Adelaide and remote and it was only after the Princeland episode in 1862 with the threat of possible secession to a new state that the Adelaide government began to invest in the South East and really encourage settlement there. The Border Watch newspaper was established in 1861, the Mt Gambier Hotel opened in 1862 and the Mt Gambier Council was formed in 1863.By the early 1860s Mt Gambier had almost 1,000 residents making it one of the largest towns in SA after the copper mining centres of Burra, Kadina and Moonta. By the 1881 SA census Mt Gambier had 2,500 residents making it the biggest town outside of Adelaide. In 1865 four iconic historic buildings were erected-the Courthouse, the Gaol, Christ Church Anglican and the Post Office and Telegraph Station. The flourmill which later became the Oat Mill opened in 1867 as wheat farmers had now taken up lands around the Mount. Mt Gambier was growing into a fine prosperous looking town with churches, stores, banks, hotels and fine residences. In the 1870s the rural population increased dramatically with tenant potato farmers on Browne’s Moorak estate and intensive hop growing in several localities such as Yahl and OB Flat and Glenburnie etc. Also in 1876 the first commercial forestry was started at the behest of George Goyder. A tree nursery was established on the edge of Leg of Mutton Lake in 1876 on a site selected by George Goyder himself. A stone cottage for the first nurseryman Charles Beale was constructed and it survived until demolished in 1969 but the nursery closed in 1929. The nursery propagated eucalypts, Oak, Elm, Ash, Sycamore, and North American pines. Pinus radiata was first grown at Leg of Mutton Lake and was being dispersed to other areas by 1878. Pinus canariensis was also grown in the 1880s. Pinus radiata is now the most commonly grown commercial forest tree in SA and Australia. Also in the 1870s the first hospital was erected and Dr Wehl, the town’s doctor for many years was in residence.

In the mid 1880s the first rail line was laid as the railway lines pushed out from Mt Gambier to Naracoorte. The service to Naracoorte began in 1887 and connected on with the line to Bordertown and Adelaide. By 1897 a railway connected Mt Gambier to Millicent and the port at Beachport. The railway line across the border to Heywood and Melbourne was not completed until 1917 as the SA government resisted a line that would take goods and passengers from Mt Gambier to Port Melbourne rather than to Port Adelaide. Mt Gambier railway station used to be a hive of activity with daily trains to Adelaide and an overnight sleeper services several times a week. Passenger trains to Mt Gambier from Adelaide stopped in 1990 after Australian National took over the SA railway network. Freight services stopped in 1995 and the railway line and station was formally closed. The railyards and other buildings were cleared in 2013.

The Buandik Aboriginal People.

The Buandik people are commemorated in a city street but by little else. Yet they were resilient and determined fighters opposed to the white settlement of the South East. Their occupation of the Mt Gambier district stretches back to around 20,000+ years but their dated occupation from archaeological sites goes back to about 11,000 years with their myths and legends including stories about volcanic activity at Mt Gambier. The last volcanic explosions were about 4,000 years ago. Both Mt Schank and Mt Gambier were important places to the Buandik for ceremonies, hunting, access to water and stone implement making. A government report in 1867 noted that the Buandik people in government care were few in number mainly sickly and elderly. The younger people had presumably moved out into the white community. But back in the 1840s the Buandik were a force to be reckoned with. There are no common stories of Aboriginal massacres but white pastoralists certainly retaliated when sheep were stolen. On Mt Schank station the Buandik were so troublesome that shepherds would not venture out to care for sheep alone and the Arthur brothers gave this trouble as their reason for them selling the run in 1845. In 1845 the government established a police station at Mt Gambier, which the Protector of Aboriginals visited, to ensure that pastoralists did not massacre the Buandik.

William Vansittart and Vansittart Park.

Vansittart Park has been a focal point of Mt Gambier since 1884 for activities such as family picnics, political rallies and speeches, bike racing, band rotunda concerts, bowling greens, sport oval, grandstand (1927) and Anzac memorial services. But who was William Vansittart? He was an Anglican reverend from England (Vansittart is a noble and political Anglo-Irish family in the UK) who arrived in SA in 1847 as a young bachelor. He was never licensed as a minister in SA but he developed his passions for making money and horse racing here. He mixed with the elite of Adelaide like Sir Samuel Davenport, the Governor and was a friend of Hurtle Fisher and he was Master of the Hounds. In 1850 he purchased 35 acres at Beaumont where he built Tower House and 80 acres at Mt Gambier. He imported a thoroughbred horse from Hobart called Lucifer. Ironic that a minister of religion would have a horse called Lucifer! His horses raced in Adelaide, Salisbury, Gawler, Brighton and Clare as well as in Mt Gambier and Penola. In 1851 he also took over the 110 square mile 14 year lease of Mayurra run with George Glen of Millicent. In 1852 he returned to England for a short time and on his return he purchased more freehold land bringing his estate to around 800 acres. Not long after in 1854 his horse shied, he was thrown against a tree and died of head injuries but he died intestate with an estate worth over £10,000. Glen bought out his share of Mayurra; the Beaumont house and property was sold in 1867 as were his race horses and his brother Captain Spencer Vansittart eventually inherited the Mt Gambier property. In accordance with William’s wishes 115 acres were set aside to provide income for a scholarship for boarders at St Peters Boys College which happened from 1859. Later in 1883 Spencer Vansittart offered 20 acres to the Mt Gambier Council for a memorial park at the “nominal” sum of £400 which hardly seems “nominal”. The Council raised a loan and purchased the land and the park is still enjoyed by the city’s residents and visitors. Captain Spencer’s widow sold the last package of 300 acres of land in 1912 thus ending the Vansittart links with Mt Gambier. The Vansittart scholarship is still available for boarders from the South East and is operated by a group of College trustees.

Some Historic Buildings in Mt Gambier and a town walk.

Your town walk is basically straight ahead along Penola Road towards the Mount itself which becomes Bay Road( the bay is at Port MacDonnell) once you cross Commercial Street which is the Main Street. There are just a few diversions to the left as you face the Mount. The coach will collect you at the Mount end of the walk near the Old Courthouse.

If you a good walker check out the fine houses in Jardine Street at numbers 1, 7, 9, 11, 12, 17 and 22. They range from cottages to Gothic and turreted mansions including the home of Jens the hotelier. This detour will add another 10 minutes to the walk if you elect to do it.

1.Catholic Covent. Sisters of Mercy setup a convent school in 1880. This wonderful convent was not built until 1908 in local dolomite stone & limestone quoins. Note the fine stone gables with small niches for statuary, the well proportioned arched colonnades and upstairs oriel windows – the projecting bay windows with stone supports. This is one of the finest buildings in Mt Gambier. The convent closed in 1986. Now Auspine.

2.Wesleyan Methodist Church Hall/Sunday School. Across the street is pink dolomite neo-classical style Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School Hall. Hundreds of children attended Sunday School in those days. It opened in 1904. It is now commercial offices. (If you want to walk up Wyatt Street beside the Sunday School and turn right at second street which is at Gray you will see the old two storey Methodist Manse at 101 Gray St. It was built in 1868 and sold 1941. As you turn into Gray Street the Salvation Army Hall is on your left. Allow 10 minutes for this detour before returning to Penola Road).

3.Methodist Church now Liberty Church. A Gothic large church built in 1862 by the Wesleyans. Opened by minister from Portland. Additions made 1877 with new entrance. The old lecture hall and Sunday School was beneath the church. Note the buttress on corners and sides. Became Uniting Church 1977 and closed 1994 when services moved to St Andrews Presbyterian Church. Behind the church (walk through the car park) in Colhurst Place is LLandovery two storey mansion now a B&B. Built 1878 for a flour and oat miller who had his mill in Percy Street.

4.St Paul’s Catholic Church. This impressive Gothic church with huge tower with crenulations was opened in 1884 and will be open today. There are 1966 extensions to the rear of it. The Presbytery is behind the church facing Alexander St. it was built in 1901 when the church was free of building debt. The first thatched bush church was built in another location in 1855. From 1857 the priest was Father Julian Tenison Woods, explorer, academic, horseman etc. A second church opened in 1861 in Sturt St and is now demolished. It closed in 1885 as this church opened. The bells came from Dublin. The church fence and gates built 1936.

5.The Mount Gambier Club. Across the street is the Club. It was built in 1904 for a local distiller as chambers for lease. The wealthy pastoralists of the South East formed an exclusive men only club in 1913 and it has used the upper floor of Engelbrecht’s chambers ever since. They purchased the whole building in 1920. The Club is a beautifully proportioned classical style building with pediments, balustrades, window entablature, and perfect symmetry. Look down the sides and you can see it is made of Mt Gambier limestone blocks.

6.Mt Gambier Caledonian Hall. Next door is the Scots Club. Its prominence signifies the Scottish links of many Gambier residents. The hall was opened in 1914 and opened by the former Prime Minister Sir George Reid, another Scot. It has classical features but is rather ugly and neglected these days. It is now a night club.

7.The Trustees Building. Next to the Caledonian is the Trustee Building erected in 1958. Its blue and bone tiled façade is typical of 1950s architecture yet the rectangular appearance has a slight classical look about it. It is on the SA Heritage Register. Accountants now occupy it.

8.Turn left into Percy Street and go along here beyond KFC for one town block to the next corner for the Oatmills (now a coffee shop and cinemas). Milling and brewing were two of Mt Gambier’s prime 19th century industries. The 4 storey complex here was started in 1867 for Welsh Thomas Williams who eventually had five flour mills. His mill was called Commercial Flourmills. A new owner converted the mill from wheat milling to oat milling. A new oatmill was built in 1901 and operated until 1975 producing Scottish porridge oats. The mill has now been restored with café, shops and cinemas. Return to Penola Rd.

9. Mt Gambier Hotel. No hotel could have a more remarkable origin than the Mt Gambier. An African American John Byng built a weatherboard hotel near here in 1847. The third licensee Alexander Mitchell, another Scot, took it over and moved the hotel to this corner site in 1862 as an impressive two storey hotel which was unusual at that time. The western wing was added in 1883 and balconies affixed in 1902.

10.Cross towards the Mount with the traffic lights then turn left into Commercial Street East.

11.Mt Gambier Town Hall. Marked as the Riddoch Gallery this fine Venetian Gothic style building is impressive with its coloured stone work contrasting well with cement rendered horizontal lines and vertical panels around windows and doors. The upper windows are mullioned with stone divisions between the glass. It was built in 1882 with the clock tower added in 1883 after a donation. The first Council meeting was in 1863 with Dr Wehl as chairman held in a hotel. Later the Council hired a room at the Foresters Hall and then they purchased this site in 1868 with a weatherboard room. This was used until 1882.

12.Mt Gambier old Institute. The Literary Institute was formed in 1862 and a foundation stone laid for a reading room/hall in 1868 by John Riddoch. The single storey institute opened in 1869. The upper floor was added in 1887, so that it would match the new Town Hall. It is built in a similar style- Venetian Romanesque as the windows and rounded and not arched as with a gothic structure.

13.Captain Gardiner Memorial Fountain 1884. The fountain was presented by Captain Robert Gardiner the grandfather of Sir Robert Helpman (his name was originally Helpmann). The fountain was made in Melbourne .Gardiner was also a benefactor of St Andrew’s Presbyterian -he donated the pipe organ in 1885.

14.Jens Hotel. After demolishing an earlier hotel (the 1847 hotel of John Byng) Johannes Jens had the first section of his Jens Hotel built on this corner in 1884. An almost identical eastern wing was erected in 1904 and the Spanish Art Deco section in 1927. Turn right here and go behind the Town hall to the Cave Gardens.

15.Cave Gardens. This spot was an early water supply. A garden was created in 1893 and then improved and reconstructed in 1925. This sink hole has recently been upgraded again and it is lit at night.

16.Post Office. This important communications centre was erected in 1865 as a telegraph office/post office. This is till one of the finest buildings in Mt Gambier and a rare example of the Georgian style for the city. . The single storey side wings were added in 1906 in a sympathetic style. It is still the main city Post Office.

17.Norris Agency Building. This superb Italianate building was completed in 1900 as chambers for businessmen. Owner was Alexander Norris who died in 1917. The façade is pink dolomite with cement quoins and unusual lined decoration work above the windows and door each contained within a triangular classical pediment.

18.Farmers Union Building. Another classical style building built when this style was out of fashion in 1914.Erected for Farmers Union as a large two storey building. It has none of the grace of the Norris building next door. FU was formed in 1888 in Jamestown by Thomas Mitchell, a Scot and others to provide cheap rates for grains, seeds and superphosphate but in the early 1900s they branched into products for dairy farmers and the marketing of milk products. The Mt Gambier district had plenty of dairy farmers. It is now owned by a Japanese company Kirin but it still markets its chocolate milk drinks as Farmers Union. Upper floor has double pilasters (flattened pillars) with top volutes but little other decoration.

19.Savings Bank Building on the corner. The former Savings Bank in Gothic style is unusual for commercial premises in Mt Gambier. It is constructed of weathered local limestone and was built in 1906. Note the different cut stone for the foundations, simulated turrets on the corners and by the door to break the façade appearance and the stone line above the lower window which then divides the façade into equal thirds.

20.Macs Hotel. This hotel was built in 1864 and is largely unchanged except that the upper floor was added in 1881. The first licensee was a Scot named John MacDonald. The double veranda supports are very elegant.

21.Roller flourmill now a painted hardware store. Built 1885 as a steam flourmill in pink dolomite. Note the small 12 paned windows set in much larger indented niches in the walls on the northern wall. (Sturt St.)

22.Christ Church Anglican Church and hall. Dr Browne of Moorak donated half the money for the construction of Christ Church in pink dolomite and with an unusual gabled tower. Church and tower completed in 1866. Adjacent is the Jubilee Hall built in 1915, destroyed by fire in 1951, and rebuilt exactly the same in weathered local limestone blocks with the original foundation stone still in place. It has the single Gothic window in the street facing gable and a crenulated square tower. Adjoining it is the 1869 Sunday School with the narrow double pointed Gothic windows. It was extended in 1892. The lychgate is more recent as a memorial to a regular church goer, Margaret French who died in 1927.

23.The old railway station just visible along the rail lines to your right. The first rail line was to Beachport in 1879 and the second to Naracoorte (and so to Adelaide) in 1887. Portland and Melbourne line opened 1917. A spur line to Glencoe was completed in 1904. First station was erected in 1879. It was demolished for the erection of the current station in 1918 which is similar in design to those in Tailem Bend, Bordertown, Moonta etc. Bluebird rail cars started on the Mt Gambier run in 1953 when the old 3’6” gauge line to Wolseley was converted to 5’3”. The last passenger service to Adelaide finished in 1990 and the station closed for freight in 1995. The railyards were cleared in 2013 and the future of the station is bleak. The rail lines to Beachport and Glencoe closed in 1956/57.

24.The Old Courthouse, 42 Bay Rd. It has a great low wall suitable for sitting on. This well designed Georgian style Courthouse opened in 1865 and the similarly styled side wings were added in 1877. The front veranda, which is not Georgian in style, was added in 1880. In 1975 the Courthouse was granted to the National Trust for a museum. The adjoining new Courthouse opened in 1975 at the same time. Note the “blind” windows to the façade but the same rounded Georgian shaped, 16 paned windows on the sides.

The Blue Lake, Mt Schank and Volcanoes.

The jewel in the crown of Mt Gambier is undoubtedly the volcanic cone, the crater lakes especially the Blue Lake and the surrounding Botanic Gardens and parklands. The Botanic Garden on the north side was approved in 1872 but nothing happened about plantings and care until 1882. The first pleasure road through the saddle between the Blue Lake and the Valley Lake was created in the 1861 as a more direct road to the then newly created international port named Port MacDonnell. That is why the road is called the Bay road. Surveyor General George Goyder explored the lake surrounds himself in 1876 when he selected the site for the government tree nursery. Later the government established the first sawmill on the edge of the crater reserve near Moorak homestead in the early 1920s. The Centenary Tower was initiated in 1900 to celebrate the centenary of Captain Grant sighting Mt Gambier. It took several years to complete and was opened by the Chief Justice of SA Sir Samuel Way in 1907 but it was completed in 1904. The whole complex is a maar geomorphological formation which originated during a volcanic era about 28,000 years ago but in a second phase of volcanic activity 4,000 to 6,000 years ago the cones and lakes of Mt Gambier were created along with the cones of Mt Schank and Mt Burr near Millicent. Mt Gambier was the most recent volcanic explosion in Australia. The crater lakes are: Blue Lake, Valley Lake, Leg of Mutton Lake and Browne’s Lake (dry). The Blue Lake is linked to the aquifers beneath the deep layers of limestone which underlay the entire South East. Blue Lake is about 72 metres deep and some of the water in it is estimated to be about 500 years old but it is mixed with rain runoff each year as well. The Lake provides the water supply for Mt Gambier. Deep in the lake are examples of the oldest living organisms on earth- stromatalites. The lake changes colour from grey to vivid blue each November and reverts in the following April. The change in colour is related to the position of the sun and reflected light from suspended particles in the lake which reflect blue green light rather than brown grey light. Secondly the suspended matter only occurs because the water near the surface rises in temperature in the spring and it is this which causes the particles to precipitate out of the water. The precipitated matter settles on the bottom of the lake ready for a new cycle the following spring. Like the Blue Lake various sink holes in the district have linkages to the underlying aquifer through the layers of limestone too and they include Cave Gardens, Umpherstone, Piccaninni Ponds, etc.

Moorak Station and Tenison Woods College.

Moorak station as originally known as Mount Gambier Station established by George Glen in the 1840s. The leasehold was later taken over by David Power who in turn sold it to Fisher and Rochford who in turn sold the estate as freehold to the Scottish Dr William Browne who had established Booborowie run with his brother in 1843 north of Burra. The Browne brothers dissolved their partnership around 1865 and John went to live at Buckland Park and William took up residence at Moorak. William had purchased Moorak Station in 1862 and built the grand Moorak homestead in impressive Georgian style onto a smaller house there. William died in 1894 and the Moorak Estate passed to his son Colonel Percival Browne who was to disappear on the ill-fated voyage of the new steamer the Waratah in 1909 which disappeared during a storm off Durban, South Africa. Also on that voyage was Mrs. Agnes Hay (nee Gosse) of Mt Breckan Victor Harbor and Linden Park Estate Adelaide and some 200 other poor souls. Around 1909 the Moorak Station was subdivided for closer settlement and in the 1920s the Marist Brothers purchased the homestead with a little land for their and monastery and opened the Marist Brothers Agricultural College for boys in 1931. That college in turn merged with the Mater Christi College in 1972 to become Tenison College. (Mater Christi College had been formed in 1952 by the merger of the St Josephs Convent School (1880) and St Peters Parish School but the primary section of St Peters broke away in 1969 from Mater Christi College and formed a separate St Peters Primary School. This primary school in turn merged with Tenison College in 2001 to form Tenison Woods College!) The College name commemorates the work of Father Julian Tenison Woods who arrived in Mt Gambier in 1857 to work in Penola and Mt Gambier. It was he who encouraged Mary MacKillop to take her vows and establish her Sisters of St Joseph.

Dr Browne’s manager of Moorak Estate in 1868 introduced hops as a viable crop in the South East and large quantities were grown for about 20 years. Other early experimental crops grown included tobacco, cotton and flax. Dr Browne and Moorak were also important in the potato industry. Dr Browne leased around 830 acres to 20 tenants for the express purpose of growing potatoes. He was keen to emulate the British aristocracy although he was a good Scot with being a manorial style landlord with tenant farmers. Potatoes were also grown from the early years at Yahl, OB Flat and Compton near Mt Gambier. The potatoes were carted down to Port MacDonnell and shipped to Adelaide for consumers. As one of the major wool producers of Australia William Browne contributed roughly half of the funds for the erection of Christ Church Anglican in Mt Gambier. The Moorak estate consisted of around 11,000 acres of the most fertile volcanic soil in SA with another 2,000 acres in a nearby property, German Creek near Carpenter’s Rocks. Dr Browne ran Silky Lincolns on Moorak for their wool as Merinos did not fare well on the damp South East pastures. About 2,000 acres was in wheat, about 2,500 acres was tenanted to other farmers and around 4,000 acres were in lucerne, clover, rye and other pasture grasses. William Browne returned to live in England in 1866 so his sons could attend Eton and military training colleges there. He made regular trips to SA about every second year to oversee his many pastoral properties here. When he died in 1894 he left 100,000 acres of freehold land in SA to his children who all resided here as well as leasehold land. He was an extremely wealthy man. Son Percival took control of Moorak. Before Percival’s death Moorak Estate was partly purchased by the SA government in 1904 for closer settlement when they acquired around 1,000 acres. After Percival’s death a further 6,300 acres was acquired for closer settlement and the remainder of the estate was sold to other farmers. The government paid between £10 and £31 per acre for the land. Percival Browne was highly respected in Mt Gambier and a reserve around the Blue Lake is named after him. The fourth of the crater lakes of Mt Gambier is also named Browne’s Lake after the family but it has been dry for decades. In 1900 Colonel Browne planted the ring of English Oaks around what was to become the oval of the Marist Brothers College.

Moorak.

There is a memorial by the station to William Browne as founder of the Coriadale Sheep Stud. The great Moorak woolshed was demolished in 1939. The Union church which opened in 1920 was used by the Methodists and the Anglicans. It is now a private residence. Moorak hall was opened in 1926. New classrooms were added to the Moorak School in 1928 and the first rooms opened in 1913. The cheese factory in Moorak opened in 1913 as a cooperative and was sold to Farmers Union in 1949. They closed the factory in 1979. Most of the cheese produced at Moorak went to the Melbourne market. The first cheese maker at Moorak was trained at Lauterbach’s cheese factory at Woodside. Moorak was one of a circle of settlements around Mt Gambier that had butter/cheese factories. These towns were: Kongorong; Glencoe East; Glencoe West; Suttontown; Glenburnie; Mil Lel; Yahl; OB Flat; Moorak; Mt Schank; and Eight Mile Creek.

Yahl.

In the 1860s this tiny settlement was a tobacco, hop and potato growing district and it persisted with potatoes up until recent times. Today Yahl is little more than a suburban village of Mt Gambier with a Primary school with approx 120 students. The old government school was erected in 1879. It had a Methodist church built in 1880 which operated as a church until 1977 and it had a large butter factory which had opened in 1888. The butter and cheese factory was taken over by the OB Flat cheese factory in 1939 and the two operated in conjunction with each other. The OB Flat cheese factory closed in 1950 and all production moved to Yahl. The factory finally closed in 1971. The township of Yahl also had a General Store and a Salvation Army Hall which was built in 1919.

Sink Holes: Umpherston Gardens and Cave Gardens.

James Umpherston purchased land near Mt Gambier in 1864 which included a large sink hole or collapsed cavern with a lake in the bottom. He was born in Scotland in 1812 and came to SA in the 1850s with his brother William. William purchased his first land at Yahl in 1859. James Umpherston was a civic minded chap being a local councilor, a parliamentarian in Adelaide for two years and President of the Mt Gambier Agricultural and Horticultural Society for 13 years. When he retired from civic life and farming in 1884 he decided to create a garden in his sinkhole. He beautified it and encouraged visitors and even provided a boat in the lake for boat rides. Access was gained by steps and a path carved into the sinkhole walls. However after he died in 1900 the garden was ignored, became overgrown and was largely forgotten in 1949 when the Woods and Forests Department obtained the land for a new sawmill at Mt Gambier. By then the lake had dried up as the water table had fallen over the decades. In 1976 staff, rather than the government, decided to restore the Umpherstone gardens. The cleared out the rubbish that had been dumped in the sinkhole, restored the path access, trimmed the ivy and replanted the hydrangeas and tree ferns. In 1994 the Woos and Forests Department handed over the land around the sinkhole to the City of Mt Gambier. It was added to the SA Heritage Register in 1995.

Farm implement near Glasgow in rural Saline County Missouri by Notley Hawkins Photography. Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV camera with a Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at ƒ/4.0 with a 148 second exposure at ISO 100. Processed with Adobe Lightroom CC.

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Antique Farm Implement.

Penn Farm Agricultural Heritage Center.

Cedar Hill State Park. Cedar Hill, Texas.

Dallas County. September 10, 2020.

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Borgward was a German automobile manufacturer founded by Carl F. W. Borgward (November 10, 1890 – July 28, 1963). The company was based in Bremen. The Borgward group eventually produced four brands of cars: Borgward,Hansa, Goliath and Lloyd.

The origins of Bremen's most significant auto-business go back to 1905 with the establishment in nearby Varel of the "Hansa Automobilgesellschaft" and the foundation in Bremen itself of "Namag", maker of the Lloyd car. These two businesses merged in 1914 to form the "Hansa-Lloyd-Werke A.G.". After the war, in the troubled economic situation then confronting Germany, the business failed to prosper and by the late 1920s faced bankruptcy. For Carl Borgward, already the successful creator of the Goliath-Blitzkarren business, the misfortunes of Hansa-Lloyd presented an opportunity greatly to expand the scope of his auto business, and he took control of it.

Although Borgward pioneered technical novelties in the German market such as air suspension and automatic transmission, the company had trouble competing in the marketplace. While larger companies like Opel and VW took advantage of economies of scale and kept their prices low to gain market share, Borgward's cost structure was even higher than necessary for its size, as it basically operated as four tiny independent companies and never implemented such basic cost reduction strategies as joint development and parts sharing between the company's makes. Borgward suffered quality problems as well.

In 1961, the company was forced into liquidation by creditors. Carl Borgward died in July 1963, still insisting the company had been technically solvent. This proved to be true in the sense that after the creditors were paid in full, there was still 4.5 million Marks left over from the business.

(Wikipedia)

Vintage blacksmith shop

The Regional Seas Conventions and Action Plans are instrumental in supporting the implementation of the GPA at regional levels and have developed, or are in the process of developing, regional sea action plans on marine litter. The regional plans take into account the environmental, social and economic situation of each regional sea and they vary in the detail and extent of actions recommended to the states (UNEP, 2016a). While, for example, in the Mediterranean the strategic framework includes legally binding measures, the regional action plans for the Baltic and North Atlantic are built around a set of fundamental principles and, similar to the G7 Action Plan, a series of regional and national actions to address land-based and sea-based sources, priority removal actions and priority actions on education, research and outreach. Otherwise in the Pacific marine debris has been identified as a priority area in the broader Pacific Regional Waste and Pollution Management Strategy 2015–2016.

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This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Maphoto/Riccardo Pravettoni

Mamiya RZ67 ProⅡ / MAMIYA-SEKOR Z 110mm f2.8 / Kodak Portra 160

The main environmental issues associated with the implementation of the 5G network come with the manufacturing of the many component parts of the 5G infrastructure. In addition, the proliferation of new devices that will use the 5G network that is tied to the acceleration of demand from consumers for new 5G-dependent devices will have serious environmental consequences. The 5G network will inevitably cause a large increase in energy usage among consumers, which is already one of the main contributors to climate change. Additionally, the manufacturing and maintenance of the new technologies associated with 5G creates waste and uses important resources that have detrimental consequences for the environment. 5G networks use technology that has harmful effects on birds, which in turn has cascading effects through entire ecosystems. And, while 5G developers are seeking to create a network that has fewer environmental impacts than past networks, there is still room for improvement and the consequences of 5G should be considered before it is widely rolled out. 5G stands for the fifth generation of wireless technology. It is the wave of wireless technology surpassing the 4G network that is used now. Previous generations brought the first cell phones (1G), text messaging (2G), online capabilities (3G), and faster speed (4G). The fifth generation aims to increase the speed of data movement, be more responsive, and allow for greater connectivity of devices simultaneously.[2] This means that 5G will allow for nearly instantaneous downloading of data that, with the current network, would take hours. For example, downloading a movie using 5G would take mere seconds. These new improvements will allow for self-driving cars, massive expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) device use, and acceleration of new technological advancements used in everyday activities by a much wider range of people. While 5G is not fully developed, it is expected to consist of at least five new technologies that allow it to perform much more complicated tasks at faster speeds. The new technologies 5G will use are hardware that works with much higher frequencies (millimeter wavelengths), small cells, massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output), beamforming, and full duplex.[3] Working together, these new technologies will expand the potential of many of the devices used today and devices being developed for the future. Millimeter waves are a higher frequency wavelength than the radio wavelength generally used in wireless transmission today.[4] The use of this portion of the spectrum corresponds to higher frequency and shorter wavelengths, in this case in the millimeter range (vs the lower radio frequencies where the wavelengths can be in the meters to hundreds of kilometers). Higher frequency waves allow for more devices to be connected to the same network at the same time, because there is more space available compared to the radio waves that are used today. The use of this portion of the spectrum has much longer wavelengths than of that anticipated for a portion of the 5G implementation. The waves in use now can measure up to tens of centimeters, while the new 5G waves would be no greater than ten millimeters.[5] The millimeter waves will create more transmission space for the ever-expanding number of people and devices crowding the current networks. The millimeter waves will create more space for devices to be used by consumers, which will increase energy usage, subsequently leading to increased global warming. Millimeter waves are very weak in their ability to connect two devices, which is why 5G needs something called “small cells” to give full, uninterrupted coverage. Small cells are essentially miniature cell towers that would be placed 250 meters apart throughout cities and other areas needing coverage.[6] The small cells are necessary as emissions [or signals] at this higher frequency/shorter wavelength have more difficulty passing through solid objects and are even easily intercepted by rain.[7] The small cells could be placed on anything from trees to street lights to the sides of businesses and homes to maximize connection and limit “dead zones” (areas where connections are lost). The next new piece of technology necessary for 5G is massive MIMO, which stands for multiple input multiple output. The MIMO describes the capacity of 5G’s base stations, because those base stations would be able to handle a much higher amount of data at any one moment of time. Currently, 4G base stations have around eight transmitters and four receivers which direct the flow of data between devices.[9] 5G will exceed this capacity with the use of massive MIMO that can handle 22 times more ports. Figure 1 shows how a massive MIMO tower would be able to direct a higher number of connections at once. However, massive MIMO causes signals to be crossed more easily. Crossed signals cause an interruption in the transmission of data from one device to the next due to a clashing of the wavelengths as they travel to their respective destinations. To overcome the cross signals problem, beamforming is needed. To maximize the efficiency of sending data another new technology called beamforming will be used in 5G. For data to be sent to the correct user, a way of directing the wavelengths without interference is necessary. This is done through a technique called beamforming. Beamforming directs where exactly data are being sent by using a variety of antennas to organize signals based on certain characteristics, such as the magnitude of the signal. By directly sending signals to where they need to go, beamforming decreases the chances that a signal is dropped due to the interference of a physical object.

One way that 5G will follow through on its promise of faster data transmission is through sending and receiving data simultaneously. The method that allows for simultaneous input and output of data is called full duplexing. While full duplex capabilities allow for faster transmission of data, there is an issue of signal interference, because of echoes. Full duplexing will cut transmission times in half, because it allows for a response to occur as soon as an input is delivered, eliminating the turnaround time that is seen in transmission today. Because these technologies are new and untested, it is hard to say how they will impact our environment. This raises another issue: there are impacts that can be anticipated and predicted, but there are also unanticipated impacts because much of the new technologies are untested. Nevertheless, it is possible to anticipate some of detrimental environmental consequences of the new technologies and the 5G network, because we know these technologies will increase exposure to harmful radiation, increase mining of rare minerals, increase waste, and increase energy usage. The main 5G environmental concerns have to do with two of the five new components: the millimeter waves and the small cells. The whole aim of the new 5G network is to allow for more devices to be used by the consumer at faster rates than ever before, because of this goal there will certainly be an increase in energy usage globally. Energy usage is one of the main contributors to climate change today and an increase in energy usage would cause climate change to increase drastically as well. 5G will operate on a higher frequency portion of the spectrum to open new space for more devices. The smaller size of the millimeter waves compared to radio frequency waves allows for more data to be shared more quickly and creates a wide bandwidth that can support much larger tasks.[15] While the idea of more space for devices to be used is great for consumers, this will lead to a spike in energy usage for two reasons – the technology itself is energy demanding and will increase demand for more electronic devices. The ability for more devices to be used on the same network creates more incentive for consumers to buy electronics and use them more often. This will have a harmful impact on the environment through increased energy use. Climate change has several underlying contributors; however, energy usage is gaining attention in its severity with regards to perpetuating climate change. Before 5G has even been released, about 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to the ICT industry.[16] While 2% may not seem like a very large portion, it translates to around 860 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.[17] Greenhouse gas emissions are the main contributors to natural disasters, such as flooding and drought, which are increasing severity and occurrence every year. Currently, roughly 85% of the energy used in the United States can be attributed to fossil fuel consumption.[18] The dwindling availability of fossil fuels and the environmental burden of releasing these fossil fuels into our atmosphere signal an immediate need to shift to other energy sources. Without a shift to other forms of energy production and the addition of technology allowed by the implementation of 5G, the strain on our environment will rise and the damage may never be repaired. With an increase in energy usage through technology and the implementation of 5G, it can be expected that the climate change issues faced today will only increase. The overall contribution of carbon dioxide emissions from the ICT industry has a huge impact on climate change and will continue to have even larger impacts without proper actions. In a European Union report, researchers estimated that in order to keep the increase in global temperature below 2° Celsius a decrease in carbon emissions of around 15-30% is necessary by 2020. Engineers claim that the small cells used to provide the 5G connection will be energy efficient and powered in a sustainable way; however the maintenance and production of these cells is more of an issue. Supporters of the 5G network advocate that the small cells will use solar or wind energy to stay sustainable and green.[20] These devices, labeled “fuel-cell energy servers” will work as clean energy-based generators for the small cells.[21] While implementing base stations that use sustainable energy to function would be a step in the right direction in environmental conservation, it is not the solution to the main issue caused by 5G, which is the impact that the massive amount of new devices in the hands of consumers will have on the amount of energy required to power these devices. The wasteful nature of manufacturing and maintenance of both individual devices and the devices used to deliver 5G connection could become a major contributor of climate change. The promise of 5G technology is to expand the number of devices functioning might be the most troubling aspect of the new technology. Cell phones, computers, and other everyday devices are manufactured in a way that puts stress on the environment. A report by the EPA estimated that in 2010, 25% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from electricity and heat production making it the largest single source of emissions.[22] The main gas emitted by this sector is carbon dioxide, due to the burning of natural gas, such as coal, to fuel electricity sources.[23] Carbon dioxide is one of the most common greenhouse gases seen in our atmosphere, it traps heat in earth’s atmosphere trying to escape into space, which causes the atmosphere to warm generating climate change. Increased consumption of devices is taking a toll on the environment. As consumers gain access to more technologies the cycle of consumption only expands. As new devices are developed, the older devices are thrown out even if they are still functional. Often, big companies will purposefully change their products in ways that make certain partner devices (such as chargers or earphones) unusable–creating demand for new products. Economic incentives mean that companies will continue these practices in spite of the environmental impacts. One of the main issues with the 5G network and the resulting increase in consumption of technological devices is that the production required for these devices is not sustainable. In the case of making new devices, whether they be new smart-phones or the small cells needed for 5G, the use of nonrenewable metals is required. It is extremely difficult to use metals for manufacturing sustainably, because metals are not a renewable resource. Metals used in the manufacturing of the smart devices frequently used today often cannot be recycled in the same way many household items can be recycled. Because these technologies cannot be recycled, they create tons of waste when they are created and tons of waste when they are thrown away. There are around six billion mobile devices in use today, with this number expected to increase drastically as the global population increases and new devices enter the market. One estimate of the life-time carbon emissions of a single device–not including related accessories and network connection–is that a device produces a total of 45kg of carbon dioxide at a medium level of usage over three years. This amount of emission is comparable to that of driving the average European car for 300km. But, the most environmentally taxing stage of a mobile device life cycle is during the production stage, where around 68% of total carbon emissions is produced, equating to 30kg of carbon dioxide. To put this into perspective, an iPhone X weighs approximately 0.174kg, so in order to produce the actual device, 172 iPhone X’s worth of carbon dioxide is also created. These emissions vary from person to person and between different devices, but it’s possible to estimate the impact one device has on the environment. 5G grants the capacity for more devices to be used, significantly increase the existing carbon footprint of smart devices today. Energy usage for the ever-growing number of devices on the market and in homes is another environmental threat that would be greatly increased by the new capabilities brought by the 5G network. Often, energy forecasts overlook the amount of energy that will be consumed by new technologies, which leads to a skewed understanding of the actual amount of energy expected to be used.[30] One example of this is with IoT devices.[31] IoT is one of the main aspects of 5G people in the technology field are most excited about. 5G will allow for a larger expansion of IoT into the everyday household.[32] While some IoT devices promise lower energy usage abilities, the 50 billion new IoT devices expected to be produced and used by consumers will surpass the energy used by today’s electronics.

The small cells required for the 5G network to properly function causes another issue of waste with the new network. Because of the weak nature of the millimeter waves used in the 5G technology, small cells will need to be placed around 250 meters apart to insure continuous connection. The main issue with these small cells is that the manufacturing and maintenance of these cells will create a lot of waste. The manufacturing of technology takes a large toll on the environment, due to the consumption of non-renewable resources to produce devices, and technology ending up in landfills. Implementing these small cells into large cities where they must be placed at such a high density will have a drastic impact on technology waste. Technology is constantly changing and improving, which is one of the huge reasons it has such high economic value. But, when a technological advancement in small cells happens, the current small cells would have to be replaced. The short lifespan of devices created today makes waste predictable and inevitable. In New York City, where there would have to be at least 3,135,200 small cells, the waste created in just one city when a new advancement in small cells is implemented would have overwhelming consequences on the environment. 5G is just one of many examples of how important it is to look at the consequences of new advancements before their implementation. While it is exciting to see new technology that promises to improve everyday life, the consequences of additional waste and energy usage must be considered to preserve a sustainable environment in the future. There is some evidence that the new devices and technologies associated with 5G will be harmful to delicate ecosystems. The main component of the 5G network that will affect the earth’s ecosystems is the millimeter waves. The millimeter waves that are being used in developing the 5G network have never been used at such scale before. This makes it especially difficult to know how they will impact the environment and certain ecosystems. However, studies have found that there are some harms caused by these new technologies. The millimeter waves, specifically, have been linked to many disturbances in the ecosystems of birds. In a study by the Centre for Environment and Vocational Studies of Punjab University, researchers observed that after exposure to radiation from a cell tower for just 5-30 minutes, the eggs of sparrows were disfigured.[34] The disfiguration of birds exposed for such a short amount of time to these frequencies is significant considering that the new 5G network will have a much higher density of base stations (small cells) throughout areas needing connection. The potential dangers of having so many small cells all over areas where birds live could cause whole populations of birds to have mutations that threaten their population’s survival. Additionally, a study done in Spain showed breeding, nesting, and roosting was negatively affected by microwave radiation emitted by a cell tower. Again, the issue of the increase in the amount of connection conductors in the form of small cells to provide connection with the 5G network is seen to be harmful to species that live around humans. Additionally, Warnke found that cellular devices had a detrimental impact on bees.[36] In this study, beehives exposed for just ten minutes to 900MHz waves fell victim to colony collapse disorder.Colony collapse disorder is when many of the bees living in the hive abandon the hive leaving the queen, the eggs, and a few worker bees. The worker bees exposed to this radiation also had worsened navigational skills, causing them to stop returning to their original hive after about ten days. Bees are an incredibly important part of the earth’s ecosystem. Around one-third of the food produced today is dependent on bees for pollination, making bees are a vital part of the agricultural system. Bees not only provide pollination for the plant-based food we eat, but they are also important to maintaining the food livestock eats. Without bees, a vast majority of the food eaten today would be lost or at the very least highly limited. Climate change has already caused a large decline in the world’s bee population. The impact that the cell towers have on birds and bees is important to understand, because all ecosystems of the earth are interconnected. If one component of an ecosystem is disrupted the whole system will be affected. The disturbances of birds with the cell towers of today would only increase, because with 5G a larger number of small cell radio-tower-like devices would be necessary to ensure high quality connection for users. Having a larger number of high concentrations of these millimeter waves in the form of small cells would cause a wider exposure to bees and birds, and possibly other species that are equally important to our environment.As innovation continues, it is important that big mobile companies around the world consider the impact 5G will have on the environment before pushing to have it widely implemented. The companies pushing for the expansion of 5G may stand to make short term economic gains. While the new network will undoubtedly benefit consumers greatly, looking at 5G’s long-term environmental impacts is also very important so that the risks are clearly understood and articulated. The technology needed to power the new 5G network will inevitably change how mobile devices are used as well as their capabilities. This technological advancement will also change the way technology and the environment interact. The change from using radio waves to using millimeter waves and the new use of small cells in 5G will allow more devices to be used and manufactured, more energy to be used, and have detrimental consequences for important ecosystems. While it is unrealistic to call for 5G to not become the new network norm, companies, governments, and consumers should be proactive and understand the impact that this new technology will have on the environment. 5G developers should carry out Environmental Impact Assessments that fully estimate the impact that the new technology will have on the environment before rushing to widely implement it. Environmental Impact Assessments are intended to assess the impact new technologies have on the environment, while also maximizing potential benefits to the environment. This process mitigates, prevents, and identifies environmental harm, which is imperative to ensuring that the environment is sustainable and sound in the future. Additionally, the method of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of devices would also be extremely beneficial for understanding the impact that 5G will inevitably have on the environment. An LCA can be used to assess the impact that devices have on carbon emissions throughout their life span, from the manufacturing of the device to the energy required to power the device and ultimately the waste created when the device is discarded into a landfill or other disposal system. By having full awareness of the impact new technology will have on the environment ways to combat the negative impacts can be developed and implemented effectively.

jsis.washington.edu/news/what-will-5g-mean-for-the-enviro...

View of various antique farm implements exhibited inside this historic c.1780 barn. Old Stone Fort Museum, Schoharie, New York.

Just over from the barn (background) and wagon wheel was this fertilizer spreader of some vintage. It seems they were everywhere around the valley. The fertilizer spreaders have been converted to sheet metal long since but I thought that I would give you a shot at the complexity of this very old horse-drawn one. It is among the implements collected along the fence south of the old original Coffin sandstone house. I managed to capture a crisp shot with the monopod. I usually make another snap at the slow speeds like in the window, if I am not confident. I set my record for slow speed shots on this day. I shot extras for safety. Anyway I suppose there are some who are interested.

In the real world, manure hand a real different concept. The root of the word in man in Latin meant the hand or more accurately, manure meant to work with the hand. Perhaps you have seen that root word elsewhere: manna from heaven; manufacturing (something politicians don't think we need anymore); manuals; manuscript. manure spreaders. The lugged wheels drive the big gear which drives the chain, spins the rotary fingers, the top rake to bust clods and slide ridges across the bed to feed backward. The rotary fingers pitch the fertilizer against the rotating blades the fling it ofer an even surface. I expect that a dairy feeding operation had plenty of fertilizer to spread to enrich their pastures. Imagine working your lands with your hands. Chemical fertilizers can damage lands in the long run. Can you imagine rating farmers on what they are putting into their lands instead of removing from it. Sort of like cedars in Lebanon and trees on mud slide slopes in Afganistan when replanting could have happened over centuries. If you want better ecosystems, grow, not burn.

Coffin joined Chivington and participate in the Sand Creek Massacre, an event that some silt heads defend to this day. He was determined to eliminate the Indian threat if not the tribes themselves. I wonder how he would stand on the illegal immigration and if he would put up bronze bilingual plaques on his old barn. Eddie here is praising Chivington, he created his own tribute, in a his own fashion!

The farm/ranch/museum is really the eastern terminus of the St.Vrain Greenway Trail, on state highway #119 at Sandstone Park. Unfortunately, the floods scrubbed the south side of the pedestrian bridge over the river. and the path at Sunset Street so the trail is no longer continuous from the Vance Brand Airport, past Golden Ponds to the east end of town. For a while anyway. It will eventually be repaired but Longmont and Boulder County are self-insured so it will happen when it happens. On the up side, Wall Street doesn't make a dime on this setback. I created a Photo Set for the Coffin Farm/Ranch Agricultural Park.

The picture may suggest differently but panic buying, and hoarding has stopped in Belgium. The queues outside supermarkets are a result of the cap on the maximum number of customers that may be allowed inside a store at the same time in order to ensure that the social-distancing measures recommended by experts as central to fighting the spread of the pandemic are followed. Meanwhile, experts are telling that the measures that have been implemented are starting to pay off and that the force of the epidemic is decreasing. Nevertheless, yesterday the government reported that 1,063 new people have tested positive for Covid-19. The total number of cases in Belgium is now 11,899. The total number of people admitted to hospital is 4,524, an increase of 536 patients in one day. Of those patients, 927 are in the intensive care unit. Also, 82 new deaths have been reported, bringing the total number of deaths in Belgium to 513. Let’s hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Stay Safe, Stay Healthy – Colruyt Ledeberg, Ghent, Belgium

SADDLEWORTH PLOUGH AND CULTIVATOR FACTORY

Mr H J Wishart, proprietor of the Saddleworth Plough and Implement Factory, has been most successful as manufacturer of agricultural implements.

He makes ploughs and cultivators a speciality, and has been the recipient of many prizes for his implements at various shows in the State.

His stump-jump ploughs, which are all spring steel, may be had in from 2 to 10-furrows, and are light and durable. These ploughs are in great favour, and last season many farmers were disappointed through being rather late with their orders.

His cultivators are also made of spring steel. At the field trial at Bute on August 8 last year Mr Wishart secured first prize for his cultivator, competing against the leading makers of the state.

Farmers requiring these implements should place orders at once, as otherwise there may be disappointment.

Mr Wishart also manufactures buggies, waggons, drays, trollies &c, and every branch of the blacksmith's and wheelwright's trades are attended to.

The best workmanship is guaranteed to be put into every job entrusted to Mr Wishart.

Ref: Kapunda Herald (SA) Friday 5 July 1907.

Implementing a New Employee Time Management System…..Bye Bye Leave Request Forms

Brief History of Mt Gambier – the second city of SA after Adelaide (region population nearly 35,000, urban 28,000).

Lieutenant James Grant aboard the Lady Nelson sighted and named Mt Gambier in 1800 after a Lord of the Admiralty. The first white man to traverse the area was Stephen Henty of Portland in 1839 when he sighted the Blue Lake. He returned with cattle and stockmen in 1841. He later claimed that had he known the lake and volcano he had discovered in 1839 was in SA he would have immediately applied for an 1839 Special Survey. But Henty thought he was squatting on land in NSW and he was not an official SA settler so the government ordered him off the land in 1844. Thus the first official white settler of the South East and the Mt Gambier district became Evelyn Sturt, brother to Captain Charles Sturt, who took up an occupational license in March 1844 and a property he named Compton just north of the present city. In April 1844 Governor Grey and a party of assistants including the Assistant Surveyor General Thomas Burr and artist George French Angas explored the South East naming Robe and doing the first surveys. Evelyn Sturt became the first to have an occupational license to squat and the first purchase freehold land near Mt Gambier which he did in 1847- a section of 77 acres when 80 acres was the norm. He left the district in 1854 selling his freehold land to Hastings Cunningham who in 1855 subdivided some of this land thus creating the town of Gambierton. The town lands were adjacent to the site of the first police station selected near what is now Cave Gardens by the government in 1845. A small bush inn also operated at this spot. The first streets were named after early locals such as Evelyn Sturt, Compton, Ferrers and Crouch (built the first general store before the town was created) etc. The town grew quickly because of the mild climate, fertile soils, plentiful water and the influx of settlers from across the border in what was to become the colony of Victoria. Cunningham himself was a great benefactor and donated land for the first school in 1856. In 1861 the town name was changed by act of parliament to Mt Gambier. The Hundred of Mt Gambier (along with three other hundreds) was declared in 1858 and began the closer settlement of the South East.

Unlike other areas of SA the South East was seen as paradise for pastoralists and the optimistic pastoralists flocked to the area with their flocks in 1845. The large runs locked up the land and prevented farmers from settling in the region except for the fertile lands around Mount Gambier. Here small scale farmers had small properties and grew potatoes, hops, and later had dairy cows as well as growing wheat and oats. Land acts in the early 1870s designed to break up the big runs only partially succeeded in the South East where most station owners bought up their lands freehold. It was after 1905 before the big pastoral estates were really broken up for farmers and closer settlement, except for near Mt Gambier. Apart from Evelyn Sturt the other early white settlers of the South East in 1845 were Alexander Cameron at Penola, John Robertson at Struan, William Macintosh and George Ormerod at Naracoorte, the Austin brothers at Yallum Park (later John Riddoch), the Arthur brothers (nephews of Governor Arthur of Van Diemen’s Land) at Mt Schanck( now Mt Schank) and the Leake brothers at Glencoe. In fact in 1845 nineteen leasehold runs were taken up in the South East with a further thirty runs in 1846 and most had several 80 acres sections of freehold land near the main homestead. Most had got to the South East from Casterton and Portland in Victoria as the swamps near the coast were too difficult to traverse except for the country near Robe. Many of the estates were huge. Evelyn Sturt on the Compton/Mt Gambier run had 85 square miles as well as his freehold land; Robertson had 135 square miles at Struan; George Glen (and William Vansittart) of Mayurra had 110 square miles; the SA Company had 159 square miles on the Benara run; the Leake brothers had 194 square miles on Glencoe; Hunter had 56 square miles on Kalangadoo; Neil Black of Noorat Victoria had 45 square miles on Kongorong run and 101 square miles at Port MacDonnell and the Arthur brothers had a huge run at Mt Schanck. By 1851 almost 5,000 square miles of the South East was occupied by Occupational License and most licenses were converted to 14 year leases in that year. A third of all leasehold land in SA was taken up in the South East because of its higher rainfall and suitability for pastoralism and a third of all sheep in the colony were in the South East. When Hundreds were declared in the South East in the late 1850s and early 1860s pastoralists bought up the land. In one case John Riddoch of Yallum Park owned the entire Hundred of Monbulla. Another pastoralist W. Clarke who had purchased Mt Schancke station from the Arthur brothers in 1861 owned SA land valued at £1.25 million when he died in 1874 and he had 120,000 acres freehold in Victoria, 75,000 acres freehold in SA( Mt Schank) and 50,000 acres freehold in each of NSW and Tasmania! Mt Schanck was changed in Schank in 1917 when German place names in SA were changed as Schank without the second “c” is an old English name!

In the 1850s Mt Gambier was a shanty village as the South East was a region of large pastoral estates and little agricultural farming and very low population numbers. It was far from Adelaide and remote and it was only after the Princeland episode in 1862 with the threat of possible secession to a new state that the Adelaide government began to invest in the South East and really encourage settlement there. The Border Watch newspaper was established in 1861, the Mt Gambier Hotel opened in 1862 and the Mt Gambier Council was formed in 1863.By the early 1860s Mt Gambier had almost 1,000 residents making it one of the largest towns in SA after the copper mining centres of Burra, Kadina and Moonta. By the 1881 SA census Mt Gambier had 2,500 residents making it the biggest town outside of Adelaide. In 1865 four iconic historic buildings were erected-the Courthouse, the Gaol, Christ Church Anglican and the Post Office and Telegraph Station. The flourmill which later became the Oat Mill opened in 1867 as wheat farmers had now taken up lands around the Mount. Mt Gambier was growing into a fine prosperous looking town with churches, stores, banks, hotels and fine residences. In the 1870s the rural population increased dramatically with tenant potato farmers on Browne’s Moorak estate and intensive hop growing in several localities such as Yahl and OB Flat and Glenburnie etc. Also in 1876 the first commercial forestry was started at the behest of George Goyder. A tree nursery was established on the edge of Leg of Mutton Lake in 1876 on a site selected by George Goyder himself. A stone cottage for the first nurseryman Charles Beale was constructed and it survived until demolished in 1969 but the nursery closed in 1929. The nursery propagated eucalypts, Oak, Elm, Ash, Sycamore, and North American pines. Pinus radiata was first grown at Leg of Mutton Lake and was being dispersed to other areas by 1878. Pinus canariensis was also grown in the 1880s. Pinus radiata is now the most commonly grown commercial forest tree in SA and Australia. Also in the 1870s the first hospital was erected and Dr Wehl, the town’s doctor for many years was in residence.

In the mid 1880s the first rail line was laid as the railway lines pushed out from Mt Gambier to Naracoorte. The service to Naracoorte began in 1887 and connected on with the line to Bordertown and Adelaide. By 1897 a railway connected Mt Gambier to Millicent and the port at Beachport. The railway line across the border to Heywood and Melbourne was not completed until 1917 as the SA government resisted a line that would take goods and passengers from Mt Gambier to Port Melbourne rather than to Port Adelaide. Mt Gambier railway station used to be a hive of activity with daily trains to Adelaide and an overnight sleeper services several times a week. Passenger trains to Mt Gambier from Adelaide stopped in 1990 after Australian National took over the SA railway network. Freight services stopped in 1995 and the railway line and station was formally closed. The railyards and other buildings were cleared in 2013.

The Buandik Aboriginal People.

The Buandik people are commemorated in a city street but by little else. Yet they were resilient and determined fighters opposed to the white settlement of the South East. Their occupation of the Mt Gambier district stretches back to around 20,000+ years but their dated occupation from archaeological sites goes back to about 11,000 years with their myths and legends including stories about volcanic activity at Mt Gambier. The last volcanic explosions were about 4,000 years ago. Both Mt Schank and Mt Gambier were important places to the Buandik for ceremonies, hunting, access to water and stone implement making. A government report in 1867 noted that the Buandik people in government care were few in number mainly sickly and elderly. The younger people had presumably moved out into the white community. But back in the 1840s the Buandik were a force to be reckoned with. There are no common stories of Aboriginal massacres but white pastoralists certainly retaliated when sheep were stolen. On Mt Schank station the Buandik were so troublesome that shepherds would not venture out to care for sheep alone and the Arthur brothers gave this trouble as their reason for them selling the run in 1845. In 1845 the government established a police station at Mt Gambier, which the Protector of Aboriginals visited, to ensure that pastoralists did not massacre the Buandik.

William Vansittart and Vansittart Park.

Vansittart Park has been a focal point of Mt Gambier since 1884 for activities such as family picnics, political rallies and speeches, bike racing, band rotunda concerts, bowling greens, sport oval, grandstand (1927) and Anzac memorial services. But who was William Vansittart? He was an Anglican reverend from England (Vansittart is a noble and political Anglo-Irish family in the UK) who arrived in SA in 1847 as a young bachelor. He was never licensed as a minister in SA but he developed his passions for making money and horse racing here. He mixed with the elite of Adelaide like Sir Samuel Davenport, the Governor and was a friend of Hurtle Fisher and he was Master of the Hounds. In 1850 he purchased 35 acres at Beaumont where he built Tower House and 80 acres at Mt Gambier. He imported a thoroughbred horse from Hobart called Lucifer. Ironic that a minister of religion would have a horse called Lucifer! His horses raced in Adelaide, Salisbury, Gawler, Brighton and Clare as well as in Mt Gambier and Penola. In 1851 he also took over the 110 square mile 14 year lease of Mayurra run with George Glen of Millicent. In 1852 he returned to England for a short time and on his return he purchased more freehold land bringing his estate to around 800 acres. Not long after in 1854 his horse shied, he was thrown against a tree and died of head injuries but he died intestate with an estate worth over £10,000. Glen bought out his share of Mayurra; the Beaumont house and property was sold in 1867 as were his race horses and his brother Captain Spencer Vansittart eventually inherited the Mt Gambier property. In accordance with William’s wishes 115 acres were set aside to provide income for a scholarship for boarders at St Peters Boys College which happened from 1859. Later in 1883 Spencer Vansittart offered 20 acres to the Mt Gambier Council for a memorial park at the “nominal” sum of £400 which hardly seems “nominal”. The Council raised a loan and purchased the land and the park is still enjoyed by the city’s residents and visitors. Captain Spencer’s widow sold the last package of 300 acres of land in 1912 thus ending the Vansittart links with Mt Gambier. The Vansittart scholarship is still available for boarders from the South East and is operated by a group of College trustees.

Some Historic Buildings in Mt Gambier and a town walk.

Your town walk is basically straight ahead along Penola Road towards the Mount itself which becomes Bay Road( the bay is at Port MacDonnell) once you cross Commercial Street which is the Main Street. There are just a few diversions to the left as you face the Mount. The coach will collect you at the Mount end of the walk near the Old Courthouse.

If you a good walker check out the fine houses in Jardine Street at numbers 1, 7, 9, 11, 12, 17 and 22. They range from cottages to Gothic and turreted mansions including the home of Jens the hotelier. This detour will add another 10 minutes to the walk if you elect to do it.

1.Catholic Covent. Sisters of Mercy setup a convent school in 1880. This wonderful convent was not built until 1908 in local dolomite stone & limestone quoins. Note the fine stone gables with small niches for statuary, the well proportioned arched colonnades and upstairs oriel windows – the projecting bay windows with stone supports. This is one of the finest buildings in Mt Gambier. The convent closed in 1986. Now Auspine.

2.Wesleyan Methodist Church Hall/Sunday School. Across the street is pink dolomite neo-classical style Wesleyan Methodist Sunday School Hall. Hundreds of children attended Sunday School in those days. It opened in 1904. It is now commercial offices. (If you want to walk up Wyatt Street beside the Sunday School and turn right at second street which is at Gray you will see the old two storey Methodist Manse at 101 Gray St. It was built in 1868 and sold 1941. As you turn into Gray Street the Salvation Army Hall is on your left. Allow 10 minutes for this detour before returning to Penola Road).

3.Methodist Church now Liberty Church. A Gothic large church built in 1862 by the Wesleyans. Opened by minister from Portland. Additions made 1877 with new entrance. The old lecture hall and Sunday School was beneath the church. Note the buttress on corners and sides. Became Uniting Church 1977 and closed 1994 when services moved to St Andrews Presbyterian Church. Behind the church (walk through the car park) in Colhurst Place is LLandovery two storey mansion now a B&B. Built 1878 for a flour and oat miller who had his mill in Percy Street.

4.St Paul’s Catholic Church. This impressive Gothic church with huge tower with crenulations was opened in 1884 and will be open today. There are 1966 extensions to the rear of it. The Presbytery is behind the church facing Alexander St. it was built in 1901 when the church was free of building debt. The first thatched bush church was built in another location in 1855. From 1857 the priest was Father Julian Tenison Woods, explorer, academic, horseman etc. A second church opened in 1861 in Sturt St and is now demolished. It closed in 1885 as this church opened. The bells came from Dublin. The church fence and gates built 1936.

5.The Mount Gambier Club. Across the street is the Club. It was built in 1904 for a local distiller as chambers for lease. The wealthy pastoralists of the South East formed an exclusive men only club in 1913 and it has used the upper floor of Engelbrecht’s chambers ever since. They purchased the whole building in 1920. The Club is a beautifully proportioned classical style building with pediments, balustrades, window entablature, and perfect symmetry. Look down the sides and you can see it is made of Mt Gambier limestone blocks.

6.Mt Gambier Caledonian Hall. Next door is the Scots Club. Its prominence signifies the Scottish links of many Gambier residents. The hall was opened in 1914 and opened by the former Prime Minister Sir George Reid, another Scot. It has classical features but is rather ugly and neglected these days. It is now a night club.

7.The Trustees Building. Next to the Caledonian is the Trustee Building erected in 1958. Its blue and bone tiled façade is typical of 1950s architecture yet the rectangular appearance has a slight classical look about it. It is on the SA Heritage Register. Accountants now occupy it.

8.Turn left into Percy Street and go along here beyond KFC for one town block to the next corner for the Oatmills (now a coffee shop and cinemas). Milling and brewing were two of Mt Gambier’s prime 19th century industries. The 4 storey complex here was started in 1867 for Welsh Thomas Williams who eventually had five flour mills. His mill was called Commercial Flourmills. A new owner converted the mill from wheat milling to oat milling. A new oatmill was built in 1901 and operated until 1975 producing Scottish porridge oats. The mill has now been restored with café, shops and cinemas. Return to Penola Rd.

9. Mt Gambier Hotel. No hotel could have a more remarkable origin than the Mt Gambier. An African American John Byng built a weatherboard hotel near here in 1847. The third licensee Alexander Mitchell, another Scot, took it over and moved the hotel to this corner site in 1862 as an impressive two storey hotel which was unusual at that time. The western wing was added in 1883 and balconies affixed in 1902.

10.Cross towards the Mount with the traffic lights then turn left into Commercial Street East.

11.Mt Gambier Town Hall. Marked as the Riddoch Gallery this fine Venetian Gothic style building is impressive with its coloured stone work contrasting well with cement rendered horizontal lines and vertical panels around windows and doors. The upper windows are mullioned with stone divisions between the glass. It was built in 1882 with the clock tower added in 1883 after a donation. The first Council meeting was in 1863 with Dr Wehl as chairman held in a hotel. Later the Council hired a room at the Foresters Hall and then they purchased this site in 1868 with a weatherboard room. This was used until 1882.

12.Mt Gambier old Institute. The Literary Institute was formed in 1862 and a foundation stone laid for a reading room/hall in 1868 by John Riddoch. The single storey institute opened in 1869. The upper floor was added in 1887, so that it would match the new Town Hall. It is built in a similar style- Venetian Romanesque as the windows and rounded and not arched as with a gothic structure.

13.Captain Gardiner Memorial Fountain 1884. The fountain was presented by Captain Robert Gardiner the grandfather of Sir Robert Helpman (his name was originally Helpmann). The fountain was made in Melbourne .Gardiner was also a benefactor of St Andrew’s Presbyterian -he donated the pipe organ in 1885.

14.Jens Hotel. After demolishing an earlier hotel (the 1847 hotel of John Byng) Johannes Jens had the first section of his Jens Hotel built on this corner in 1884. An almost identical eastern wing was erected in 1904 and the Spanish Art Deco section in 1927. Turn right here and go behind the Town hall to the Cave Gardens.

15.Cave Gardens. This spot was an early water supply. A garden was created in 1893 and then improved and reconstructed in 1925. This sink hole has recently been upgraded again and it is lit at night.

16.Post Office. This important communications centre was erected in 1865 as a telegraph office/post office. This is till one of the finest buildings in Mt Gambier and a rare example of the Georgian style for the city. . The single storey side wings were added in 1906 in a sympathetic style. It is still the main city Post Office.

17.Norris Agency Building. This superb Italianate building was completed in 1900 as chambers for businessmen. Owner was Alexander Norris who died in 1917. The façade is pink dolomite with cement quoins and unusual lined decoration work above the windows and door each contained within a triangular classical pediment.

18.Farmers Union Building. Another classical style building built when this style was out of fashion in 1914.Erected for Farmers Union as a large two storey building. It has none of the grace of the Norris building next door. FU was formed in 1888 in Jamestown by Thomas Mitchell, a Scot and others to provide cheap rates for grains, seeds and superphosphate but in the early 1900s they branched into products for dairy farmers and the marketing of milk products. The Mt Gambier district had plenty of dairy farmers. It is now owned by a Japanese company Kirin but it still markets its chocolate milk drinks as Farmers Union. Upper floor has double pilasters (flattened pillars) with top volutes but little other decoration.

19.Savings Bank Building on the corner. The former Savings Bank in Gothic style is unusual for commercial premises in Mt Gambier. It is constructed of weathered local limestone and was built in 1906. Note the different cut stone for the foundations, simulated turrets on the corners and by the door to break the façade appearance and the stone line above the lower window which then divides the façade into equal thirds.

20.Macs Hotel. This hotel was built in 1864 and is largely unchanged except that the upper floor was added in 1881. The first licensee was a Scot named John MacDonald. The double veranda supports are very elegant.

21.Roller flourmill now a painted hardware store. Built 1885 as a steam flourmill in pink dolomite. Note the small 12 paned windows set in much larger indented niches in the walls on the northern wall. (Sturt St.)

22.Christ Church Anglican Church and hall. Dr Browne of Moorak donated half the money for the construction of Christ Church in pink dolomite and with an unusual gabled tower. Church and tower completed in 1866. Adjacent is the Jubilee Hall built in 1915, destroyed by fire in 1951, and rebuilt exactly the same in weathered local limestone blocks with the original foundation stone still in place. It has the single Gothic window in the street facing gable and a crenulated square tower. Adjoining it is the 1869 Sunday School with the narrow double pointed Gothic windows. It was extended in 1892. The lychgate is more recent as a memorial to a regular church goer, Margaret French who died in 1927.

23.The old railway station just visible along the rail lines to your right. The first rail line was to Beachport in 1879 and the second to Naracoorte (and so to Adelaide) in 1887. Portland and Melbourne line opened 1917. A spur line to Glencoe was completed in 1904. First station was erected in 1879. It was demolished for the erection of the current station in 1918 which is similar in design to those in Tailem Bend, Bordertown, Moonta etc. Bluebird rail cars started on the Mt Gambier run in 1953 when the old 3’6” gauge line to Wolseley was converted to 5’3”. The last passenger service to Adelaide finished in 1990 and the station closed for freight in 1995. The railyards were cleared in 2013 and the future of the station is bleak. The rail lines to Beachport and Glencoe closed in 1956/57.

24.The Old Courthouse, 42 Bay Rd. It has a great low wall suitable for sitting on. This well designed Georgian style Courthouse opened in 1865 and the similarly styled side wings were added in 1877. The front veranda, which is not Georgian in style, was added in 1880. In 1975 the Courthouse was granted to the National Trust for a museum. The adjoining new Courthouse opened in 1975 at the same time. Note the “blind” windows to the façade but the same rounded Georgian shaped, 16 paned windows on the sides.

The Blue Lake, Mt Schank and Volcanoes.

The jewel in the crown of Mt Gambier is undoubtedly the volcanic cone, the crater lakes especially the Blue Lake and the surrounding Botanic Gardens and parklands. The Botanic Garden on the north side was approved in 1872 but nothing happened about plantings and care until 1882. The first pleasure road through the saddle between the Blue Lake and the Valley Lake was created in the 1861 as a more direct road to the then newly created international port named Port MacDonnell. That is why the road is called the Bay road. Surveyor General George Goyder explored the lake surrounds himself in 1876 when he selected the site for the government tree nursery. Later the government established the first sawmill on the edge of the crater reserve near Moorak homestead in the early 1920s. The Centenary Tower was initiated in 1900 to celebrate the centenary of Captain Grant sighting Mt Gambier. It took several years to complete and was opened by the Chief Justice of SA Sir Samuel Way in 1907 but it was completed in 1904. The whole complex is a maar geomorphological formation which originated during a volcanic era about 28,000 years ago but in a second phase of volcanic activity 4,000 to 6,000 years ago the cones and lakes of Mt Gambier were created along with the cones of Mt Schank and Mt Burr near Millicent. Mt Gambier was the most recent volcanic explosion in Australia. The crater lakes are: Blue Lake, Valley Lake, Leg of Mutton Lake and Browne’s Lake (dry). The Blue Lake is linked to the aquifers beneath the deep layers of limestone which underlay the entire South East. Blue Lake is about 72 metres deep and some of the water in it is estimated to be about 500 years old but it is mixed with rain runoff each year as well. The Lake provides the water supply for Mt Gambier. Deep in the lake are examples of the oldest living organisms on earth- stromatalites. The lake changes colour from grey to vivid blue each November and reverts in the following April. The change in colour is related to the position of the sun and reflected light from suspended particles in the lake which reflect blue green light rather than brown grey light. Secondly the suspended matter only occurs because the water near the surface rises in temperature in the spring and it is this which causes the particles to precipitate out of the water. The precipitated matter settles on the bottom of the lake ready for a new cycle the following spring. Like the Blue Lake various sink holes in the district have linkages to the underlying aquifer through the layers of limestone too and they include Cave Gardens, Umpherstone, Piccaninni Ponds, etc.

Moorak Station and Tenison Woods College.

Moorak station as originally known as Mount Gambier Station established by George Glen in the 1840s. The leasehold was later taken over by David Power who in turn sold it to Fisher and Rochford who in turn sold the estate as freehold to the Scottish Dr William Browne who had established Booborowie run with his brother in 1843 north of Burra. The Browne brothers dissolved their partnership around 1865 and John went to live at Buckland Park and William took up residence at Moorak. William had purchased Moorak Station in 1862 and built the grand Moorak homestead in impressive Georgian style onto a smaller house there. William died in 1894 and the Moorak Estate passed to his son Colonel Percival Browne who was to disappear on the ill-fated voyage of the new steamer the Waratah in 1909 which disappeared during a storm off Durban, South Africa. Also on that voyage was Mrs. Agnes Hay (nee Gosse) of Mt Breckan Victor Harbor and Linden Park Estate Adelaide and some 200 other poor souls. Around 1909 the Moorak Station was subdivided for closer settlement and in the 1920s the Marist Brothers purchased the homestead with a little land for their and monastery and opened the Marist Brothers Agricultural College for boys in 1931. That college in turn merged with the Mater Christi College in 1972 to become Tenison College. (Mater Christi College had been formed in 1952 by the merger of the St Josephs Convent School (1880) and St Peters Parish School but the primary section of St Peters broke away in 1969 from Mater Christi College and formed a separate St Peters Primary School. This primary school in turn merged with Tenison College in 2001 to form Tenison Woods College!) The College name commemorates the work of Father Julian Tenison Woods who arrived in Mt Gambier in 1857 to work in Penola and Mt Gambier. It was he who encouraged Mary MacKillop to take her vows and establish her Sisters of St Joseph.

Dr Browne’s manager of Moorak Estate in 1868 introduced hops as a viable crop in the South East and large quantities were grown for about 20 years. Other early experimental crops grown included tobacco, cotton and flax. Dr Browne and Moorak were also important in the potato industry. Dr Browne leased around 830 acres to 20 tenants for the express purpose of growing potatoes. He was keen to emulate the British aristocracy although he was a good Scot with being a manorial style landlord with tenant farmers. Potatoes were also grown from the early years at Yahl, OB Flat and Compton near Mt Gambier. The potatoes were carted down to Port MacDonnell and shipped to Adelaide for consumers. As one of the major wool producers of Australia William Browne contributed roughly half of the funds for the erection of Christ Church Anglican in Mt Gambier. The Moorak estate consisted of around 11,000 acres of the most fertile volcanic soil in SA with another 2,000 acres in a nearby property, German Creek near Carpenter’s Rocks. Dr Browne ran Silky Lincolns on Moorak for their wool as Merinos did not fare well on the damp South East pastures. About 2,000 acres was in wheat, about 2,500 acres was tenanted to other farmers and around 4,000 acres were in lucerne, clover, rye and other pasture grasses. William Browne returned to live in England in 1866 so his sons could attend Eton and military training colleges there. He made regular trips to SA about every second year to oversee his many pastoral properties here. When he died in 1894 he left 100,000 acres of freehold land in SA to his children who all resided here as well as leasehold land. He was an extremely wealthy man. Son Percival took control of Moorak. Before Percival’s death Moorak Estate was partly purchased by the SA government in 1904 for closer settlement when they acquired around 1,000 acres. After Percival’s death a further 6,300 acres was acquired for closer settlement and the remainder of the estate was sold to other farmers. The government paid between £10 and £31 per acre for the land. Percival Browne was highly respected in Mt Gambier and a reserve around the Blue Lake is named after him. The fourth of the crater lakes of Mt Gambier is also named Browne’s Lake after the family but it has been dry for decades. In 1900 Colonel Browne planted the ring of English Oaks around what was to become the oval of the Marist Brothers College.

Moorak.

There is a memorial by the station to William Browne as founder of the Coriadale Sheep Stud. The great Moorak woolshed was demolished in 1939. The Union church which opened in 1920 was used by the Methodists and the Anglicans. It is now a private residence. Moorak hall was opened in 1926. New classrooms were added to the Moorak School in 1928 and the first rooms opened in 1913. The cheese factory in Moorak opened in 1913 as a cooperative and was sold to Farmers Union in 1949. They closed the factory in 1979. Most of the cheese produced at Moorak went to the Melbourne market. The first cheese maker at Moorak was trained at Lauterbach’s cheese factory at Woodside. Moorak was one of a circle of settlements around Mt Gambier that had butter/cheese factories. These towns were: Kongorong; Glencoe East; Glencoe West; Suttontown; Glenburnie; Mil Lel; Yahl; OB Flat; Moorak; Mt Schank; and Eight Mile Creek.

Yahl.

In the 1860s this tiny settlement was a tobacco, hop and potato growing district and it persisted with potatoes up until recent times. Today Yahl is little more than a suburban village of Mt Gambier with a Primary school with approx 120 students. The old government school was erected in 1879. It had a Methodist church built in 1880 which operated as a church until 1977 and it had a large butter factory which had opened in 1888. The butter and cheese factory was taken over by the OB Flat cheese factory in 1939 and the two operated in conjunction with each other. The OB Flat cheese factory closed in 1950 and all production moved to Yahl. The factory finally closed in 1971. The township of Yahl also had a General Store and a Salvation Army Hall which was built in 1919.

Sink Holes: Umpherston Gardens and Cave Gardens.

James Umpherston purchased land near Mt Gambier in 1864 which included a large sink hole or collapsed cavern with a lake in the bottom. He was born in Scotland in 1812 and came to SA in the 1850s with his brother William. William purchased his first land at Yahl in 1859. James Umpherston was a civic minded chap being a local councilor, a parliamentarian in Adelaide for two years and President of the Mt Gambier Agricultural and Horticultural Society for 13 years. When he retired from civic life and farming in 1884 he decided to create a garden in his sinkhole. He beautified it and encouraged visitors and even provided a boat in the lake for boat rides. Access was gained by steps and a path carved into the sinkhole walls. However after he died in 1900 the garden was ignored, became overgrown and was largely forgotten in 1949 when the Woods and Forests Department obtained the land for a new sawmill at Mt Gambier. By then the lake had dried up as the water table had fallen over the decades. In 1976 staff, rather than the government, decided to restore the Umpherstone gardens. The cleared out the rubbish that had been dumped in the sinkhole, restored the path access, trimmed the ivy and replanted the hydrangeas and tree ferns. In 1994 the Woos and Forests Department handed over the land around the sinkhole to the City of Mt Gambier. It was added to the SA Heritage Register in 1995.

Historical background

The earliest known implementation of road space rationing took place in Rome, as carriages and carts pulled by horses created serious congestion problems in several Roman cities. In 45 B.C. Julius Caesar declared the center of Rome off-limits between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. to all vehicles except for carriages transporting priests, officials, visitors, and high ranking citizens.

Road space rationing (Spanish: Restricción vehicular; Portuguese: Rodízio veicular) is a travel demand management strategy aimed to reduce the negative externalities generated by peak urban travel demand in excess of available supply or road capacity, through artificially restricting demand (vehicle travel) by rationing the scarce common good road capacity, especially during the peak periods. This objective is achieved by restricting traffic access into an urban cordon area, city center (CBD), or district based upon the last digits of the license number on pre-established days and during certain periods, usually, the peak hours.

The practical implementation of this traffic restraint policy is common in Latin America, and in many cases, the road rationing has as a main goal the reduction of air pollution, such as the cases of México City, and Santiago, Chile. São Paulo, with a fleet of 6 million vehicles in 2007, is the largest metropolis in the world with such a travel restriction, implemented first in 1996 as measured to mitigate air pollution, and thereafter made permanent in 1997 to relieve traffic congestion. More recent implementations in Costa Rica and Honduras have had the objective of reducing oil consumption, due to the high impact this import has on the economy of small countries, and considering the steep increases in oil prices that began in 2003. Bogotá, Quito, and La Paz, Bolivia also have similar restriction schemes in place. After a temporary implementation of road space rationing to reduce air pollution in the city during the 2008 Summer Olympics, Beijing has implemented several rationing schemes to improve the city's air quality.

~~Wikipedia

Lighted Farm Implement Parade, Sunnyside, Washington. I am pleasantly surprised how sharp these night photos are considering these shots are hand held and mostly shot at 1/30 and slower shutter speed. IMG_1053

Shot with my D600 and 14-24 Nikor Wide Angle Lens at my friends farm. Post processed in Lightroom and HDR'd in Photomatix Pro. I have a few more that I will upload later, but this is by far my favorite shot.

In the late 1960s, around the time the Transport Act of 1968 was being implemented along with various PTAs and PTEs, there was a flurry of activity in Liverpool, backed by the City Council, to develop a transport strategy for the city and the soon to be formed Metropolitan County of Merseyside. One key component of this was the development of sections of underground railways in Liverpool city centre that was designed to utilise existing, mostly third rail electrified, railways that would allow for two main outcomes.

Firstly, better penetration of the central area than the existing lines could offer - most notably in the case of Exchange station that was arguably on the northern fringe of the centre by building the 'Link' line from Moorfields through Central and on to the Garston lines. This cleverly made use of some tunnel sections that the 'Loop' line would free up as we shall see.

Secondly to improve capacity on the existing 'Wirral lines' that, using the original Mersey railway tunnel, terminated in a reversing tunnel at Central station. This was to be achieved by a single line 'loop' via Moorfields, Lime St and back to Central, that allowed 'through running' as well as better connections and that was complemented by a new birrowing junction to segregate the running lines under Birkenhead at Hamilton Square.

Backed by the DoE and the PTE the British Railways Board undertook the works for both schemes and work started in c1972 and mostly completed by 1977. Sadly, two other components of the wider scheme, the Edge Hill spur and the Outer Loop railway, were cancelled leaving just the third rail operated Wirral and Northern lines of today - with the City line out on something of a limb in many senses.

The network created by these works has been expanded, with some extensions and new stations, although some of the wider ambitions seen in these three publications are still discussed to this day.

This is the 'glossy' "Merseyside's new railways" that is undated but that I suspect I picked up c1975. Nor only does it show the main components of the scheme but it also, interestingly, gives some indication of the look and feel of the new tunnelled underground stations and platforms, along with an appearance of potential new rolling stock that looks a bit like the BR "PEP prototype units. The propsoed architectural finishes are very 'of their time' but show possible use of BR's 'corporate identity' in new sub-surface stations.

This leaflet was issued by BR and Merseyside Transport.

Stewart Farm pole barn

Holga 120s.

A farm on the Missouri River bottoms near Huntsdale in Boone County Missouri Notley Hawkins Photography.

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©Notley Hawkins

Signature Ceremony of PLATO Spacecraft Implementation Contract.

L to R: Kurt Melching, Chief Financial Officer OHB System AG, Marco Fuchs, Chief Executive Officer OHB System AG, Jan Wörner, ESA Director General.

Credits: ESA - Philippe Sebirot

Implementation of the 16 control measures specified in the Time to Act publication is expected to have significant benefits for agriculture worldwide. Rapid reduction of methane and sot has the potential to avoid an annual loss of over 50 metric tonnes of crop yields per year by 2030.

For any form of publication, please include the link to this page:

www.grida.no/resources/7543

This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: GRID-Arendal

An abandoned farm implement near Overton in Cooper County Missouri by Notley Hawkins Photography. Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III camera with a EF16-35mm f/4L IS USM lens at f.4.0 with a .5 second exposure at ISO 800 along with three Quantum Qflash Trios with red, green and blue gels. Processed with Adobe Lightroom 6.4.

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Côte d’Ivoire, 2020: UNICEF staff and schoolchildren take part in Green School activities in Gonzagueville, a suburban of Abidjan. As part of the activities, children received environmental advice, planted and watered trees and seeds and learned how to wash their hands properly. Green School initiatives in the country have been implemented by UNICEF along with young champions, to ensure healthy environs for all. On this World Environment Day, UNICEF promotes the right, for every child, to a clean environment.

© UNICEF/UNI331776/Diarassouba

To learn more: UNICEF Overview of Environment and Climate Change

A rural farm under a cloudy moonlit sky near McBaine in Boone County Missouri by Notley Hawkins Photography. Taken on a cool August summer's evening with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III camera with a EF16-35mm f/2.8L USM lens. Colored gels were used with an exposure of 120 seconds.

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Abstract colorful implement