I had difficulty posting today. I kept getting 'timed out' messages.

 

I wish you all well in whatever way is most appropriate for you but cannot take on the extra work of writing it to you individually. Thankyou for your good wishes and to those who have made me their contact. Due to poor health, eye problems and low energy I regret I can't take on any new contacts but nearly always manage to reply to your comments. Please no more than 1 invite.

The cemetery at Skew Street was established in 1825 with the relocation of the Moreton Bay Penal Settlement to Brisbane. It operated until the North Brisbane Burial Ground opened in 1843. During that time 265 people died in Brisbane and most were buried in the cemetery. The cemetery land was converted to freehold and auctioned in 1875. The Helidon Spa Water Company operated a factory on the land and several cottages were built. The construction of Eagle Terrace and Skew Street in the late 1800s and construction of the Grey Street Bridge in the 1920s will have had some impact on the site.

 

In May 1825 Lieutenant Henry Miller moved the Moreton Bay Settlement from the Redcliffe Peninsula to its present site on the northern bank of the Brisbane River. This was an elevated location with water holes and cooling breezes. The southern bank was a cliff of rock, suitable for building material, and a fertile flood plain. The settlers faced hardship and privation and the paucity of resources combined with thick sub-tropical vegetation made settlement difficult. Between 1826 and 1829, the number of prisoners in the settlement rose from 200 to 1000 and the plight of the convicts whose labour was to establish the settlement was dire.

 

The site of Brisbane Town was an on-going cause of disquiet, with Commandant Logan proposing that the settlement be moved to Stradbroke Island. However, the difficulties of crossing the bay saw this plan abandoned. Logan continued to seek alternative sites, establishing a number of outstations including Eagle Farm and Oxley Creek. Despite the continued uncertainty about the future of Brisbane Town, building had continued under Commandant Logan, who is given credit for laying out the earliest permanent foundations. Logan was responsible for the building of Brisbane's only surviving convict-constructed buildings, the Commissariat Store and the Tower Mill.

 

Convict numbers fell 75 percent between 1831 and 1838 by which time the area under cultivation shrank from 200 hectares to only 29. On 10 February 1842 Governor Gipps declared Moreton Bay open for Free Settlement.

 

The cemetery was established early in the convict period and operated until the opening of the North Brisbane Burial Grounds at Milton in 1843. During the 18 years of its operation there were 265 recorded deaths in Brisbane, including 220 convicts. Most of these people were buried in the First Brisbane Burial Ground. Probably the most famous person buried in the cemetery was the surveyor G. W. Stapylton who it was believed was killed by Aborigines near Mt Lindsay in May 1840. Two Aborigines were later hanged for this murder at the Tower Mill.

 

Following the closure of the cemetery in 1843 the area remained as unalienated crown land and in 1848 the Moreton Bay Courier described the cemetery:

 

It is a disgraceful fact that, notwithstanding the repeated complaints in this journal of the exposed condition of the old burial ground, it is now as bad as ever. The temporary fencing which was placed around has almost entirely disappeared.

 

Four years later it was described:

 

Six years ago, nearly a hundred tablets, headstones, &c., stood in the old burial ground: now a bare dozen can be counted, and many of these are dilapidated or overturned. The fence is torn down, carried away or burnt..What hands have taken so many monumental stones away none can tell.

 

Between 1864 and 1875 Skew Street was constructed through the cemetery land to provide vehicle access between Roma Street and North Quay. It had not been constructed by October 1864 as the Surveyor General wrote to the Secretary of Lands on 21 October 1864 that:

 

The arrangement of the portion including the cemetery be deferred until some future time when the relatives and friends of those who have been interred in the cemetery may be less likely to object to the locality being appropriated as a public thoroughfare.

 

In October 1875 the cemetery land was divided into 7 town allotments varying in size from 12 perches to 27.5 perches and sold at public auction as Section 41. The sale of the land was specifically to raise funds for the provision of drainage facilities within Brisbane. The purchasers were F. Giles, J. Carmody, Dr J. Waugh and H. Morwitch. Section 41 was described as:

 

The triangular reserve (formerly a burial ground) between the North Quay, Eagle Cliff (or Terrace), and Skew Street (running from opposite the old entrance to the gaol to the North Quay)

 

Dr John Waugh arrived in Brisbane in the early 1860s and originally practiced in Stanley Street but later moved his practice to the brick cottage he constructed on this newly acquired land. He was president of the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland for many years.

 

In 1881 at least three burials were exhumed from the cemetery and removed with their monuments to the Toowong Cemetery. These were all the remains of children who had died at the convict settlement. They were William Roberts, 5 years 2 months old son of Charles Roberts of the Commissariat Department who died in 1831, Peter Macauley, 15 years and 8 months old son of Private Peter Macauley of the 17th Regiment of Foot who died in 1832, and Jane Pittard the 12 month old daughter of Colour Sergeant John Pittard of the 57th Regiment of Foot who died in 1833.

 

By the 1890s the Helidon Spa Water Company had established a factory on the allotments at the North Quay end of Section 41. Construction of the Grey Street Bridge in the 1920s resulted in resumption of properties and the realignment of roadways at the northern access to the bridge.

 

E. E. McCormick Place is named after E.E. McCormick in appreciation of his assistance in the acquisition of the area by the council for park purposes.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register & Brisbane City Council Library Services.

I asked for forces - and I encountered difficulties, but they strengthened me.

I asked for wisdom - and I was handed problems to resolve; yet through them I acquired wisdom.

I asked for courage - and obstacles were placed on my way... so that I could overcome them.

I asked for love - and was given worried human beings, anxious and downcast by problems; for me to assist them.

 

I did not receive anything from all the things I wanted!

I did however, receive all of which I was in need of.

 

Conclusion: Go through life without fear! Face all the obstacles with the certainty that you can and will overcome them.

(unknown author)

 

This, in short words, is the Story of my Life!

 

With heartfelt thanks to the 'provider' of these wonderful words André S and all those helping me to Go through life without fear.

 

More blue sky and more autumn sunshine go here

 

Uebersetzung DEUTSCH in der Kommentar-Box

Traduction FRANCAIS - voir commentaires

 

© All rights reserved

Kindly visit my Flickr DNA for more information on me and my work. Thanks!

 

If you have time, please visit my EXPLORE portfolio. |I| And/Or maybe you want to look up what 'DOPIAZA' considers as the MOST INTERESTING photos. |I| THESE are MY personal 50 FAVES… (and they change often as I delete one for every new one!) |I|

For opening all other folders, please open link(s) in a new tab each! :)

  

 

One of the more used symbols in our culture is the one of the black and dark tunnel, with a light at the end. The tunnel means the problems, the difficulties that surround to us. What shut in us and and what we cannot win against. The tunnel can be more or less long, and it can be more or less heavy to us to cross it. It is our punishment, the moment to make amend for our sins by means of the suffering. And there, at the end of the way, it is the light, like a distant light that enlarges little by little as we approached. It is the lantern, the guide, the hope that calls to us and it gives breath us. The heat as opposed to the cold.

 

All we needed a light at the end of the tunnel. Unless it, it would not have sense to live…

 

[Photo of a tunnel of the train station of Atocha (MADRID). Taken in October 2006. Adjustments of light and color made with Photoshop]

 

*****************

 

Uno de los símbolos más utilizados en nuestra cultura es la del túnel negro y oscuro, con una luz al final. El túnel significa los problemas, las dificultades que nos rodean. Lo que nos encierra y contra lo que no podemos vencer. El túnel puede ser más o menos largo, se nos puede hacer más o menos pesado atravesarlo. Es nuestro castigo, el momento de expiar nuestros pecados mediante el sufrimiento. Y allí, al final del camino, está la luz, como un lejano faro que se agranda poco a poco a medida que nos acercamos. Es la linterna, la guía, la esperanza que nos llama y nos da aliento. El calor frente al frío.

 

Todos necesitamos una luz al final del túnel. Si no, no tendría sentido vivir…

 

[Foto de un túnel de la estación de trenes de Atocha (MADRID). Tomada en octubre del 2006. Retoques de luz y color, con Photoshop]

 

The other day I uploaded a shot of a white pigeon that has been visiting for the last month or so and has now made home here as she or he has difficulty flying. After some suggestions (thank-you everyone) my wife decided on Snowy - we don't of course know whether Snowy is male or female. Snowy is a great old Aussie name, for people like me (mostly men I must admit) who have silvery white hair. Snowy is eating well, moving about on the ground ok and quite bossy to other pigeons or galahs but just can't get off the ground far. He or she is really quite trusting.

 

Snowy has found a little spot in our side garden that is soft with sugar cane mulch and sits there much of the day and at night. It's quite hard for us in that we don't want to frighten her and have her land in someone else's yard or even the road and get lost, injured or worse. At the moment she is looked after and has her own food and water as well as access to the Galah's food when it is out.

 

We seem to end up with a number of birds in trouble - in this case we are reluctant to take her to the bird vet as pigeons are not really normally pets as such and we want her to be looked after and rehabilitated, not put to sleep because that's the easy way out! So that's where we are right now until we seek more advice which hopefully will end positively for her. We are also very conscious that if she doesn't use her wings and muscles these will probably go downhill, making her situation even more difficult.

 

Both the photos I have posted of Snowy seem to show some irregularities in one wing. However, this may be my angle or her angle, as when standing up everything seems to be in normal place and alignment.

Young Adults In Transition To College & Work

We often think of young adults as ready to launch easily into college, career and dynamic adult social scenes. Yet this transition from a supportive and protective home or school environment to independent living is a bridge to adulthood that many young adults find fraught with great difficulty, confusion and profound loneliness. Older teens and young adults in their twenties are often not adapting well to work place environments and find they do not possess the necessary interpersonal skills to succeed in adult and work relationships. Additionally, economic pressures are more extreme than ever and they often have unrealistic hopes of independence and financial self-direction. They feel thrown into a world without a real understanding of how to survive or succeed in it. Much is written about this "quarter life crisis." Young adults need to find a more realistic view for their own lives. They need help as they face the hard realities that they haven't accomplished certain necessary adult tasks and milestones of young adult success. These tasks include finding a college or career, mastering public transportation, navigating agreements with financial sponsors and parents, establishing adult roles in the home, dorm or apartment, managing a grocery budget, cooking, healthy living, multi-tasking, delayed gratification, or allotting appropriate time to significant priorities. Unexpected difficulties can derail even the most successful young adult or college student. Parents and their young adult sons and daughters who were once in alignment when planning the launch to college or independent living are often faced with the pain of unmatched expectations, disorganized time-lines, and resentful conversations. Young adult lives and good relationships can quickly turn upside down. Young adults in transition are students between high school and college, post-college, or returning home from boarding schools, gap-years, or military service. They seek to set new goals and define new directions for their future. These normal, yet rapid young adult changes can be especially tough on parents. Parents often need guidance and coaching as they redefine their new roles as parents to adult children. Young adults need adult wisdom and strong guidance, but in their need to differentiate, they often respond negatively to parental support. Coaching can change that dynamic by producing skill building and management practices that can benefit both the student and their parents.

What Do Young Adult Coaches Do? Encourage you to express yourself and your personal goals Advocate for you with your parents Establish appropriate areas of independence Navigate personal financial arrangements with sponsors & parents Teach time management

Help you devise a workable daily schedule Listen and learn from your ideas and dreams- take you seriously! Assign homework and tasks that move you towards your goals

Make necessary connections to adult mentors and guides Help you accomplish/produce results more quickly than you imagined Assist with applications to college and internships

Questions Young Adults & Parents Frequently Ask: What Is Young Adult Coaching?

With your young adult coach you will identity the actions and thoughts and words that best support and move you towards your goals. Often young adults create goals and then are challenged by staying aligned with them. Our coaches will help you develop the action plan and steps towards living a life that keeps you true to yourself and more accountable in your relationships.You may be facing a more conventional transition, such as moving away to college or starting a new job, or the unique challenges of beginning college as a student who has experienced physical, emotional, or mental health problems. Learning disorders or family crises may add additional stresses and young adults desire coaching support to be ready and able to meet these demands. Coaching can empower you and help you launch yourself with confidence and skill. How Does Coaching Differ From Counseling?

Coaching is not the same as therapy. It is a more immediate and directive process. Coaching involves action, action that meets goals. Although our coaches are credentialed therapists, their additional training in coaching allows them to better support you in present and future focus, whereas therapy often focuses on current emotional issues, and at times the past. Coaching is both in-person and in-the-moment by phone, text, and email; supporting you no matter where you are located and when you need it. Customized Coaching Options: Individualized Coaching Packages support you in academic skill building, as well as vocational and personal goals. Life skill development includes competency in money management, time and organizational management, and refining of executive thinking skills for greater success. Parent and Family Coaching to support your positive and personalized launch into adult life and your parent's adaptation to your new role as an adult Unique learning opportunities when in transition, such as internship programs, resume/portfolio building options, 5th or gap year choices, and more Accountability systems: ways to optimize the support & communication between young adults and their parents Supervised living and residential arrangements High School Diploma Completion

Top level tutors-current college and university level instructors to help you improve skills and provide learning support Each young adult transition plan is completely customized to your young adult and family needs.

Capped column snowflake. Stacked a few images, and blended. Had to manually align and blend some layers for the auto-align (and blend) of PS has difficulty at times (too narrow of a DoF at this magnification, or too few image slices?). Magnification was a little greater than 10x. Old Nikon 300mm f/4.5 forward lens, Canon 55mm f/1.2 (from the '70s I believe, I've had it since the '80s) reverse mounted lens, and a 2x Kenko converter...

..I think I have never had so much difficulty to take photos as I did this time :(. I am starting to hate my camera! ( I know, it is not the camera, it is me.... ;) ). Three hours photographing and unfocused photos as a result... blaaaaah. This hobby really takes too much of my time, I am wondering is it worth it. :(

“Keeping Your Eye on the Ball.”

Took with Fujifilm X100F.

The Takayama Spring and Autumn Matsuri festivals are apparently one of the most beautiful in Japan, which means of course it is one of the most crowded, leading to difficulties in getting accommodation, etc etc. So we settled for visiting the Takayama Festival Floats Exhibition Hall (or the Takayama Matsuri Yatai Kaikan) instead.

 

The key element of the festival is the procession of floats (yatai) around the town. The procession is led by the mikoshi, which is a portable shrine. It is carried on the shoulders of the shrine bearers around the town.

 

More about the festival (you may need to translate the page)

www.takayama-yatai.jp/about/autumn-festival.html

 

More about the hall:

www.hida.jp/english/touristattractions/takayamacity/histo...

Difficulty 9/10. It is a fast flying bug never stops moving even when on the grass. The bug is a bit larger than a regular small wasp.

Alive bug in nature, super macro 5X, f11, MFocus. I don't shoot macro of dead or frozen bugs in studio.

It is difficulties that show what men are. For the future, in case of any difficulty, remember that God, like a gymnastic trainer, has pitted you against a rough antagonist. For what end? That you may be an Olympic conqueror; and this cannot be without toil.

 

#Epictetus

This MOC started as a project to use Lego part 9767, the Lego TC Logo controller's Apple II interface card. It's probably the rarest part I own, and certainly not one I'd ever seen used in a MOC before. (Well, actually, I've never even seen another one at all.)

 

I finally decided go for irony, and make the MOC about the impossibility of using the part in a MOC. The System-compatible minifigures have plugged the card into a faithful Lego replica of the original Apple II hardware it would have rested in, are testing it with a System-built voltmeter, and are bewildered that everything is not working together like it always does when building with Lego products.

 

This also afforded the opportunity to use another very-seldomly-used element, the minifigure speech bubbles from set 81087.

“There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'

No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.”

― Dalai Lama XIV

I have difficulty distinguishing some Thrashers from Thrushes. I 'think' this is a Brown Thrasher...but maybe a Wood Thrush. My apologies for the poor image quality, I took the shot through the chain link fence in my backyard at dusk with aperture full open.

KODAK Digital Still Camera

So www.flickr.com/photos/dallaslevi/ looked through my photostream and noticed I didn't have many architectural shots. Thus, he challenged me to take an architectural shot of my favorite building in Madrid! That was not so hard per se, but the difficulty was making it grand, epic, larger than life - as he put it.

 

What gave it away for me and what actually helped me (because I do not know how I could make it so very very grand) was shooting it -and in this case, processing it- the way I see it in my mind.

 

So here, as my first "pushed" shot, I present to you the Monastery of El Escorial, which is one of my favorite places to go to. It is a palace, monastery and basilica. This 33.327 m² mausoleum is where we have buried our kings for centuries, from where Felipe II ruled this land during the XVI Century. A time for austerity and sobriety, cruelty even. Black and white is how I see it in my mind. Big, hovering over me. More pics in the comment box.

Candid street shot, Wellington Somerset, UK.

--------------------------------------------

Difficulties learning to use new technologies: A significant majority of older adults say they need assistance when it comes to using new digital devices. Just 18% would feel comfortable learning to use a new technology device such as a smartphone or tablet on their own, while 77% indicate they would need someone to help walk them through the process. And among seniors who go online but do not currently use social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter, 56% would need assistance if they wanted to use these sites to connect with friends or family members.

 

Ok some of these statistics look grim, but don't forget we (50 - 70 year olds) started the digital revolution,

Bill Gates is 60 this year, Steve Jobs died in 2011 at the age of 56. I started programming computers back in 1973.

 

Remember all of this technology is just electronics, the devices are just tools; no different to a hammer of hair dryer. Once you have mastered the controls they are basically simple.

 

And remember:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Sir Arthur C. Clarke)

  

What a mess Flickr was the night before last! I had difficulty adding titles to my uploaded images, comments didn't save and, after I had added a description to each of the 20 photos, the descriptions all disappeared. When I opened Flickr next morning, there was still no sign of them. Then, suddenly, they re-appeared. I also discovered that all the hundreds of photos from this trip that I added to the map are no longer on the map!!! Someone on the Help Forum told someone else to refresh a page and the map will appear again - and it works. Now, I can't add photos to albums - it looks like they are added, but when I check the album, some of yesterda's photos had not appeared. Suddenly, now appeared. Also, my descriptions appeared in duplicate! Today, 13 May 2019, everything I try to do on Flickr takes a long time to do.

 

My photos taken at the National Butterfly Centre, Mission, South Texas, have now come to an end, so you can sigh a huge sigh of relief : ) Today I added 22 photos taken at another place that we called in at later in the afternoon, the Valley Nature Centre, in Weslaco. Unfortunately, we only had an hour there before closing time, but how glad we were that we found this place. The highlight there was watching 25 Yellow-crowned Night-Herons coming in to roost for the night in the trees, right where we were standing! What a great sight this was, and we were lucky enough to have a good, close view of these gorgeous birds, though in very poor light. We also saw some Purple Martins and their circular, hanging nesting "gourds".

 

On Day 6 of our birding holiday in South Texas, 24 March 2019, we left our hotel in Kingsville, South Texas, and started our drive to Mission, where we would be staying at La Quinta Inn & Suites for three nights. On the first stretch of our drive, we were lucky enough to see several bird species, including a Golden-fronted Woodpecker, Hooded Oriole, Red-tailed Hawk, Crested Caracara, Harris's Hawk, Pyrrhuloxia male (looks similar to a Cardinal) and a spectacular Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. This stretch is called Hawk Alley.

 

We had a long drive further south towards Mission, with only a couple of drive-by photos taken en route (of a strangely shaped building that turned out to be a huge, deserted seed storage building). Eventually, we reached our next planned stop, the National Butterfly Centre. This was a great place, my favourite part of it being the bird feeding station, where we saw all sorts of species and reasonably close. Despite the name of the place, we only saw a few butterflies while we were there. May have been the weather or, more likely, the fact that I was having so much fun at the bird feeding station. We also got to see Spike, a giant African Spurred Tortoise. All the nature/wildlife parks that we visited in South Texas had beautiful visitor centres and usually bird feeding stations. And there are so many of these parks - so impressive!

 

Tomorrow, I will be able to start sorting and editing images taken on Day 7 of our 13-day trip!

Still having difficulty in scheduling visits and comments during the normal waking hours. I hope this will soon resolve. Best seen in LARGE format.

  

Clearly, the difficulty lies in the meerkat's mastery of optical illusions and advanced military-grade camouflage. Look at how seamlessly its fur blends in with the… well, the empty air around it. It is standing so incredibly still that it has become one with the universe, effectively turning invisible to the naked eye. It’s not just an animal; it’s a chameleon of the dunes, practically indistinguishable from a beach towel or a stray seashell unless you possess the visual acuity of an eagle wearing prescription glasses.

 

Then there is the sheer chaos of the environment distracting you. With all those aggressively colorful beach balls and striped towels screaming for your attention, how is the human brain supposed to process a creature standing smack in the dead center of the frame? It’s a sensory overload designed to confuse your prey drive. The majestic sandcastle alone is a fortress of distraction, pulling your gaze away from the very obvious, furry focal point. It’s a classic "needle in a haystack" situation, provided the needle is the size of a surfboard and standing on top of the haystack waving at you.

 

Finally, the hardest part is the psychological warfare the meerkat is waging. It is hiding in the one place you’d never think to look: directly in front of your face. It’s the "Hiding in Plain Sight" technique perfected by lost car keys and glasses on top of heads. By standing there with such casual confidence, posture erect and looking slightly judgmental, it tricks your brain into thinking, "Surely the hidden object isn't the giant thing right there." It’s not a puzzle; it’s a mind game, and the meerkat is winning.

Explored number 21 on 16 August 2018 - thank you so much everyone ! Not sure how it got there !

 

Alfredo Marceneiro - O Louco

 

Louco in Portuguese means "crazy". Very like me recently with all the problems on my computer ! I really love this really old Fado music. So soulful. Perhaps you've experienced some sort of 'madness' yourselves.... anyone who hasn't is fortunate.

 

Love is a kind of madness, some say, thank goodness we have it though ! These roses are the same ones I posted a couple of shots back and they have bloomed magnificently - so pale and delicate.

 

Edited in Topaz Studio, with enormous difficulty, as a recent update on my usual computer disabled it. This was created on a very, very slow computer which somehow manages to still support Topaz software.

 

Thank you for your comments and faves .. I appreciate them all.

 

So I purchased High Brow Adele a few months ago but due to some um… “technical difficulties” with my dead computer I am now able to do a review of this doll. The Adele 2.0 is probably my most favorite IT face sculpt of all time and I wanted to have a small collection of the best Adeles ever produced and I feel that High Brow Adele from the 2011 The New Close-Ups Collection is one of them. High Brow was the last Adele to have a 2.0 sculpt until it was retired then she emerged at the 2011 Jet Set Convention with a new face sculpt. The Adele 2.0 sculpt thankfully made a reappearance from last year’s ITBE collection and from the recent 2014 Gloss Convention. As I have noticed, Adele was the only doll from The New Close-Ups Collection with a recycled face screening as she shares it with Scarlet Woman Adele from the 2010 Dark Romance Convention and was then used for the ITBE Gold Glam Adele. It’s not that bad but it’s definitely different from the rest that had a more complex color blocked paint application. While each of the dolls had fierce eyeshadows and thick eyeliner, Adele was softer and simpler. What I do love about her is her glossy nude lip that is reminiscent to Talking Drama Adele. Definitely on point! Her look, and the entire collection, is inspired by Jason Wu’s Spring 2011 Ready-to-Wear Collection and Adele’s was based off of a look worn by Joan Smalls on the runway and she has shoes inspired by Dior. The only thing I don’t like is her hair just because I have seen this high ponytail a million times before and sometimes they cut the bangs short but I like it more if they just tuck the bangs at the back. I wished she had the same ponytail as Breaking The Mold Veronique instead so we can let her hair down as that makes her more versatile. Because of that I am planning on rerooting her hair.

We are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by!

YES, WE DID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

"Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!"

~Barack Obama

  

GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!

 

You’ve experienced and continue to encounter so much difficulty, decay, harm and pain in your experiences and carry the awful effects of this within your body, mind and spirit. And you are working so hard, at a pace and in a way that is appropriate for you, to keep growing through when all the extreme adversity tries to destroy you.

  

[image created on 3–3-2024]

 

____________________________

 

As a way to cope with circumstances beyond my control, survive and work to keep fighting for life I decided to try to take at least one photo (or more) each day. I call this “a photo (or more) a day.” Practicing this form of therapeutic photography helps me work to focus on the present moment, gives me something familiar and enjoyable to focus on as I use photography skills that have become like second-nature to me and being able to view the images I capture helps me recall what I was thinking, feeling and noticing at the moment when I created the photos. More of the photos from this series can be seen on my Instagram account

 

I may not always have the energy, time or capacity to share photos from this series—especially with the very challenging circumstances my family and I are experiencing—and will do my best to continue taking a photo (or more) a day even if I’m not able to share.

 

If you would like to support my work and my family, one way you can do so is by ordering my zines:

CLOUDS

in the moment | collection 1

in the moment | collection 2

Moving Forward

 

Many thanks for your support.

Tilly Losch,” circa 1935, by Joseph Cornell, Construction, 10 x 9¤ x 2⁄ inches ©The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York City

 

May 17, 2005

A Critic Takes On the Logic of Female Orgasm

 

By DINITIA SMITH

 

Evolutionary scientists have never had difficulty explaining the male orgasm, closely tied as it is to reproduction.

 

But the Darwinian logic behind the female orgasm has remained elusive. Women can have sexual intercourse and even become pregnant - doing their part for the perpetuation of the species - without experiencing orgasm. So what is its evolutionary purpose?

 

Over the last four decades, scientists have come up with a variety of theories, arguing, for example, that orgasm encourages women to have sex and, therefore, reproduce or that it leads women to favor stronger and healthier men, maximizing their offspring's chances of survival.

 

But in a new book, Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, a philosopher of science and professor of biology at Indiana University, takes on 20 leading theories and finds them wanting. The female orgasm, she argues in the book, "The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution," has no evolutionary function at all.

 

Rather, Dr. Lloyd says the most convincing theory is one put forward in 1979 by Dr. Donald Symons, an anthropologist.

 

That theory holds that female orgasms are simply artifacts - a byproduct of the parallel development of male and female embryos in the first eight or nine weeks of life.

 

In that early period, the nerve and tissue pathways are laid down for various reflexes, including the orgasm, Dr. Lloyd said. As development progresses, male hormones saturate the embryo, and sexuality is defined.

 

In boys, the penis develops, along with the potential to have orgasms and ejaculate, while "females get the nerve pathways for orgasm by initially having the same body plan."

 

Nipples in men are similarly vestigial, Dr. Lloyd pointed out.

 

While nipples in woman serve a purpose, male nipples appear to be simply left over from the initial stage of embryonic development.

 

The female orgasm, she said, "is for fun."

 

Dr. Lloyd said scientists had insisted on finding an evolutionary function for female orgasm in humans either because they were invested in believing that women's sexuality must exactly parallel that of men or because they were convinced that all traits had to be "adaptations," that is, serve an evolutionary function.

 

Theories of female orgasm are significant, she added, because "men's expectations about women's normal sexuality, about how women should perform, are built around these notions."

 

"And men are the ones who reflect back immediately to the woman whether or not she is adequate sexually," Dr. Lloyd continued.

 

Central to her thesis is the fact that women do not routinely have orgasms during sexual intercourse.

 

She analyzed 32 studies, conducted over 74 years, of the frequency of female orgasm during intercourse.

 

When intercourse was "unassisted," that is not accompanied by stimulation of the clitoris, just a quarter of the women studied experienced orgasms often or very often during intercourse, she found.

 

Five to 10 percent never had orgasms. Yet many of the women became pregnant.

 

Dr. Lloyd's figures are lower than those of Dr. Alfred A. Kinsey, who in his 1953 book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" found that 39 to 47 percent of women reported that they always, or almost always, had orgasm during intercourse.

 

But Kinsey, Dr. Lloyd said, included orgasms assisted by clitoral stimulation.

 

Dr. Lloyd said there was no doubt in her mind that the clitoris was an evolutionary adaptation, selected to create excitement, leading to sexual intercourse and then reproduction.

 

But, "without a link to fertility or reproduction," Dr. Lloyd said, "orgasm cannot be an adaptation."

 

Not everyone agrees. For example, Dr. John Alcock, a professor of biology at Arizona State University, criticized an earlier version of Dr. Lloyd's thesis, discussed in in a 1987 article by Stephen Jay Gould in the magazine Natural History.

 

In a phone interview, Dr. Alcock said that he had not read her new book, but that he still maintained the hypothesis that the fact that "orgasm doesn't occur every time a woman has intercourse is not evidence that it's not adaptive."

 

"I'm flabbergasted by the notion that orgasm has to happen every time to be adaptive," he added.

 

Dr. Alcock theorized that a woman might use orgasm "as an unconscious way to evaluate the quality of the male," his genetic fitness and, thus, how suitable he would be as a father for her offspring.

 

"Under those circumstances, you wouldn't expect her to have it every time," Dr. Alcock said.

 

Among the theories that Dr. Lloyd addresses in her book is one proposed in 1993, by Dr. R. Robin Baker and Dr. Mark A. Bellis, at Manchester University in England. In two papers published in the journal Animal Behaviour, they argued that female orgasm was a way of manipulating the retention of sperm by creating suction in the uterus. When a woman has an orgasm from one minute before the man ejaculates to 45 minutes after, she retains more sperm, they said.

 

Furthermore, they asserted, when a woman has intercourse with a man other than her regular sexual partner, she is more likely to have an orgasm in that prime time span and thus retain more sperm, presumably making conception more likely. They postulated that women seek other partners in an effort to obtain better genes for their offspring.

 

Dr. Lloyd said the Baker-Bellis argument was "fatally flawed because their sample size is too small."

 

"In one table," she said, "73 percent of the data is based on the experience of one person."

 

In an e-mail message recently, Dr. Baker wrote that his and Dr. Bellis's manuscript had "received intense peer review appraisal" before publication. Statisticians were among the reviewers, he said, and they noted that some sample sizes were small, "but considered that none of these were fatal to our paper."

 

Dr. Lloyd said that studies called into question the logic of such theories. Research by Dr. Ludwig Wildt and his colleagues at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany in 1998, for example, found that in a healthy woman the uterus undergoes peristaltic contractions throughout the day in the absence of sexual intercourse or orgasm. This casts doubt, Dr. Lloyd argues, on the idea that the contractions of orgasm somehow affect sperm retention.

 

Another hypothesis, proposed in 1995 by Dr. Randy Thornhill, a professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and two colleagues, held that women were more likely to have orgasms during intercourse with men with symmetrical physical features. On the basis of earlier studies of physical attraction, Dr. Thornhill argued that symmetry might be an indicator of genetic fitness.

 

Dr. Lloyd, however, said those conclusions were not viable because "they only cover a minority of women, 45 percent, who say they sometimes do, and sometimes don't, have orgasm during intercourse."

 

"It excludes women on either end of the spectrum," she said. "The 25 percent who say they almost always have orgasm in intercourse and the 30 percent who say they rarely or never do. And that last 30 percent includes the 10 percent who say they never have orgasm under any circumstances."

 

In a phone interview, Dr. Thornhill said that he had not read Dr. Lloyd's book but the fact that not all women have orgasms during intercourse supports his theory.

 

"There will be patterns in orgasm with preferred and not preferred men," he said.

 

Dr. Lloyd also criticized work by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis, who studies primate behavior and female reproductive strategies.

 

Scientists have documented that orgasm occurs in some female primates; for other mammals, whether orgasm occurs remains an open question.

 

In the 1981 book "The Woman That Never Evolved" and in her other work, Dr. Hrdy argues that orgasm evolved in nonhuman primates as a way for the female to protect her offspring from the depredation of males.

 

She points out that langur monkeys have a high infant mortality rate, with 30 percent of deaths a result of babies' being killed by males who are not the fathers. Male langurs, she says, will not kill the babies of females they have mated with.

 

In macaques and chimpanzees, she said, females are conditioned by the pleasurable sensations of clitoral stimulation to keep copulating with multiple partners until they have an orgasm. Thus, males do not know which infants are theirs and which are not and do not attack them.

 

Dr. Hrdy also argues against the idea that female orgasm is an artifact of the early parallel development of male and female embryos.

 

"I'm convinced," she said, "that the selection of the clitoris is quite separate from that of the penis in males."

 

In critiquing Dr. Hrdy's view, Dr. Lloyd disputes the idea that longer periods of sexual intercourse lead to a higher incidence of orgasm, something that if it is true, may provide an evolutionary rationale for female orgasm.

 

But Dr. Hrdy said her work did not speak one way or another to the issue of female orgasm in humans. "My hypothesis is silent," she said.

 

One possibility, Dr. Hrdy said, is that orgasm in women may have been an adaptive trait in our prehuman ancestors.

 

"But we separated from our common primate ancestors about seven million years ago," she said.

 

"Perhaps the reason orgasm is so erratic is that it's phasing out," Dr. Hrdy said. "Our descendants on the starships may well wonder what all the fuss was about."

 

Western culture is suffused with images of women's sexuality, of women in the throes of orgasm during intercourse and seeming to reach heights of pleasure that are rare, if not impossible, for most women in everyday life.

 

"Accounts of our evolutionary past tell us how the various parts of our body should function," Dr. Lloyd said.

 

If women, she said, are told that it is "natural" to have orgasms every time they have intercourse and that orgasms will help make them pregnant, then they feel inadequate or inferior or abnormal when they do not achieve it.

 

"Getting the evolutionary story straight has potentially very large social and personal consequences for all women," Dr. Lloyd said. "And indirectly for men, as well."

 

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The Tees Newport Bridge is a vertical-lift bridge spanning the River Tees a short distance upriver from Tees Transporter Bridge, linking Middlesbrough with the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, Northern England. It no longer lifts, but still acts as a road bridge in its permanently down position.

 

Designed by Mott, Hay and Anderson and built by local company Dorman Long, who have also been responsible for such structures as the Tyne Bridge and Sydney Harbour Bridge, it was the first large vertical-lift bridge in Britain.

 

Constructed around twin 55 m (180 ft) lifting towers, the 82 m (269 ft) bridge span, weighing 2,700 tonnes, could be lifted by the use of two 325 H.P. electric motors at 16 m (52 ft) per minute to a maximum height of 37 m (121 ft). In the event of motor failure a standby 450 H.P. petrol engine could be employed to move the bridge, but should both systems fail it was possible to raise or lower the span manually using a winch mechanism. It was estimated in 1963 by Mr R. Batty, long time Bridge Master at Newport Bridge, that "it would take 12 men eight hours" to complete the movement by hand.

 

The bridge was inaugurated by Prince Albert, Duke of York (later King George VI) and opened to traffic on 28 February 1934.

 

Originally, 12 men would have been employed to man the bridge around the clock, usually requiring four to drive it at any one time. This was accomplished from the oak-panelled winding house situated midway along the bridge span. During the 1940s and early 1950s this would occur up to twice a day with an average of 800 vessels per year passing under it, despite staffing difficulties during the 1940s when men were away fighting. However, as the number of ships needing to sail up to Stockton-on-Tees declined, so did the usage of the bridge.

 

The legal requirement to lift the bridge for shipping traffic was removed in 1989 after the repeal of a Parliamentary Act. Before mechanical decommissioning Mr Ian MacDonald, who worked on the bridge from 1966, finally as Bridge Master, supervised the final lift on 18 November 1990.

 

The Tees Newport Bridge still serves as a road bridge, carrying considerable traffic as a section of the A1032, despite the presence of the A19 Tees Viaduct a short distance upriver. In recent years it was repainted in its original green and some minor maintenance took place on the wire ropes and counterbalances which still take the majority of the bridge load. In 1988 the bridge was given Grade II Listed Building status.

 

In July 2014, work started to paint the bridge red and silver to mark its 80th anniversary. This was planned to take six weeks but was completed behind schedule and over budget mainly because of the poor condition of the steelwork, the result of lack of maintenance.

 

As ships dock on the banks of the River Tees up to the Tees Newport Bridge the Admiralty publishes tide times for the bridge location

 

Middlesbrough is a town in the Middlesbrough unitary authority borough of North Yorkshire, England. The town lies near the mouth of the River Tees and north of the North York Moors National Park. The built-up area had a population of 148,215 at the 2021 UK census. It is the largest town of the wider Teesside area, which had a population of 376,633 in 2011.

 

Until the early 1800s, the area was rural farmland in the historic county of Yorkshire. The town was a planned development which started in 1830, based around a new port with coal and later ironworks added. Steel production and ship building began in the late 1800s, remaining associated with the town until the post-industrial decline of the late twentieth century. Trade (notably through ports) and digital enterprise sectors contemporarily contribute to the local economy, Teesside University and Middlesbrough College to local education.

 

Middlesbrough was made a municipal borough in 1853. When elected county councils were created in 1889, Middlesbrough was considered large enough to provide its own county-level services and so it became a county borough, independent from North Riding County Council. The borough of Middlesbrough was abolished in 1968 when the area was absorbed into the larger County Borough of Teesside. Six years later in 1974 Middlesbrough was re-established as a borough within the new county of Cleveland. Cleveland was abolished in 1996, since when Middlesbrough has been a unitary authority within the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire.

 

Middlesbrough started as a Benedictine priory on the south bank of the River Tees, its name possibly derived from it being midway between the holy sites of Durham and Whitby. The earliest recorded form of Middlesbrough's name is "Mydilsburgh", containing the term burgh.

 

In 686, a monastic cell was consecrated by St. Cuthbert at the request of St. Hilda, Abbess of Whitby. The manor of Middlesburgh belonged to Whitby Abbey and Guisborough Priory.[1] Robert Bruce, Lord of Cleveland and Annandale, granted and confirmed, in 1119, the church of St. Hilda of Middleburg to Whitby. Up until its closure on the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII in 1537, the church was maintained by 12 Benedictine monks, many of whom became vicars, or rectors, of various places in Cleveland.

 

After the Angles, the area became home to Viking settlers. Names of Viking origin (with the suffix by meaning village) are abundant in the area; for example, Ormesby, Stainsby and Tollesby were once separate villages that belonged to Vikings called Orm, Steinn and Toll that are now areas of Middlesbrough were recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Other names around Middlesbrough include the village of Maltby (of Malti) along with the towns of Ingleby Barwick (Anglo-place and barley-wick) and Thornaby (of Thormod).

 

Links persist in the area, often through school or road names, to now-outgrown or abandoned local settlements, such as the medieval settlement of Stainsby, deserted by 1757, which amounts to little more today than a series of grassy mounds near the A19 road.

 

In 1801, Middlesbrough was a small farm with a population of just 25; however, during the latter half of the 19th century, it experienced rapid growth. In 1828 the influential Quaker banker, coal mine owner and Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) shareholder Joseph Pease sailed up the River Tees to find a suitable new site downriver of Stockton on which to place new coal staithes. As a result, in 1829 he and a group of Quaker businessmen bought the Middlesbrough farmstead and associated estate, some 527 acres (213 ha) of land, and established the Middlesbrough Estate Company.

 

Through the company, the investors set about a new coal port development (designed by John Harris) on the southern banks of the Tees. The first coal shipping staithes at the port (known as "Port Darlington") were constructed with a settlement to the east established on the site of Middlesbrough farm as labour for the port, taking on the farm's name as it developed into a village. The small farmstead became a village of streets such as North Street, South Street, West Street, East Street, Commercial Street, Stockton Street and Cleveland Street, laid out in a grid-iron pattern around a market square, with the first house being built on West Street in April 1830. New businesses bought premises and plots of land in the new town including: shippers, merchants, butchers, innkeepers, joiners, blacksmiths, tailors, builders and painters.

 

The first coal shipping staithes at the port (known as "Port Darlington") were constructed just to the west of the site earmarked for the location of Middlesbrough. The port was linked to the S&DR on 27 December 1830 via a branch that extended to an area just north of the current Middlesbrough railway station, helping secure the town's future.

 

The success of the port meant it soon became overwhelmed by the volume of imports and exports, and in 1839 work started on Middlesbrough Dock. Laid out by Sir William Cubitt, the whole infrastructure was built by resident civil engineer George Turnbull. After three years and an expenditure of £122,000 (equivalent to £9.65 million at 2011 prices), first water was let in on 19 March 1842, and the formal opening took place on 12 May 1842. On completion, the docks were bought by the S&DR.

 

Iron and steel have dominated the Tees area since 1841 when Henry Bolckow in partnership with John Vaughan, founded the Vulcan iron foundry and rolling mill. Vaughan, who had worked his way up through the Iron industry in South Wales, used his technical expertise to find a more abundant supply of Ironstone in the Eston Hills in 1850, and introduced the new "Bell Hopper" system of closed blast furnaces developed at the Ebbw Vale works. These factors made the works an unprecedented success with Teesside becoming known as the "Iron-smelting centre of the world" and Bolckow, Vaughan & Co., Ltd became the largest company in existence.

 

By 1851 Middlesbrough's population had grown from 40 people in 1829 to 7,600. Pig iron production rose tenfold between 1851 and 1856 and by the mid-1870s Middlesbrough was producing one third of the entire nations Pig Iron output. It was during this time Middlesbrough earned the nickname "Ironopolis".

 

On 21 January 1853, Middlesbrough received its Royal Charter of Incorporation, giving the town the right to have a mayor, aldermen and councillors. Henry Bolckow became mayor, in 1853.

 

A Welsh community was established in Middlesbrough sometime before the 1840s, with mining being the main form of employment. These migrants included figures who would become important leaders in the commercial, political and cultural life of the town:

 

John Vaughan established Teesside's first ironworks in 1841, The Vulcan Works at Middlesbrough. Vaughan had worked his way up through the industry at the Dowlais Ironworks in south Wales and encouraged hundreds of the skilled Welsh workers to follow him to Teesside.

Edward Williams (iron-master), although he was the grandson of the famous Welsh Bard Iolo Morganwg, Edward had started as a mere clerk at Dowlais. His move to the Tees saw him rise to ironmaster, alderman, magistrate and Mayor of Middlesbrough. Edward was also the father of Aneurin and Penry, who both became Liberal MPs for the area.

E.T. John arrived from Pontypridd as a junior clerk in Williams' office. John became the director of several industrial enterprises and a radical politician.

Windsor Richards, an Engineer and manager, oversaw the town's transition from iron to steel production.

Much like the contemporary Welsh migration to America, the Welsh of Middlesbrough came almost exclusively from the iron-smelting and coal districts of South Wales. By 1861 42% of the town's ironworkers identified as Welsh and one in twenty of the total population. Place names such as "Welch Cottages" and "Welch Place" appeared around the Vulcan works, and Middlesbrough became a centre for the Welsh communities at Witton Park, Spennymoor, Consett and Stockton on Tees (especially Portrack). David Williams also recorded that a number of the Welsh workers at the Hughesovka Ironworks in 1869 had migrated from Middlesbrough.

 

A Welsh Baptist chapel was active in the town as early as 1858, and St Hilda's Anglican church began providing services in the Welsh language. Churches and chapels were the centres of Welsh culture, supporting choirs, Sunday Schools, social societies, adult education, lectures and literary meetings. By the 1870s, many more Welsh chapels were built (one reputed to seat 500 people), and the first Eisteddfodau were held.

 

By the 1880s, a "Welsh cultural revival" was underway, with the Eisteddfodau attracting competitors and spectators from outside the Welsh communities. In 1890 the Middlesbrough Town Hall hosted the first Cleveland and Durham Eisteddfod, an event notable for its non-denominational inclusivity, with Irish Catholic choirs and the bishop of the newly created Roman Catholic Diocese of Middlesbrough as honoured guests.

 

In the early twentieth century this Eisteddfod had become the biggest annual event in the town and the largest annual Eisteddfod outside Wales. The Eisteddfod had a clear impact on the culture of the town, especially through its literary and music events, by 1911 the Eisteddfod had twenty-two classes of musical competition only two of which were for Welsh language content. By 1914, thirty choirs from across the area were competing in 284 entries. A choral tradition remained part of the town's culture long after the eisteddfod and chapels had gone. In 2012 an exhibition at the Dorman Museum marked the Apollo Male Voice Choir's 125 years as an active choir in the town.

 

Industrial Wales was noted for its "radical Liberal-Labour" politics, and the rhetoric of these politicians clearly won favour with the urban population of the North East. Penry Williams and Jonathan Samuel won the seats of Middlesbrough and Stockton-on-Tees for the Liberal Party and Penry's brother, Aneurin would also win the newly created Consett seat in 1918.

 

Sir Horace Davey stressed his Welsh lineage and stated that "it was scarcely an exaggeration to say that Welshmen had founded Middlesbrough", courting the Welsh vote that saw him elected MP for Stockton. However, others complained that local Conservative candidates were losing to "Fenians and Welshers" (Irish and Welsh people).

 

These sentiments had grown by 1900 when Samuel lost his seat after a Unionist complained publicly that the town had been "forced to submit to the indignity of being trailed ignominiously through the mire by Welsh constituents". Samuel lost the seat but regained it in 1910 with a campaign that made few, if any, references to his Welsh background.

 

From 1861 to 1871, the census of England & Wales showed that Middlesbrough consistently had the second highest percentage of Irish born people in England after Liverpool. The Irish population in 1861 accounted for 15.6% of the total population of Middlesbrough. In 1871 the amount had dropped to 9.2% yet this still placed Middlesbrough's Irish population second in England behind Liverpool. Due to the rapid development of the town and its industrialisation there was much need for people to work in the many blast furnaces and steel works along the banks of the Tees. This attracted many people from Ireland, who were in much need of work. As well as people from Ireland, the Scottish, Welsh and overseas inhabitants made up 16% of Middlesbrough's population in 1871. A second influx of Irish migration was observed in the early 1900s as Middlesbrough's steel industry boomed producing 1/3 of Britain's total steel output. This second influx lasted through to the 1950s after which Irish migration to Middlesbrough saw a drastic decline. Middlesbrough no longer has a strong Irish presence, with Irish born residents making up around 2% of the current population, however there is still a strong cultural and historical connection with Ireland mainly through the heritage and ancestry of many families within Middlesbrough.

 

The town's rapid expansion continued throughout the second half of the 19th century, fuelled by the iron and steel industry. In 1864 the North Riding Infirmary (an ear, nose and mouth hospital) opened in Newport Road; this was demolished in 2006.

 

On 15 August 1867, a Reform Bill was passed, making Middlesbrough a new parliamentary borough, Bolckow was elected member for Middlesbrough the following year. In 1875, Bolckow, Vaughan & Co opened the Cleveland Steelworks in Middlesbrough beginning the transition from Iron production to Steel and by the turn of the century. Henry Bolckow died in 1878 and left an endowment of £5,000 for the infirmary.

 

In the latter third of the 19th century, Old Middlesbrough was starting to decline and was overshadowed by developments built around the new town hall, south of the original town hall, the town's population reaching 90,000 by the dawn of the 20th century.[9] In 1900, Bolckow, Vaughan & Co had become the largest producer of steel in Great Britain and possibly came to be one of the major steel centres in the world.

 

In 1914, Dorman Long, another major steel producer from Middlesbrough, became the largest company in Britain. It employed a workforce of over 20,000 and by 1929 and gained enough to take over from Bolckow, Vaughan & Co's dominance and to acquire their assets. The steel components of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1932) were engineered and fabricated by Dorman Long of Middlesbrough. The company was also responsible for the New Tyne Bridge in Newcastle.

 

Several large shipyards also lined the Tees, including the Sir Raylton Dixon & Company, Smith's Dock Company of South Bank and Furness Shipbuilding Company of Haverton Hill.

 

Middlesbrough was the first major British town and industrial target to be bombed during the Second World War. The Luftwaffe first attacked the town on 25 May 1940 when a lone bomber dropped 13 bombs between South Bank Road and the South Steel Plant. One of the bombs fell on the South Bank football ground making a large crater in the pitch. The bomber was forced to leave after RAF night fighters were scrambled to intercept. Two months after the first bombing Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited the town to meet the public and inspect coastal defences.

 

German bombers often flew over the Eston Hills while heading for targets further inland, such as Manchester. On 30 March 1941 a Junkers Ju 88 was shot down by two Spitfires of No. 41 Squadron, piloted by Tony Lovell and Archie Winskill, over Middlesbrough. The aircraft dived into the ground at Barnaby Moor, Eston; the engines and most of the airframe were entirely buried upon impact.

 

On 5 December 1941 a Spitfire of No. 122 Squadron, piloted by Sgt Hutton, crashed into rising ground near Mill Farm, Upsall, on the lower slopes of Eston Hills. Poor visibility due to bad weather and low cloud is believed to have been the cause of the crash.

 

On 15 January 1942, minutes after being hit by gunfire from a merchant ship anchored off Hartlepool, a Dornier Do 217 collided with the cable of a barrage balloon over the River Tees. The blazing bomber plummeted onto the railway sidings in South Bank leaving a crater twelve feet deep. In 1997 the remains of the Dornier were unearthed by a group of workers clearing land for redevelopment; the remains were put on display for a short while at Kirkleatham museum.

 

On 4 August 1942 a lone Dornier Do 217 picked its way through the barrage balloons and dropped a stick of bombs onto the railway station. One bomb caused serious damage to the Victorian glass and steel roof. A train in the station was also badly damaged although there were no passengers aboard. The station was put out action for two weeks.

 

The Green Howards was a British Army infantry regiment very strongly associated with Middlesbrough and the area south of the River Tees. Originally formed at Dunster Castle, Somerset in 1688 to serve King William of Orange, later King William III, this regiment became affiliated to the North Riding of Yorkshire in 1782. As Middlesbrough grew, its population of men came to be a group most targeted by the recruiters. The Green Howards were part of the King's Division. On 6 June 2006, this famous regiment was merged into the new Yorkshire Regiment and are now known as 2 Yorks, The 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards). There is also a Territorial Army (TA) company at Stockton Road in Middlesbrough, part of 4 Yorks which is wholly reserve.

 

Post Second World War to contemporary era

By the end of the war over 200 buildings had been destroyed within the Middlesbrough area. The borough lost 99 civilians as a result of enemy action.

 

Areas of early and mid-Victorian housing were demolished and much of central Middlesbrough was redeveloped. Heavy industry was relocated to areas of land better suited to the needs of modern technology. Middlesbrough itself began to take on a completely different look.

 

Middlesbrough's 1903 Gaumont cinema, originally an opera house until the 1930s, was demolished in 1971. The Cleveland Centre opened in the same year. In 1974, Middlesbrough and other areas around the Tees, became part of the county of Cleveland. This was to create a county within a single NUTS region of England, with the UK joining the European Union predecessor (European Communities) a year earlier.

 

Middlesbrough's Royal Exchange building was demolished, to make way for the road. A multi-storey the Star and Garter Hotel built in the 1890s near to the exchange on the site of a former Welsh Congregational Church, was also demolished. The Victorian era North Riding Infirmary was demolished in 2006 and replaced by a hotel and supermarket.

 

The Cleveland Centre opened in 1971, Hill Street shopping centre opened in 1981 and Captain Cook Square opened in 1999.

 

Middlesbrough F.C.'s modern Riverside Stadium opened on 26 August 1995 next to Middlesbrough Dock. The club moved from Ayresome Park their previous home in the town for 92 years.

 

With the abolition of Cleveland County in 1996, Middlesbrough again became part of North Yorkshire.

 

The original St.Hilda's area of Middlesbrough, after decades of decline and clearance, was given a new name of Middlehaven in 1986 on investment proposals to build on the land. Middlehaven has since had new buildings built there including Middlesbrough College and Middlesbrough FC's Riverside Stadium amongst others. Also situated at Middlehaven is the "Boho" zone, offering office space to the area's business and to attract new companies, and also "Bohouse", housing. Some of the street names from the original grid-iron street plan of the town still exist in the area today.

 

The expansion of Middlesbrough southwards, eastwards and westwards continued throughout the 20th century absorbing villages such as Linthorpe, Acklam, Ormesby, Marton and Nunthorpe[9] and continues to the present day.

Rocket Stories / Magazin-Reihe

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Brief History of Maryborough.

This fertile area of Queensland was the fifth area to be settled when it was still part of NSW. The first settlement in QLD was at Redcliffe (and later Moreton Bay) as a convict colony in 1824. This was followed by white settlement at Ipswich in 1842 and further inland in the mountains at Warwick in 1847. The NSW government sent explorers to the Mary River area in 1842 which was when the river was named. Then in 1847 inland from the Mary River a town was surveyed but not gazetted until 1849. It was Gayndah which now claims to be the oldest town in QLD. The establishment of Gayndah is remarkable given transport difficulties. Near the coast Maryborough was the site of a wharf for pastoralists in 1847 and later a small town was created in 1850 making Maryborough the fifth settlement in what is now QLD. The first land sales at Maryborough were in 1852 although a general store had opened before this time on leased land in 1848. The new town of Maryborough was sited on the Mary River which rises near the Glasshouse Mountains inland from the Sunshine Coast. It generally flows northwards to enter the sea a few miles downstream from the town of Maryborough. The Mary River was named after Lady Mary Lennox the wife of the Governor of NSW Charles Fitzroy. The little town struggled to establish itself but once QLD got independence from NSW in 1859 Maryborough began to grow more quickly as free white settlers spread around the new colony. The delays in growth were partly caused by local Aboriginal resistance to the white pastoralists. Between 1847 and 1853 twenty eight white settlers were killed by Aboriginal people. A white massacre of around 100 Aboriginal people in the early 1850s brought some calm to the area and broke the resistance of the Gubbi Gubbi people. The Gubbi Gubbi people were called the Gin Gins by white settlers hence the name for that town north of Maryborough. Like so many Australian towns Maryborough’s growth was fuelled by mining discoveries. Maryborough was declared an official QLD port in 1859 and the first ship load of immigrants disembarked directly at Maryborough in 1860. Most were female and instead of obtaining work as servants immediately accepted offers of marriage from the men of the district. Maryborough became a municipality in 1861. It soon had a Customs House, a Courthouse and School of Arts but it really grew with the discovery of gold inland at Gympie. Maryborough served as the pot for goods going to and from Gympie from 1867 onwards. The QLD Land Acts of 1867 also opened up the pastoral leasehold lands to farmers for the first time. The main crops grown were maize and sugar. At about the same time as the Gympie gold rush Maryborough got its first sugar mill, a timber mill and John Walker of Ballarat opened a foundry and engineering works to produce mining equipment just as he had done previously in Ballarat. The port expanded and the town grew. A new Post Office (1869), hotels and general stores opened to cater for the miners and the townspeople. By 1871 Maryborough had 3,500 residents with its own newspaper’s, churches and schools. The wider district population was 9,000 people. By 1876 the population had swelled to 5,700 people. The first railway opened in Maryborough in 1881 when a line connected the port with Gympie gold fields.

 

Maryborough South Sea Islander Hospital. The Kanaka indentured labour system was introduced to QLD in 1863. The Polynesian Hawaiians called themselves kanakas. This was the term used in the 19th century to cover the South Sea Islander indentured labourers. Most who came to the Maryborough region (and Bundaberg too) were from the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). Some Islanders were also taken as indentured labourers to Chile, to Canada, to California and to Fiji. The arrival of the first indentured islanders coincided with the beginnings of

the sugar industry in the Maryborough region. Sugar is a very intense labour crop and in the USA, the Caribbean and

South America African slaves were used for such work until the mid-19th century. The Americans had their tragic Civil War to end slavery there. British colonies were not allowed to have slaves by the 1830s century including all of the Australia colonies. African slaves were gradually freed in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the mid-19th century. South America had its slaves all freed by the 1870s. Although descendants of the South Sea Islanders like to refer to themselves as the Sugar Slaves this term would be highly offensive to all descendants of African slaves of the Americas and Caribbean. Indentured labour was a common labour system in the 19th century and continued into the 20th century. In Australia the Commonwealth government ran a similar indentured labour scheme for young British men who wanted to be farm labourers. They served a three year term, with no pay until they had completed their indenture, and they needed government permission to buy work boots or any other item. In SA this scheme was known as the Barwell Boys (Barwell was the SA premier at the time) scheme but it operated in WA and other states too. This indentured labour system ended in 1925.

 

So when the indentured South Sea Islander trade was established in Queensland in 1863 the first labourers were covered by the 1861 Masters and Servants Acts. (All colonies – and later states- had such acts which controlled labour relations right through to the 1980 and 1990s when anti-discrimination and equal opportunity acts watered them down.) Queensland acted quickly after 1863 and introduced the Polynesian Labourers Act in 1868. Amongst the many clauses of the act was the establishment of inspectors of conditions on plantations where South Sea Islanders were indentured. They weighed food rations, inspected housing and clothing. The act was also designed to protect the Islanders’ basic rights and to stop the “kidnapping” of Islanders. All ships captains had to ensure that there was no coercion and that the Islander’s recruitment was consistent with the QLD Polynesian Labourers Act. Although white settlers and Islanders died of fevers and tropical diseases frequently in the Maryborough area it had one of four Islander Hospitals erected by the QLD government in the early 1880s to help alleviate disease and death among the Islander populations in QLD. The first inspector for the health conditions of the Islanders began work in Maryborough in 1875.Their complaints about the conditions under which Islanders lived led to the opening of the 50 bed Maryborough Pacific Islander Hospital and doctor’s residence. Islanders had a higher death rate from disease than whites and extra health care was needed. Thus the Maryborough Hospital opened in 1883 to improve health conditions but it closed just five years later. Like other Islander hospitals it was funded from the wages due to dead Islanders. These wages were diverted to state government coffers. Attached to the hospital was an Islander cemetery which was formally established in 1891 but was used for interments whilst the hospital existed. A total of 363 Islander patients died at the hospital and were presumably all buried in the cemetery. The Maryborough Pacific Islander Hospital buildings were removed in 1892 and some equipment moved to the Maryborough Hospital which established a separate Kanaka ward. The site of the Pacific Island Hospital and cemetery was left vacant until sold off as vacant land in 1911. A controversy arose a couple of years when the Maryborough Council was considering allowing building on the former site. Action were than taken to have the site declared a heritage area. The outcome for this has not yet been decided. If building approval were to happen one can only hope that a suitable memorial and monument is placed there to remind everyone of Maryborough’s role in the South Sea Islander traffic. The site is near Tinana 5 kms west of Maryborough.

  

The first South Sea Islander labourers arrived at the port of Maryborough in 1867 on the schooner Mary Smith. All were male and found employed straight away with the Maryborough Sugar Company. They were paid £6 per year (paid at the end for the three year contract) compared with a white labourers who would have received up to £30 a year. The Islanders also were fed and housed which the white labourers were not. The Maryborough Sugar Company also paid for the voyage to and from the South Sea Islands. When the Mary borough Pacific Islander Hospital closed in 1888 it was partially because the number for South Sea Islanders was declining in the district. Numbers continued to fall in the 1890s as sugar profits declined. Then all South Sea Islanders were covered by the “White Australia Acts” of the new Federal Government in 1901. At that time the Islander population in Queensland was at its peak with around 9,000 Islanders. Commonwealth legislation banned recruitment from 1904 and started deportation in 1906. By 1908 7,000 Islanders had been deported and about 2,000 were allowed to stay on in Australia because of marriage or health or other issues. Over the life time of the South Sea Islander trade around 60,000 Islanders had been brought into Queensland and of those about a quarter were employed in the Maryborough district.

 

The Port of Maryborough.

The town actually began with a wharf as once prospective settlers learned that the River Mary was navigable white pastoralist and cotton and maize farmers moved into the district upstream from around 1848. Then in 1859 as the colony of Queensland was created from New South Wales a new international port was created at Maryborough. The town had moved from West Maryborough to the present site. Consequently the first Customs House was erected in 1861. In 1860 the first vessels arrived at the port of Maryborough direct from Europe with a load of immigrants. In 1869 nearly 7,000 immigrants had landed in Maryborough and by 1878 nearly 16,000 had landed here. In fact between 1860 and 1900 around 22,000 immigrants arrived directly in Maryborough from England and Europe. Maryborough also had a coastal steamer service to Brisbane and Rockhampton. From 1867 it also handled all the goods going into and the gold coming out of the goldfields at Gympie. In the last quarter of the 19th century the port of Maryborough handled saw timber, sugar, wool, meat, gold, maize, etc. Before the end of the 19th century when river ports like Maryborough were about to be forgotten because they could not handle larger steamers its imports and exports were roughly in balance in terms of value. The most valuable exports were: gold, silver, copper, fruit, hides and skins, sugar and wool. Of these the most valuable were sugar £50,000, raw and refined, followed by silver/lead £33,000, gold/silver £9,000 and skin/hides £8,000.

 

Among the early immigrants were shiploads of German settlers from 1860. As the numbers grew the first Lutheran pastor arrived in 1864 followed by a second in 1867. These and later pastors came from Germany or Denmark, mainly the Schleswig district, which was occupied by Germany from 1864 after it defeated the Danes. Between 1860 and 1891 around 180,000 immigrants arrived in Queensland with an assisted government passage and some rights to lease land. Around 16,000 were non British mainly Germans, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes. Other Australian colonies only gave assisted passages to British immigrants except for Tasmania and Queensland. Most of the non-British immigrants were German but the QLD government’s agent I Germany also recruited Scandinavians, Swiss etc. Queensland became the colony with the greatest number of Danes and it had almost as many Norwegians and Swedes as NSW. Some of these non-British immigrant’s landed in Maryborough with the first ship load arriving in March 1871 on the Reichstag from Hamburg. The Scandinavians especially settled at Tiaro and Tinana near Maryborough, around Bundaberg, Pialba at Hervey Bay and in other places like Kingaroy where Sir Jo Bjelke-Petersen lived. The town of Eidsvold, near Gayndah is a Norwegian name and it was established by the Archer brothers from Larvik in Norway. As most of the Scandinavians were Lutheran (but some were Catholic), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish names are often linked to the Lutheran churches of the Maryborough district. Some Scandinavian names (mainly Danish) of Maryborough early settlers include the Jocumsen, Claussen,Madsen, Kehlet, Weinberg, Okeden, Boge, Möller, etc. Many Danish and other Scandinavian names can also be found in the Polson cemetery at Pialba Hervey Bay such as Christensen, Hansen, Mortensen, Nielsen, Petersen, Thomsen etc.

 

A stroll down Kent Street from Pallas Street.

1. On the left is Queen Elizabeth rose garden.

2. The Dominion Milling Company factory site. Now derelict. The Maryborough flour mill when erected in 1890 was the furthest north in Australia. It was acquired by the Dominion Milling Company around 1910. The distinctive entrance arch was erected in 1915. All operations only ceased in 1977. In more recent years it has been a saw mill and an antiques centre.

3. The old power house from the 1920s when cities like Maryborough had their own electricity generator.

4. The Freemasons Centre.

5. On the right Maryborough High School. Its original grand buildings were opened in 1881 as Maryborough Girls Grammar School.

6. On the left beyond the school oval is Maryborough Boys Grammar School erected in 1881 and the gates erected in 1909. It is now the TAFE campus.

7. The Maryborough Central School. The first school was established in 1862. The grand l two storey building was erected at the height of the European immigration period in 1875. More wooden classrooms were built in 1882 as the infant’s school.

8. On right is the City Hall. Built 1906 in American colonial style in red brick. Australia’s only pneumonic plaque outbreak occurred in Maryborough in 1905. Eight people died and a plaque commemorates that sad event.

9. On the left the School of Arts. 427 Kent St. This grand classical building was designed by Adelaide architect John Grainger. It was completed in 1888 replacing a former wooden school of arts building. In 1972 it was purchased by the City of Maryborough for use as a library. The round windows above oblong windows is unusual. Cost £3,500.

10. On the right. Finney Isles and Co store 1908. The building was designed by the prominent Bundaberg architect, F. H. Faircloth. Alterations were undertaken to the building in 1918 due to the expansion of Finney, Isles & Co business. The building was purchased by Fritz Kinne in 1923 and their name is in the central pediment. This German background businessman was an alderman and twice Mayor of Maryborough.384 Kent St

11. On the left before the next intersection. This was the Stupart’s Emporium built in 1883. No 373 Kent St.

13. On the right. The Royal Hotel. Built in 1868 and given its “royal patronage” authority by Governor Bowen of Queensland in that year. Established in 1856 and totally rebuilt in this classical style in 1902.

14. On left at 331 Kent St. The former Australian Joint Stock Bank built in 1882. Great classical features but the windows are too narrow and spoil the effect. Main facade is on the side street. Its proportions are much better. The author of the Mary Poppins book P L Travers was born in the building in 1899. Her father Travers Goff was the bank manager at the time. She was born as Helen Goff. Her statue is next to the building. Look for the street crossing lights showing Mary Poppins.

14. On the left at 327 Kent St. Built in 1915 as the Queensland National bank. Now known as Woodstock House. Good height, grand pilasters up the sides of the building, fine pediment, Corinthian columns with acanthus leaves at the top, both triangular and rounded pediments above windows, good symmetry. A great classical style building.

15.On right at 310 Kent St is the former Francis Hotel. This was the site of the first hotel in Maryborough around 1852. A second storey was added in 1919 with lots of Edwardian woodwork on the balcony. It closed as a hotel in 1992.

16. On the right next to the hotel is the former stores of Douglas Helsham. Construction began in 1874 and was completed in 1875. Helsham employed a Brisbane architect James Cowlishaw.

17. On left at 297 Kent St. The former Royal Bank built in 1888 with almost some Art Nouveau curves. The architect was Italian Victor Caradini. The roof line pediment is “broken” and now includes the name Monsour. Fred Monsour was a Middle Eastern silk and fabric importer. With his brother they had several stores and warehouses but he name in the cartouche these days refers to Dr Monsour a local medical practitioner.

18. At the very end of Kent Street and to the right is the former Engineer’s Arms Hotel. This strange very narrow hotel between two streets was built in 1889 is Maryborough’s answer to the Flatiron building of New York.

 

Brief History of Maryborough.

This fertile area of Queensland was the fifth area to be settled when it was still part of NSW. The first settlement in QLD was at Redcliffe (and later Moreton Bay) as a convict colony in 1824. This was followed by white settlement at Ipswich in 1842 and further inland in the mountains at Warwick in 1847. The NSW government sent explorers to the Mary River area in 1842 which was when the river was named. Then in 1847 inland from the Mary River a town was surveyed but not gazetted until 1849. It was Gayndah which now claims to be the oldest town in QLD. The establishment of Gayndah is remarkable given transport difficulties. Near the coast Maryborough was the site of a wharf for pastoralists in 1847 and later a small town was created in 1850 making Maryborough the fifth settlement in what is now QLD. The first land sales at Maryborough were in 1852 although a general store had opened before this time on leased land in 1848. The new town of Maryborough was sited on the Mary River which rises near the Glasshouse Mountains inland from the Sunshine Coast. It generally flows northwards to enter the sea a few miles downstream from the town of Maryborough. The Mary River was named after Lady Mary Lennox the wife of the Governor of NSW Charles Fitzroy. The little town struggled to establish itself but once QLD got independence from NSW in 1859 Maryborough began to grow more quickly as free white settlers spread around the new colony. The delays in growth were partly caused by local Aboriginal resistance to the white pastoralists. Between 1847 and 1853 twenty eight white settlers were killed by Aboriginal people. A white massacre of around 100 Aboriginal people in the early 1850s brought some calm to the area and broke the resistance of the Gubbi Gubbi people. The Gubbi Gubbi people were called the Gin Gins by white settlers hence the name for that town north of Maryborough. Like so many Australian towns Maryborough’s growth was fuelled by mining discoveries. Maryborough was declared an official QLD port in 1859 and the first ship load of immigrants disembarked directly at Maryborough in 1860. Most were female and instead of obtaining work as servants immediately accepted offers of marriage from the men of the district. Maryborough became a municipality in 1861. It soon had a Customs House, a Courthouse and School of Arts but it really grew with the discovery of gold inland at Gympie. Maryborough served as the pot for goods going to and from Gympie from 1867 onwards. The QLD Land Acts of 1867 also opened up the pastoral leasehold lands to farmers for the first time. The main crops grown were maize and sugar. At about the same time as the Gympie gold rush Maryborough got its first sugar mill, a timber mill and John Walker of Ballarat opened a foundry and engineering works to produce mining equipment just as he had done previously in Ballarat. The port expanded and the town grew. A new Post Office (1869), hotels and general stores opened to cater for the miners and the townspeople. By 1871 Maryborough had 3,500 residents with its own newspaper’s, churches and schools. The wider district population was 9,000 people. By 1876 the population had swelled to 5,700 people. The first railway opened in Maryborough in 1881 when a line connected the port with Gympie gold fields.

 

Maryborough South Sea Islander Hospital. The Kanaka indentured labour system was introduced to QLD in 1863. The Polynesian Hawaiians called themselves kanakas. This was the term used in the 19th century to cover the South Sea Islander indentured labourers. Most who came to the Maryborough region (and Bundaberg too) were from the Solomon Islands and the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). Some Islanders were also taken as indentured labourers to Chile, to Canada, to California and to Fiji. The arrival of the first indentured islanders coincided with the beginnings of

the sugar industry in the Maryborough region. Sugar is a very intense labour crop and in the USA, the Caribbean and

South America African slaves were used for such work until the mid-19th century. The Americans had their tragic Civil War to end slavery there. British colonies were not allowed to have slaves by the 1830s century including all of the Australia colonies. African slaves were gradually freed in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the mid-19th century. South America had its slaves all freed by the 1870s. Although descendants of the South Sea Islanders like to refer to themselves as the Sugar Slaves this term would be highly offensive to all descendants of African slaves of the Americas and Caribbean. Indentured labour was a common labour system in the 19th century and continued into the 20th century. In Australia the Commonwealth government ran a similar indentured labour scheme for young British men who wanted to be farm labourers. They served a three year term, with no pay until they had completed their indenture, and they needed government permission to buy work boots or any other item. In SA this scheme was known as the Barwell Boys (Barwell was the SA premier at the time) scheme but it operated in WA and other states too. This indentured labour system ended in 1925.

 

So when the indentured South Sea Islander trade was established in Queensland in 1863 the first labourers were covered by the 1861 Masters and Servants Acts. (All colonies – and later states- had such acts which controlled labour relations right through to the 1980 and 1990s when anti-discrimination and equal opportunity acts watered them down.) Queensland acted quickly after 1863 and introduced the Polynesian Labourers Act in 1868. Amongst the many clauses of the act was the establishment of inspectors of conditions on plantations where South Sea Islanders were indentured. They weighed food rations, inspected housing and clothing. The act was also designed to protect the Islanders’ basic rights and to stop the “kidnapping” of Islanders. All ships captains had to ensure that there was no coercion and that the Islander’s recruitment was consistent with the QLD Polynesian Labourers Act. Although white settlers and Islanders died of fevers and tropical diseases frequently in the Maryborough area it had one of four Islander Hospitals erected by the QLD government in the early 1880s to help alleviate disease and death among the Islander populations in QLD. The first inspector for the health conditions of the Islanders began work in Maryborough in 1875.Their complaints about the conditions under which Islanders lived led to the opening of the 50 bed Maryborough Pacific Islander Hospital and doctor’s residence. Islanders had a higher death rate from disease than whites and extra health care was needed. Thus the Maryborough Hospital opened in 1883 to improve health conditions but it closed just five years later. Like other Islander hospitals it was funded from the wages due to dead Islanders. These wages were diverted to state government coffers. Attached to the hospital was an Islander cemetery which was formally established in 1891 but was used for interments whilst the hospital existed. A total of 363 Islander patients died at the hospital and were presumably all buried in the cemetery. The Maryborough Pacific Islander Hospital buildings were removed in 1892 and some equipment moved to the Maryborough Hospital which established a separate Kanaka ward. The site of the Pacific Island Hospital and cemetery was left vacant until sold off as vacant land in 1911. A controversy arose a couple of years when the Maryborough Council was considering allowing building on the former site. Action were than taken to have the site declared a heritage area. The outcome for this has not yet been decided. If building approval were to happen one can only hope that a suitable memorial and monument is placed there to remind everyone of Maryborough’s role in the South Sea Islander traffic. The site is near Tinana 5 kms west of Maryborough.

  

The first South Sea Islander labourers arrived at the port of Maryborough in 1867 on the schooner Mary Smith. All were male and found employed straight away with the Maryborough Sugar Company. They were paid £6 per year (paid at the end for the three year contract) compared with a white labourers who would have received up to £30 a year. The Islanders also were fed and housed which the white labourers were not. The Maryborough Sugar Company also paid for the voyage to and from the South Sea Islands. When the Mary borough Pacific Islander Hospital closed in 1888 it was partially because the number for South Sea Islanders was declining in the district. Numbers continued to fall in the 1890s as sugar profits declined. Then all South Sea Islanders were covered by the “White Australia Acts” of the new Federal Government in 1901. At that time the Islander population in Queensland was at its peak with around 9,000 Islanders. Commonwealth legislation banned recruitment from 1904 and started deportation in 1906. By 1908 7,000 Islanders had been deported and about 2,000 were allowed to stay on in Australia because of marriage or health or other issues. Over the life time of the South Sea Islander trade around 60,000 Islanders had been brought into Queensland and of those about a quarter were employed in the Maryborough district.

 

The Port of Maryborough.

The town actually began with a wharf as once prospective settlers learned that the River Mary was navigable white pastoralist and cotton and maize farmers moved into the district upstream from around 1848. Then in 1859 as the colony of Queensland was created from New South Wales a new international port was created at Maryborough. The town had moved from West Maryborough to the present site. Consequently the first Customs House was erected in 1861. In 1860 the first vessels arrived at the port of Maryborough direct from Europe with a load of immigrants. In 1869 nearly 7,000 immigrants had landed in Maryborough and by 1878 nearly 16,000 had landed here. In fact between 1860 and 1900 around 22,000 immigrants arrived directly in Maryborough from England and Europe. Maryborough also had a coastal steamer service to Brisbane and Rockhampton. From 1867 it also handled all the goods going into and the gold coming out of the goldfields at Gympie. In the last quarter of the 19th century the port of Maryborough handled saw timber, sugar, wool, meat, gold, maize, etc. Before the end of the 19th century when river ports like Maryborough were about to be forgotten because they could not handle larger steamers its imports and exports were roughly in balance in terms of value. The most valuable exports were: gold, silver, copper, fruit, hides and skins, sugar and wool. Of these the most valuable were sugar £50,000, raw and refined, followed by silver/lead £33,000, gold/silver £9,000 and skin/hides £8,000.

 

Among the early immigrants were shiploads of German settlers from 1860. As the numbers grew the first Lutheran pastor arrived in 1864 followed by a second in 1867. These and later pastors came from Germany or Denmark, mainly the Schleswig district, which was occupied by Germany from 1864 after it defeated the Danes. Between 1860 and 1891 around 180,000 immigrants arrived in Queensland with an assisted government passage and some rights to lease land. Around 16,000 were non British mainly Germans, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes. Other Australian colonies only gave assisted passages to British immigrants except for Tasmania and Queensland. Most of the non-British immigrants were German but the QLD government’s agent I Germany also recruited Scandinavians, Swiss etc. Queensland became the colony with the greatest number of Danes and it had almost as many Norwegians and Swedes as NSW. Some of these non-British immigrant’s landed in Maryborough with the first ship load arriving in March 1871 on the Reichstag from Hamburg. The Scandinavians especially settled at Tiaro and Tinana near Maryborough, around Bundaberg, Pialba at Hervey Bay and in other places like Kingaroy where Sir Jo Bjelke-Petersen lived. The town of Eidsvold, near Gayndah is a Norwegian name and it was established by the Archer brothers from Larvik in Norway. As most of the Scandinavians were Lutheran (but some were Catholic), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish names are often linked to the Lutheran churches of the Maryborough district. Some Scandinavian names (mainly Danish) of Maryborough early settlers include the Jocumsen, Claussen,Madsen, Kehlet, Weinberg, Okeden, Boge, Möller, etc. Many Danish and other Scandinavian names can also be found in the Polson cemetery at Pialba Hervey Bay such as Christensen, Hansen, Mortensen, Nielsen, Petersen, Thomsen etc.

 

A stroll down Kent Street from Pallas Street.

1. On the left is Queen Elizabeth rose garden.

2. The Dominion Milling Company factory site. Now derelict. The Maryborough flour mill when erected in 1890 was the furthest north in Australia. It was acquired by the Dominion Milling Company around 1910. The distinctive entrance arch was erected in 1915. All operations only ceased in 1977. In more recent years it has been a saw mill and an antiques centre.

3. The old power house from the 1920s when cities like Maryborough had their own electricity generator.

4. The Freemasons Centre.

5. On the right Maryborough High School. Its original grand buildings were opened in 1881 as Maryborough Girls Grammar School.

6. On the left beyond the school oval is Maryborough Boys Grammar School erected in 1881 and the gates erected in 1909. It is now the TAFE campus.

7. The Maryborough Central School. The first school was established in 1862. The grand l two storey building was erected at the height of the European immigration period in 1875. More wooden classrooms were built in 1882 as the infant’s school.

8. On right is the City Hall. Built 1906 in American colonial style in red brick. Australia’s only pneumonic plaque outbreak occurred in Maryborough in 1905. Eight people died and a plaque commemorates that sad event.

9. On the left the School of Arts. 427 Kent St. This grand classical building was designed by Adelaide architect John Grainger. It was completed in 1888 replacing a former wooden school of arts building. In 1972 it was purchased by the City of Maryborough for use as a library. The round windows above oblong windows is unusual. Cost £3,500.

10. On the right. Finney Isles and Co store 1908. The building was designed by the prominent Bundaberg architect, F. H. Faircloth. Alterations were undertaken to the building in 1918 due to the expansion of Finney, Isles & Co business. The building was purchased by Fritz Kinne in 1923 and their name is in the central pediment. This German background businessman was an alderman and twice Mayor of Maryborough.384 Kent St

11. On the left before the next intersection. This was the Stupart’s Emporium built in 1883. No 373 Kent St.

13. On the right. The Royal Hotel. Built in 1868 and given its “royal patronage” authority by Governor Bowen of Queensland in that year. Established in 1856 and totally rebuilt in this classical style in 1902.

14. On left at 331 Kent St. The former Australian Joint Stock Bank built in 1882. Great classical features but the windows are too narrow and spoil the effect. Main facade is on the side street. Its proportions are much better. The author of the Mary Poppins book P L Travers was born in the building in 1899. Her father Travers Goff was the bank manager at the time. She was born as Helen Goff. Her statue is next to the building. Look for the street crossing lights showing Mary Poppins.

14. On the left at 327 Kent St. Built in 1915 as the Queensland National bank. Now known as Woodstock House. Good height, grand pilasters up the sides of the building, fine pediment, Corinthian columns with acanthus leaves at the top, both triangular and rounded pediments above windows, good symmetry. A great classical style building.

15.On right at 310 Kent St is the former Francis Hotel. This was the site of the first hotel in Maryborough around 1852. A second storey was added in 1919 with lots of Edwardian woodwork on the balcony. It closed as a hotel in 1992.

16. On the right next to the hotel is the former stores of Douglas Helsham. Construction began in 1874 and was completed in 1875. Helsham employed a Brisbane architect James Cowlishaw.

17. On left at 297 Kent St. The former Royal Bank built in 1888 with almost some Art Nouveau curves. The architect was Italian Victor Caradini. The roof line pediment is “broken” and now includes the name Monsour. Fred Monsour was a Middle Eastern silk and fabric importer. With his brother they had several stores and warehouses but he name in the cartouche these days refers to Dr Monsour a local medical practitioner.

18. At the very end of Kent Street and to the right is the former Engineer’s Arms Hotel. This strange very narrow hotel between two streets was built in 1889 is Maryborough’s answer to the Flatiron building of New York.

  

A couple weeks ago I posted on the difficulties of spotting Oophaga lehmanni in the wild, and its threatened status (www.facebook.com/paul.bertner/posts/1954323497983506). After deliberating for a week, while cooped up with the flu and a sprained finger, and rummaging online for records of O. lehmanni, I was struck not only by the overall dearth, but by the almost complete lack of 'in situ' images, with not a single one illustrating behaviour or a decent representation of the environment. For a critically threatened species, one whose risk of extinction is quite high, this to me represented a tremendous oversight. Though I'd already tried and failed to capture some behaviour shots on a short previous expedition, I decided to dedicate a week to the endeavour, if for no other reason than to have a record befitting such an elegant species.

 

Travelling to the same site as before, I settled in to photograph calling behaviours. Setting aside a week to get this rather modest shot was giving myself quite a lot of latitude I thought...I was wrong. Three days in and I had little to show for my efforts, resorting to shooting at 300mm + 1.4X TC, I was still struggling to surprise this elusive gem. Though I could hear the frogs calling, and could even see them doing so, creeping up on them and getting a respectable photo was proving an altogether different kind of a problem.

 

I tried remote shooting (however they rarely returned to the same perch, causing the framing to be off), I tried hides (though after waiting 2-3hrs in mosquito infested areas with the slightest movement causing the frogs to go diving back into root tangles proved frustrating to say the least). Nothing seemed to work, and I was beginning to despair.

 

This begged the question, "Why would a poisonous species which supposedly has no known predators be so timid?" The answer somewhat surprised me, "researchers". Apparently the frequent capture-release monitoring of the local populations has resulted in a rather poignant behavioural change. A species which would otherwise be fearlessly hopping the rainforest understory has had its buzzing call muted. It was a potent reminder of our influence on the natural world, whether it represents a kind of Schroedinger's cat problem, in which our very observation and monitoring of a species ultimately impacts its natural behaviours, or whether it's something more intrusive or sinister like manipulation for an aesthetic image or poaching, respectively.

 

We have to go further in I told the guide. And so we walked, and we walked and still the frogs fell silent at the sound of our approaching footfalls. 6 hours later, 2 of which we left the already weedy trail completely to bushwhack, and we came to a spot where we crept up upon a calling frog. It continued its buzzing call despite undoubtedly having already seen us. I made sure to shoot without flash and with a long lens to prevent any kind of potential habituation/aversion. Moments later a second male appeared from behind a leaf and they immediately began to wrestle. They flipped one another repeatedly, interspersed with calls. Rather evenly matched, this went on for almost 15 minutes. Finally the victor held his ground, whilst the vanquished retreated from the hallowed ground.

 

Upon reviewing the photos and videos, I felt privileged to have witnessed such a behaviour from a vanishing species. This is perhaps even truer than I'd originally thought, the two males despite their verisimilitude actually appear to be different species/sub-species. While one has all the characteristics befitting O. lehmanni, the other whose white fingertips, slightly broadened head and differing banding patterns indicates some degree of hybridization with the very closely related Oophaga histrionica. Perhaps extinction will not come in the form of habitat loss or extinction (though harbour no illusions that this undoubtedly plays its role), but through hybridization, and its absorption into a larger more robust population. To purists and hobbyists this would still represent a tragedy, though perhaps it's a gentler swan song, a muting of a call rather than its abrupt silencing.

 

Photos from the Cauca Valley, Colombia.

 

pbertner.wordpress.com/ethical-exif-ee/

---------------------

EE Legend

-Health injury/stress levels (scale 1-10-->☠️)

👣-Translocation

⏳-time in captivity

📷 -in situ

- Manipulated subject

🎨 -Use of cloning or extensive post processing

↺ -Image rotation

Religious Belief

  

Main article: Rainbows in mythology

The rainbow has a place in legend owing to its beauty and the historical difficulty in explaining the phenomenon.

In Greco-Roman mythology, the rainbow was considered to be a path made by a messenger (Iris) between Earth and Heaven.

In Chinese mythology, the rainbow was a slit in the sky sealed by goddess Nüwa using stones of five different colours.

In Hindu religion, the rainbow is called Indradhanush, meaning "the bow (Sanskrit and Hindi: dhanush is bow) of Indra, the god of lightning, thunder and rain". Another Indian mythology says the rainbow is the bow of Rama, the incarnation of Vishnu. It is called Rangdhonu in Bengali, dhonu (dhanush) meaning bow. Likewise, in mythology of Arabian Peninsula, the rainbow, called Qaus Quzaħ in Arabic, is the war bow of the god Quzaħ.

In Armenian mythology rainbow - is a belt of Tir, which was originally a god Sun, and then - god of knowledge. Eating options are apricot's belt, Belt of Our Lady or the Arch of God.

In Norse Mythology, a rainbow called the Bifröst Bridge connects the realms of Ásgard and Midgard, homes of the gods and humans, respectively. The Irish leprechaun's secret hiding place for his pot of gold is usually said to be at the end of the rainbow. This place is impossible to reach, because the rainbow is an optical effect which depends on the location of the viewer. When walking towards the end of a rainbow, it will appear to "move" further away (two people who simultaneously observe a rainbow at different locations will disagree about where a rainbow is).

Another ancient portrayal of the rainbow is given in the Epic of Gilgamesh: the rainbow is the "jewelled necklace of the Great Mother Ishtar" that she lifts into the sky as a promise that she "will never forget these days of the great flood" that destroyed her children. (The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet Eleven)

Then Ishtar arrived. She lifted up the necklace of great jewels that her father, Anu, had created to please her and said, "Heavenly gods, as surely as this jewelled necklace hangs upon my neck, I will never forget these days of the great flood. Let all of the gods except Enlil come to the offering. Enlil may not come, for without reason he brought forth the flood that destroyed my people."

According to Christian religion and Judaic religion, after Noah's flood God put the rainbow in the sky as the sign of His promise that He would never again destroy the earth with flood (Genesis 9:13–17):[33]

I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

In the Dreamtime of Australian Aboriginal mythology, the rainbow snake is the deity governing water. In Amazonian cultures, rainbows have long been associated with malign spirits that cause harm, such as miscarriages and (especially) skin problems. In the Amuesha language of central Peru, certain diseases are called ayona’achartan, meaning "the rainbow hurt my skin". A tradition of closing one's mouth at the sight of a rainbow in order to avoid disease appears to pre-date the Incan empire.[34][35]

In New Age and Hindu philosophy, the seven colours of the rainbow represent the seven chakras, from the first chakra (red) to the seventh chakra (violet).

~William Ellery Channing

 

Exposure: 15"

Aperture: f/11.0

Focal Length: 18 mm

ISO Speed: 200

As if this Joshua tree didn't already have enough trouble, trying to exist in a crack between two huge rocks. But then something caused its trunk to snap

The difficulty of moss and lichen photography is that it would require a large depth of field, which is unattainable at this magnification. I only closed the aperture to 11 to avoid that the forest behind the moss becomes too defined and distracting.

It has been said that every generation has changes to adjust to and I don’t believe ours was much different than the changes prior generations coped and adjusted to. World War II children had all that murder and trauma, the children of the depression had the poverty and uncertainties of life, children like my grandfather at the turn of the century witnessed the evolution of things like electricity, the coming of age of gadgets to make life easier in certain ways. This is just the nature of the species to be in a constant change. Perhaps for my life this change was in the types of recreational items we consumed in pursuit of what? Happiness, experience, wisdom, knowledge? Time will let us know the results of this experiment.

 

This age, the now, is this the computer age, the beginning of the computer age as it seems those machines change, improve, and expand almost daily. There was a need for me to plug in an old computer system, one with Windows 3.1 as the operating system, it was probably ten years old, and it was like driving an old frail car on its last legs. How quickly the new becomes old and discarded. My current computer gurus laugh when I say I am comfortable in Windows 95, the benefits of 98, 2000, and XP being so superior to this old program I write in. When I was recently forced to examine the possibility of purchasing a replacement unit for this sick PC the number of options was incredible. I had to choose between so many computer variables, memory, ram, hard drive, video cards, speakers, size of screen, wide screen or regular and this was just in the low end category of notebooks. Processors were confusing, I had to chose between, Celeron and Pentium and Centrino all of this with the knowledge that what I purchased was going to be somewhat obsolete in a year or so.

 

Shift back to 1968, the summer of. Hi-jinks continued and one high led to another as young entrepreneurs were everywhere marketing pot and hashish, mescaline, LSD, and MDA, along with speed, heroin, and cocaine. We were still juiceheads having done our time learning this pastime the other items slowly got some of our dollars as we became more knowledgeable of their attributes. There was an acid trip I took early that summer when on getting off I thought I had shrunken to the size of an infant and I tried to get under the bed of the rooming house we called The White House. The guys had never seen this behaviour before, the idea of a “Bad Trip” was something the press always harped on to advance the cops theory that all drugs are bad. We didn’t like cops. That summer a groovy coffee shop opened in the basement of Vic’s’ Meat Pie store that faced onto Weston Rd, Vics was next door to the Black Cat Variety Store named after a brand of cigarettes popular at the time. Vics backroom was a dingy place, poorly lit with several tables set with single candles in coloured dishes giving off a red glow The owner served coffee and cokes and bags of chips. We dropped something, it could have been acid who remembers. Big Vic the owner had a CLOSED sign in his window out front, so we went to the back doors through the laneway that ran behind the shops and found half the kids in the neighborhood down there. Younger kids too, all high on something or the other grooving to some tunes. Two local plainclothes coppers come walking in dressed in ridiculous costumes, a lumberjack shirt for one burly goof named Criscoe and a ball cap and jeans for his side kick Smith, we spotted them right away and razzed them even though we were ripped. It was the original Mutt and Jeff show. We just left and the place emptied everyone had somewhere to go and listen to tunes, and not be disturbed.

 

We hung out at the Place Pigalle on Avenue Road. After the Place closed we’d go to this spot this guy from the States had opened a funky coffee shop on Dupont St not to far from the bar and we would go there half pissed and sit around listening to his eclectic tunes. This spot we called Rocheyz, but if you were to spell it correctly it would be Roches. The owner was like a Vietnam Vet kind of guy who looked like Ginger Rogers, his red hair tied in a pony tail. He was always talking about shitting in a hole, made a good mockery of consumer life and in his small way turned us on to the coffee shop ideology of former beat types like Ginsberg and Kerouac without actually preaching their names. He served weird stuff like tofu and beet juice tea, the lighting was real dim so you could just hangout forever, we heard somewhere that he was a junkie.

 

Most of the guys were still in High School at York Memo except for Billy, he worked somewhere maybe for the firebrick company, everything was going to change for everyone, guys were getting serious about chicks, I just wanted to party, Pete was going to St Lawrence College in New York State on a full hockey scholarship, the brothers Frank and Jack were off to Peterborough to study at the newly opened Trent University. Count was top of the class and doing quite well at U of T. I had my own directions to follow.

 

One day I was servicing the fire equipment at a place called McPhar Geophysics; this was located in Don Mills, a suburb of Toronto with an area that had streets full of small manufacturing plants and warehouses. Don Mills is thought of an upper middle class area of very sharp homes. In the receiving department at McPhar there was a lot of exploration gear, things like, snowshoes, canoes, axes and I guess it was like going on a movie set for me, as my eyes bulged. The closest I’d ever gotten to a pair of snowshoes was by watching the show Eric of the Yukon and His dog King, or something like that. A big swarthy guy with a beard and coveralls ran the shipping department and I wasn’t shy, I asked what this company did as he packaged neat things to be shipped to addresses printed in big lettering on the parcels, exciting names like, Rouyan/Noranda, Quebec, Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Sao Paolo, Brazil. This outfit was the leader in geophysical surveying in Canada, maybe the world as the founder of the company had invented this piece of machinery for use in WW-II to detect submarines underwater or something like that, when things get technical, remember Science class I get edgy. They found a use for the discovery in the mining industry, locating ore bodies.

 

Here’s how it worked. A typical set up would consist of six people, in the woods in an area, a remote area, near a mine site or a potential mining site. The party operator would put his Receiver on the ground, it was like an electronic sending unit, full of numerous incomprehensible to me buttons, switches, graphs and toggle like switches. This operator we’ll call him John Parker cause that was the guys name I trained with at the first place in Val D’Or Quebec in early January 1969. From Parkers’ receiver a number of wires with crocodile clips, each wire about twelve feet long, were unrolled and hooked up to my piece of machinery, the Transmitter. This little baby was my (the second in commands) equipment. It also had a lot of buttons and switches and a place for Parkers six wires to attach to. Maybe there were three positive and three negative wires. The transmitter was supplied power by a portable generator carried on some bodies back in a rucksack type fashion. In turn the wires were attached to longer wires, some a hundred feet long at six stations, three in front of the set up at certain intervals and three behind the set up at similar intervals. These wires were attached to eight foot steel rods which had been pounded into the ground by staff hired locally using big sledge ended axes. The gas generator was fired up and Parker would play with his buttons and ask me to change the frequency on my piece of equipment, like a parrot I would take his directions, then he would take numbers, called readings and write them into a book. Electric current was sent through the wires into the ground and our machinery somehow measured the results and this would give mining engineers the information they needed as to what direction the mineral they were mining was in or if there were any minerals worth mining for. At night it was our job, Parker and mine to take the days numbers and put them on graph paper, we had to use a slide ruler and this was a little tough for my grade nine math, especially since I’d told the owner/boss Ash Mullan that I had grade twelve which he bought since I showed up for my interview in my nice Invictus Football Team jacket, crew cut and all. I winged the night work for quite some time and thought I had invented a better way of doing the radius work, which we’ll get to in a while. After the mining engineers received these reports which I suppose they paid big money for they, if interested would send in a crew to drill the earth and take out what they call core samples that could be studied to determine the worth of the project.

 

For some reason this was a big thing, me leaving town to work away. It was like I was going to war which I tried to do twice, once a few years earlier the Canadian Navy turned me down for service after my final interview when they asked me my opinion on the Americans in Vietnam, I said, “they shouldn’t be there,” oops so much for saying the wrong thing about your allies, and that year 68 Bill and I tried to sign up for of all things the United States Marines. One time when we were down in Niagara Falls getting drunk at the Johns Club, a place where you went in and they took your order and like a man you’d say, “I’ll have a tray please,” and a waitress would bring you thirty small glasses of beer, and in less than an hour you were so pissed and you’d go for a leak and come back to your table and Bill had changed his name to something like Steve McQueen and he was actually on a movie shoot in the Falls and just taking a little time off for R&R and the ladies fell for it a few times! The following week after sobering up we headed back to Niagara Falls on a mission. The marines recruiting office was in a warehousey part of town in an old factory or something and they told us to go sign up for our own armed forces. I removed some kind of emblem, like a bomb shelter sign off the building and along with my other collectibles stuck it on a wall in the White House.

 

So it wasn’t as if this was the first time I tried to leave, it was the first time I actually got to leave. Close to my departing there was a big drunken go away, everyone was there, all the chicks we hung out with, Barb, kind of my date but we never did anything, Debbie , soon to be Jacks wife, Mickey who Pete was spending a lot of time with on the hood of his little mini car, Phyllis this Italian chick who was hounding Frank, Herbie’s girl, beautiful Ruth Hope the ministers daughter, Bill was still stagging it, it was a big thing, a big party. Mom had moved the family up to an apartment on Weston Road near Cadet Cleaners and Sid’s barbershop. Prior to that we had lived at 26 Victoria Blvd forever, the landlord, a Mr.Gowland must have sold the house. Alex was away on some secret mission we don’t really know where, rumour had it he was in the States on a football scholarship, another rumour was he was in Montreal. The younger kids were there, Kevin, Shane, Sue and Barb as well as mom who loved the teenagers coming over. The party got a little loud and out of hand, I recall the yellow cop cars parked on Weston Road, their red flashing roof top lights, then the cops coming in the front door and all of us running out the back door, and through to Buttonwood Avenue or was it Bartonville and then all of us hiding in the hedges at Bala Avenue school. We left the cops with mom who were busy asking her who was still drinking there, we all got away, we were all underage, and that’s just how it was then.

 

McPhar was a generous company, a few weeks prior to Parker and I leaving for Val D’Or they had me in for an afternoon, had me open up a new bank account where my cheque of $900.00 a month would be deposited, gave a start up expense cheque of $300.00 from which I was to purchase, felt lined snow boots, waterproof pants and a below zero parka. This was way before high tech clothing was available. Down on Yonge Street I found an Army Surplus shop that had neat war stuff and I bought a knee length grey parka, down filled, with a piece of dead fur on the hood. Some of the air force crests and badges were still on the sleeves. For pants I picked a pair of blue nylon jobs that were about half an inch thick with insulation. I should have spent more on boots though as the cheap dark blue zipper up snowmobile feltpaks I purchased were no match for eight hours trekking in snow at times six feet deep. My co-worker, trainer, boss John Parker met me midtown, he had rented a brand new olive coloured Pontiac four door for the drive up to Quebec, we didn’t get to far that first night as a winter storm forced us off the road in Barrie where I had a taste of a company bought motel room and a nice steak dinner, I knew right then I was going to love this gig.

 

Next day the snow still fell and I drove for a while giving Parker a break, it was rough driving up around Sudbury and when we turned right up towards Kirkland Lake this was the first time I’d truly been north. Prior to that us southern boys would think of Barrie as being north I would quickly discover that the North was a large area comprised of incredible terrain, long views, kind people, and a coldness that was not at all like the cold of Toronto. We made it to Val D’Or Quebec not to far from the Ontario border, perhaps an hour’s drive. Our hotel was an old two storey wood framed structure a few blocks from the centre of town which was about the size of Gravenhurst. The streets were covered in snow like a postcard. For meals there was an arrangement with the hotel to make us breakfast and a packed lunch, we would tell them how many sandwiches of what type, peanut butter(beurre d’arachide) and jam, or sliced ham(jambon), and so on. Dinners we went in to town and had a hot meal, anything within reason, no alcohol, and the company paid for everything.

 

Walking into town you could better understand the quietness of this village, as some kids skated and played hockey at an outdoor rink with boards, the heat from their breath coming out of their mouths, a pair of incandescent bulbs glared under round aluminum hoods illuminating the ice rink at each end. Nobody was on the streets, thick smoke poured from the chimneys of the tiny homes, some cabin like in size. The smell of burning firewood filled the air with that type of sweetness which a log of apple or some other such wood gives off. In town, I looked inside a few drinking establishments, now and then, had a couple of beers, spotted the older hookers plying their trade at the front of the bars dressed in obvious get ups, black, torn fishnet stockings, rouged cheeks and their breasts busting out from clothing that was meant for younger smaller ladies. In Ontario towns you would not see such flagrant prostitution, Quebec was more lenient, more accepting of mans need for comfort. Being on my best behaviour I mostly observed as I was learning a new trade and I did not want to jeopardize this by acting up.

 

Our first day in the woods was a Sunday our day off and Parker took me to a field to practice snowshoeing, I caught on immediately after falling a few times. It is quite a neat experience as the body is suspended above the snow which was quite deep, perhaps three or five feet deep. Your feet do sink in a few inches depending on the crustiness of the snow but then they stop and you learn quickly to walk like a penguin, that is with your feet intentionally pointing left and right instead of straight ahead so your snow shoes will not catch each other. To me this was like a new sport. Going up hills was a skill as was descending hills and making turns, after a while it became natural. As the day began the leather harness was easy to use as it was warm and pliable. After a day’s work it could be frozen solid and difficult to manage. Complicating matters was the fact that we wore packs to move our gear through the woods, my transmitter weighed in at ninety pounds so the effort required was high and often this would test the abilities of any man. Whoever led the party through the pre-staked areas of survey would have the added burden of breaking fresh snow so the followers had a bit of an easier walk.

 

Our gig in Val D’Or was not very lengthy, about three weeks. I was for the most part able to do the work with pleasure and discovered these long days out in the snow, in nature were much to my liking. There was an eerie absence of wildlife for some reason, I guess I expected to see deer and moose and bears around every corner but this was not the case. Nights in the town were so much like a Cornelius Krieghoff painting, snow covered cabins with smoke pouring from the chimneys the joie de vivre of the townsfolk. My limited French vocabulary was a valued asset as I could in short time communicate my needs in very rudimentary terms, ham of course was jambon, beurre d’arachides was peanut butter, what I then had difficulty with as I do today is the rapidity of the conversations, a smile was always available as well as at times a questioning look.

 

There was a short furlough in Toronto for a week while the next gig was being prepared for, it was to be in Kirkland Lake with a few days here and there in Timmins. These towns were gold mining centres from earlier times. I was flush with cash as there was nowhere to spend money in Val Dor except the occasional biere at one of the many French pubs. My finances had always been precarious. There was the matter of a small loan in the amount of about seven hundred dollars that I owed HFC and I had no intention of ever paying it. Those dupes had loaned me money for Christmas presents one year at their ridiculous rate of twenty percent. Like I was going to buy presents, I drank all the money in about three weeks. A goofy manager at the HFC office in Weston, upstairs from a shop took me in to sign some forms, swear allegiance to pay this debt, he was a Canadian version of Snidely Whiplash, an English born chap who would have been more suited to being a prison guard. Besides this debt I was in the clear and once I left Dyer and Miller and I changed addresses the loan to HFC was not a consideration and I highly recommend every body do this at least once in life, that is get a loan from some rip off organization and stiff them. Get a bogus birth certificate or something, and get a loan.

 

There were parties of course on my return you would have thought I’d been away for years. The following Sunday I was to make my way to Kirkland Lake Ontario via train. I’d never been on a train ride except for the time we came home from Parry Sound all drunked up on the warm Labatt 50s. At the station Frank came to see me off and at the last minute I said why don’t you come along for the ride as I had a bag of grass to smoke and he had nothing to do. It wasn’t long before we were smoking the joints, I had pre rolled them, there were about thirty, the dope was pretty mild, not like today’s killer weed. We smoked between the trains cars. Back in the coach someone was reading a book called Five Easy Pieces and if you stared long enough you could make the letters interchange sort of a mini hallucination. Six joints later and a couple of sandwiches we were in Kirkland Lake. Getting off the train we noticed the temperature was 35 degrees below zero and this was a big thing for us city boys. Parker, the boss met me at the train, I introduced him to Frank and he hired him on the spot to work on the crew which was to start soon.

 

Frank was kind of gangly at the time, going through a growth spurt, he was always bent over because he was taller than everyone else, he had a gentle manner and enjoyed the usual stuff, like, beer, tokes and women. I loaned him some money and he bought a suitable work outfit, some clothes as he had nothing but the clothes on his back. I recall he purchased a better pair of felt pack boots than mine, the ones with the leather uppers bonded to heavy rubber bottoms that were more waterproof especially if you put Dubbin on them at night. At the Parklane Hotel we shared a room, we had management give us an extra roll a way bed and the cost was quite minimal, they ran a tab for Frank. Meals were taken in the hotel dining room and lunches were prepared for us. As I recall the room was quite small we literally had to crawl over each other to get to the can.

 

We had a day off before work started and that first night in downtown Kirkland was like magic. The Beatles new recording Hey Jude was broadcast live around the world and we caught this in an empty shabby store front bar. Outside it was freezing cold but the coldness was different, it was a dry cold, the wind not holding the same sharp bite as a Toronto wind blowing off of Lake Ontario. The women were looking pretty good and I had a new pick up line, “mon petite serpent” at this the ladies would almost instantly run and hide. Doctor Doolittle was playing at the local theatre and one night we went to the show ripped on our mediocre weed, leaving the theatre singing the songs that were sung in the movie.

 

Work was difficult as it was cold and there was a lot of snow. Town was exciting, our hotel had a Tavern in the basement where a stripper appeared in the evenings. Her name was Patty and we affectionately called her the Portuguese Pig, I don’t know why because we never got any where with her, she had a room in the hotel and we’d always be sneaking peeks at her boobs as she changed before shows. A friend of hers named Candy was around now and then and I thought she was pretty special but again it was like we were all Toronto outcasts and this alone made us buddies. Somewhere down the line Patty the Portuguese Pig knew Bil and she had a crush on him. Nights would find us in the Tavern listening to crappy groups who kept playing a Credence Clearwater Revival song called Proud Mary and the Tom Jones tune, Green Green Grass of Home. Parker was sorry he had hired Frank because we didn’t ever have our minds on the job and we were always hung over. Bill would call regularly he was ready to escape his reality.

 

One night we borrowed the company car and drove to Rouyn Noranda for beers with these French Hippies, a guy and his chick whom we met the week previous at the Kirkland Winter Carnival. Rouyn was not far maybe fifty miles and while there we smoked some nice hash that they had and Frank was making a move on the chick. We got pretty high and it was time to get back to Kirkland. Frank started to drive while I was napping, we were half way to Montreal when I woke up and noticed a road sign that said Montreal ahead 150 miles, this was before the metric system had been imposed on us. We assessed the situation and turned around we were about three hours from Kirkland Lake We got back just as the sun was coming up. The boss, John Parker never had a clue. Another time we were hung over and it was bloody cold, we didn’t feel like working, I dropped my receiver climbing over a farm fence and called Parker over, he turned the machine on and had to take it to the little airport and ship it out to have it repaired. That was good for a couple of days off. Of course there were times when we had no days off, we would work fourteen days straight if the crew was willing so it all worked out.

 

A job near Timmins not to far away needed us so we drove over got rooms in some el cheapo hotel where Patty the Portuguese Pig and her friend Candy were working and this was great because the girls had now let us tie their bikini tops on before shows and apply the glue to the pasties and then watch as the girls pushed them on over their luscious nipples, still no touching, just looking. This trip would be my introduction to snowmobiles. At seven in the morning we left the rooms and piled into the company car, the same four door Pontiac, Parker always drove. We drove to a remote area, parked the car then a few men would show up with ski doos and drive us the final half hour into the worksite as we sat on sleds pulled by the ski doos. It was a far cry from the glamour and hot rodding associated with today’s snowmobilers. Our work was done on a frozen lake a new experience for me, there were long views of barren landscapes, tree lined lakes not a bird or animal insight. Timmins had more bars than Kirkland as unlike Kirkland it was still a thriving gold mining community while Kirkland had began to lose its roll as king of the gold mining towns. Sid Bernstein an old Jewish waiter I met later in life at the Seaway Beverly Hills Hotel had been to Kirkland in the 1930s and he talked about the boom days, the Gold Rush Fever.

 

Work was an endless day of carrying gear over strange moonscape like terrain, areas where no trees existed; as it was snow covered you never got a feel for the land. Parker took care of the night work being a real stickler for accuracy and a dedicated employee, he seemed content to work all day have a meal, go to his room and do the calculations with the slide ruler and chart the results inked on the special roll of graph paper for this purpose. It wasn’t ever necessary for him to socialize, have a beer with the guys, he was work oriented, I’d never met anyone like this before. John Parker came from Saskatchewan, had a degree from DeVry Tech a technical school and when he wasn’t working he had his head in some learning type book, never a novel or something fun. Yet this mismatch of personalities did not deter us from getting the work done, it was hard work, perhaps the hardest I would ever endure and I have to respect that man from Saskatchewan as he never complained always was a good leader. Later on the job I learned that the preferred employee came from a farming background as this type of person was used to long hard days in adverse conditions, and did not suffer the need of rest and relaxation. The job ended and Frank headed back to Toronto with a few dollars in his pocket and this bonding would keep us friends forever.

 

“Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.” - Rabindranath Tagore

 

My friend moved to a new, very old house in the country - Good luck!!!

 

With many thanks to NinianLif for the texture.

 

FREE texture from NinianLif

  

Windy day adding difficulty in climbing up the stairs to Big Buddha.

A surprise entrant into the ranks of Stagecoach in Hull's new dark blue livery crew was 11201, a bus which... well, it seems I'd had some difficulty getting photos of it in the past. But before this was considered to be brought into the paint shop, this bus was taken out of service on the evening of 7th of March 2024 in one of the most unusual bus crashes I've seen yet. A photo from the Hull Daily Mail shows 11201 behind some barriers and resting with a smashed up front end on the Bude Road pavement, having somehow demolished a bus stop while working an 11 to Kingswood - not the 10 as Sofie Jackson would have you believe. Rather amusingly, there's a passenger still standing at the stop, almost like they're waiting for another 11 to come along.

 

The crash, however, left the front end of 11201 bent in quite a bit, so its no surprise that a complicated repairs process meant it eventually returned to service at the back end of July 2024. Then this February gone, it disappeared again, only to reappear back in the new brand. With it being a very nice day for it, I picked my spot on Bransholme and found myself pleasantly surprised but not one, but the two new livery buses from this batch within minutes of each other! Ah, if only they timed it right, I'd have got both in one go.

 

Seen here among the blossoming trees of Noddle Hill Way - credit to the driver for slowing so I could get the full effect in! - Stagecoach in Hull's recently-repainted 11201, a 2019 ADL Enviro400 MMC, approaches Wawne Road on a 12 to Hull Interchange.

I had difficulties with Nanami for a while. I quess it was just the fact that she's more beautiful than cute.But when I now redressed her with more casual clothes and stopped being afraid to mess her curly long hair, I love her again ^^ Funny how simple the solution can be.

 

These pics were taken just supaquick because the sun was already going down. That's why her clothes are so wrinkled too :<

Ben Nevis is the highest mountain in Scotland, the United Kingdom and the British Isles. The summit is 1,345 metres (4,413 ft) above sea level and is the highest land in any direction for 739 kilometres (459 miles). Ben Nevis stands at the western end of the Grampian Mountains in the Highland region of Lochaber, close to the town of Fort William.

 

The mountain is a popular destination, attracting an estimated 130,000 ascents a year, around three-quarters of which use the Mountain Track from Glen Nevis. The 700-metre (2,300 ft) cliffs of the north face are among the highest in Scotland, providing classic scrambles and rock climbs of all difficulties for climbers and mountaineers. They are also the principal locations in Scotland for ice climbing.

 

The summit, which is the collapsed dome of an ancient volcano, features the ruins of an observatory which was continuously staffed between 1883 and 1904. The meteorological data collected during this period is still important for understanding Scottish mountain weather. C. T. R. Wilson was inspired to invent the cloud chamber after a period spent working at the observatory.

 

Ben Nevis is the Anglicisation of the Scottish Gaelic name Beinn Nibheis. Whilst Beinn is the common Scottish Gaelic word for 'mountain' the origin of Nibheis is unclear.

 

Nibheis may preserve an earlier Pictish form, *Nebestis or *Nebesta, involving the Celtic root *neb, meaning 'clouds' (compare: Welsh nef )., thus 'Cloudy Mountain'.

 

Nibheis may also have an origin with the words nèamh meaning 'heaven' (which is related to the modern Scottish Gaelic word neamh meaning 'bright, shining') and bathais meaning 'the top of a man's head'. Thus, Beinn Nibheis could derive from beinn nèamh-bhathais, "the mountain with its head in the clouds", or 'mountain of heaven'.

 

The Scottish Gaelic word neimh can be translated as 'malice', 'poison' or 'venom' giving 'venomous mountain', possibly describing the storms that envelop the summit.

 

As is common for many Scottish mountains, it is known both to locals and visitors as simply the Ben.

 

Ben Nevis forms a massif with its neighbours to the northeast, Càrn Mòr Dearg, to which it is linked by the Càrn Mòr Dearg Arête, Aonach Beag and Aonach Mòr. All four are Munros and among the eleven mountains in Scotland over 4,000 feet (1,200 m) (of which nine are currently listed as Munros).

Western flank of the Nevis massif; from Sgùrr Dhòmhnuill

 

The western and southern flanks of Ben Nevis rise 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) in about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) above the River Nevis flowing down Glen Nevis – the longest and steepest hill slope in Britain – with the result that the mountain presents an aspect of massive bulk on this side. To the north, by contrast, cliffs drop some 600 metres (2,000 ft) to Coire Leis

 

A descent of 200 metres (600') from this corrie leads to the Charles Inglis Clark Memorial Hut (known as the CIC Hut), a private mountain hut 680 metres (2,230 ft) above sea level, owned by the Scottish Mountaineering Club and used as a base for the many climbing routes on the mountain's north face. The hut is just above the confluence of Allt a' Mhuilinn and Allt Coire na Ciste.

 

In addition to the main 1,345-metre (4,413 ft) summit, Ben Nevis has two subsidiary "tops" listed in Munro's Tables, both of which are called Càrn Dearg ("red hill"). The higher of these, at 1,221 metres (4,006 ft), is to the northwest, and is often mistaken for Ben Nevis itself in views from the Fort William area. The other Càrn Dearg (1,020 m (3,350 ft)) juts out into Glen Nevis on the mountain's southwestern side. A lower hill, Meall an t-Suidhe (711 metres (2,333 ft)), is further west, forming a saddle with Ben Nevis which contains a small loch, Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe. The popular tourist path from Glen Nevis skirts the side of this hill before ascending Ben Nevis's broad western flank.

 

Ben Nevis is all that remains of a Devonian volcano that met a cataclysmic end in the Carboniferous period around 350 million years ago. Evidence near the summit shows light-coloured granite (which had cooled in subterranean chambers several kilometres; miles beneath the surface) lies among dark basaltic lavas (that form only on the surface). The two lying side by side is evidence the huge volcano collapsed in on itself creating an explosion comparable to Thera (2nd millennium BC) or Krakatoa (1883). The mountain is now all that remains of the imploded inner dome of the volcano. Its form has been extensively shaped by glaciation.

 

Research has shown igneous rock from the Devonian period (around 400 million years ago) intrudes into the surrounding metamorphic schists; the intrusions take the form of a series of concentric ring dikes. The innermost of these, known as the Inner Granite, constitutes the southern bulk of the mountain above Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe, and also the neighbouring ridge of Càrn Mòr Dearg; Meall an t-Suidhe forms part of the Outer Granite, which is redder in colour. The summit dome itself, together with the steep northern cliffs, is composed of andesite and basaltic lavas.

 

Ben Nevis has a highland tundra climate (ET in the Köppen classification). Ben Nevis's elevation, maritime location and topography frequently lead to cool and cloudy weather conditions, which can pose a danger to ill-equipped walkers. According to the observations carried out at the summit observatory from 1883 to 1904, fog was present on the summit for almost 80% of the time between November and January, and 55% of the time in May and June. The average winter temperature was around −5 °C (23 °F), and the mean monthly temperature for the year was −0.5 °C (31.1 °F). In an average year the summit sees 261 gales, and receives 4,350 millimetres (171 in) of rainfall, compared to only 2,050 millimetres (81 in) in nearby Fort William, 840 millimetres (33 in) in Inverness and 580 millimetres (23 in) in London. Rainfall on Ben Nevis is about twice as high in the winter as it is in the spring and summer. Snow can be found on the mountain almost all year round, particularly in the gullies of the north face – with the higher reaches of Observatory Gully holding snow until September most years and sometimes until the new snows of the following season.

 

The first recorded ascent of Ben Nevis was made on 17 August 1771 by James Robertson, an Edinburgh botanist, who was in the region to collect botanical specimens. Another early ascent was in 1774 by John Williams, who provided the first account of the mountain's geological structure. John Keats climbed the mountain in 1818, comparing the ascent to "mounting ten St. Pauls without the convenience of a staircase". The following year William MacGillivray, who was later to become a distinguished naturalist, reached the summit only to find "fragments of earthen and glass ware, chicken bones, corks, and bits of paper". It was not until 1847 that Ben Nevis was confirmed by the Ordnance Survey as the highest mountain in Britain and Ireland, ahead of its rival Ben Macdui.

 

The summit observatory was built in the summer of 1883, and would remain in operation for 21 years. The first path to the summit was built at the same time as the observatory and was designed to allow ponies to carry up supplies, with a maximum gradient of one in five. The opening of the path and the observatory made the ascent of the mountain increasingly popular, all the more so after the arrival of the West Highland Railway in Fort William in 1894. Around this time the first of several proposals was made for a rack railway to the summit, none of which came to fruition.

 

In 1911, an enterprising Ford dealer named Henry Alexander ascended the mountain in a Model T as a publicity stunt. The ascent was captured on film and can be seen in the archives of the British Film Institute. A statue of Alexander and the car was unveiled in Fort William in 2018.

 

In 2000, the Ben Nevis Estate, comprising all of the south side of the mountain including the summit, was bought by the Scottish conservation charity the John Muir Trust.

 

In 2016, the height of Ben Nevis was officially remeasured to be 1344.527m by Ordnance Survey. The height of Ben Nevis will therefore be shown on new Ordnance Survey maps as 1,345 metres (4,411 ft) instead of the now obsolete value of 1,344 metres (4,409 ft).

 

The 1883 Pony Track to the summit (also known as the Ben Path, the Mountain Path or the Tourist Route) remains the simplest and most popular route of ascent. It begins at Achintee on the east side of Glen Nevis about 2 km (1.2 mi) from Fort William town centre, at around 20 metres (60') above sea level. Bridges from the Visitor Centre and the youth hostel now allow access from the west side of Glen Nevis. The path climbs steeply to the saddle by Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe (colloquially known as the 'Halfway Lochan') at 570 m, then ascends the remaining 700 metres (2000') up the stony west flank of Ben Nevis in a series of zig-zags. The path is regularly maintained but running water, uneven rocks and loose scree make it hazardous and slippery in places. Thanks to the zig-zags, the path is not unusually steep apart from in the initial stages, but inexperienced walkers should be aware that the descent is relatively arduous and wearing on the knees.

 

A route popular with experienced hillwalkers starts at Torlundy, a few miles north-east of Fort William on the A82 road, and follows the path alongside the Allt a' Mhuilinn. It can also be reached from Glen Nevis by following the Pony Track as far as Lochan Meall an t-Suidhe, then descending slightly to the CIC Hut. The route then ascends Càrn Mòr Dearg and continues along the Càrn Mòr Dearg Arête ("CMD Arête") before climbing steeply to the summit of Ben Nevis. This route involves a total of 1,500 metres (5000') of ascent and requires modest scrambling ability and a head for heights. In common with other approaches on this side of the mountain, it has the advantage of giving an extensive view of the cliffs of the north face, which are hidden from the Pony Track.

 

It is also possible to climb Ben Nevis from the Nevis Gorge car park at Steall at the head of the road up Glen Nevis, either by the south-east ridge or via the summit of Càrn Dearg (south-west). These routes require mild scrambling, are shorter and steeper than the Pony Track, and tend only to be used by experienced hill walkers.

 

The summit of Ben Nevis comprises a large stony plateau of about 40 hectares (100 acres). The highest point is marked with a large, solidly built cairn atop which sits an Ordnance Survey trig point. The summit is the highest ground in any direction for 459 miles (739 km) before the Scandinavian Mountains in western Norway are reached.

 

The ruined walls of the observatory are a prominent feature on the summit. An emergency shelter has been built on top of the observatory tower for the benefit of those caught out by bad weather. Although the base of the tower is slightly lower than the true summit of the mountain, the roof of the shelter overtops the trig point by several feet, making it the highest man-made structure in the UK. A war memorial to the dead of World War II is located next to the observatory.

 

On 17 May 2006, a piano that had been buried under one of the cairns on the peak was uncovered by the John Muir Trust, which owns much of the mountain. The piano is believed to have been carried up for charity by removal men from Dundee over 20 years earlier.

 

The view from the UK's highest point is extensive. Under ideal conditions, it can extend to over 190 kilometres (120 mi), including such mountains as the Torridon Hills, Morven in Caithness, Lochnagar, Ben Lomond, Barra Head and to Knocklayd in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

 

A meteorological observatory on the summit was first proposed by the Scottish Meteorological Society (SMS) in the late-1870s, at a time when similar observatories were being built around the world to study the weather at high altitude. In the summer of 1881, Clement Lindley Wragge climbed the mountain daily to make observations (earning him the nickname "Inclement Rag"), leading to the opening on 17 October 1883 of a permanent observatory run by the SMS. The building was staffed full-time until 1904, when it was closed due to inadequate funding. The twenty years worth of readings still provide the most comprehensive set of data on mountain weather in Great Britain.

 

In September 1894, C. T. R. Wilson was employed at the observatory for a couple of weeks as temporary relief for one of the permanent staff. During this period, he witnessed a Brocken spectre and glory, caused by the sun casting a shadow on a cloud below the observer. He subsequently tried to reproduce these phenomena in the laboratory, resulting in his invention of the cloud chamber, used to detect ionising radiation.

 

Ben Nevis's popularity, climate and complex topography contribute to a high number of mountain rescue incidents. In 1999 there were 41 rescues and four fatalities on the mountain. It has also been estimated that there are several deaths annually on Ben Nevis.

 

In two avalanches that occurred on Ben Nevis in 2009 and 2016 two people died on both occasions. In two avalanches that occurred in 1970 and 2019 three people died on both occasions. A climber died in an avalanche on the north face in 2022.

 

Some accidents arise over difficulties in navigating to or from the summit, especially in poor visibility. The problem stems from the fact that the summit plateau is roughly kidney-shaped and surrounded by cliffs on three sides; the danger is particularly accentuated when the main path is obscured by snow. Two precise compass bearings taken in succession are necessary to navigate from the summit cairn to the west flank, from where a descent can be made on the Pony Track in relative safety.

 

In the late 1990s, Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team erected two posts on the summit plateau to assist walkers attempting the descent in foggy conditions. These posts were subsequently cut down by climbers, sparking controversy in mountaineering circles on the ethics of such additions. Critics argued that cairns and posts are an unnecessary man-made intrusion into the natural landscape, which create a false sense of security and could lessen mountaineers' sense of responsibility for their own safety.

 

Supporters of navigational aids pointed to the high number of accidents that occurred on the mountain. Between 1990 and 1995 alone there were 13 fatalities, although eight of these were due to falls while rock climbing rather than navigational error. Also there is a long tradition of placing such aids on the summit, and the potentially life-saving role they could play.

 

In 2016, the John Muir Trust cleared a number of smaller informal cairns which had recently been erected by visitors, many near the top of gullies, which were seen as dangerous as they could confuse walkers using them for navigation.

 

The north face of Ben Nevis is riven with buttresses, ridges, towers and pinnacles, and contains many classic scrambles and rock climbs. It is of major importance for British winter climbing, with many of its routes holding snow often until late April. It was one of the first places in Scotland to receive the attention of serious mountaineers; a partial ascent and, the following day, a complete descent of Tower Ridge in early September 1892 is the earliest documented climbing expedition on Ben Nevis. (It was not climbed from bottom to top in entirety for another two years). The Scottish Mountaineering Club's Charles Inglis Clark hut was built below the north face in Coire Leis in 1929. Because of its remote location, it is said to be the only genuine alpine hut in Britain. It remains popular with climbers, especially in winter.

 

Tower Ridge is the longest of the north face's four main ridges, with around 600 metres (2000') of ascent. It is not technically demanding (its grade is Difficult), and most pitches can be tackled unroped by competent climbers, but it is committing and very exposed. Castle Ridge (Moderate), the northernmost of the main ridges, is an easier scramble, while Observatory Ridge (Very Difficult), the closest ridge to the summit, is "technically the hardest of the Nevis ridges in summer and winter". Between the Tower and Observatory Ridges are the Tower and Gardyloo Gullies; the latter takes its name from the cry of "garde à l'eau" (French for "watch out for the water") formerly used in Scottish cities as a warning when householders threw their waste out of a tenement window into the street. The gully's top wall was the refuse pit for the now-disused summit observatory. The North-east Buttress (Very Difficult) is the southernmost and bulkiest of the four ridges; it is as serious as Observatory Ridge but not as technically demanding, mainly because an "infamous" rock problem, the 'Man-trap', can be avoided on either side.

 

The north face contains dozens of graded rock climbs along its entire length, with particular concentrations on the Càrn Dearg Buttress (below the Munro top of Càrn Dearg NW) and around the North-east Buttress and Observatory Ridge. Classic rock routes include Rubicon Wall on Observatory Buttress (Severe) – whose second ascent in 1937, when it was considered the hardest route on the mountain, is described by W. H. Murray in Mountaineering in Scotland – and, on Càrn Dearg, Centurion and The Bullroar (both HVS), Torro (E2), and Titan's Wall (E3), these four described in the SMC's guide as among "the best climbs of their class in Scotland".

 

Many seminal lines were recorded before the First World War by pioneering Scottish climbers like J. N. Collie, Willie Naismith, Harold Raeburn, and William and Jane Inglis Clark. Other classic routes were put up by G. Graham Macphee, Dr James H. B. Bell and others between the Wars; these include Bell's 'Long Climb', at 1,400 ft (430 m) reputedly the longest sustained climb on the British mainland. In summer 1943 conscientious objector Brian Kellett made a phenomenal seventy-four repeat climbs and seventeen first ascents including fourteen solos, returning in 1944 to add fifteen more new lines, eleven solo, including his eponymous HVS on Gardyloo buttress. Much more recently, an extreme and as yet ungraded climb on Echo Wall was completed by Dave MacLeod in 2008 after two years of preparation.

 

The north face is also one of Scotland's foremost venues for winter mountaineering and ice climbing and holds snow until quite late in the year; in a good year, routes may remain in winter condition until mid-spring. Most of the possible rock routes are also suitable as winter climbs, including the four main ridges; Tower Ridge, for example, is grade IV on the Scottish winter grade, having been upgraded in 2009 by the Scottish Mountaineering Club after requests by the local Mountain Rescue Team, there being numerous benightments and incidents every winter season. Probably the most popular ice climb on Ben Nevis is The Curtain (IV,5) on the left side of the Càrn Dearg Buttress. At the top end of the scale, Centurion in winter is a grade VIII,8 face climb.

 

In February 1960 James R. Marshall and Robin Clark Smith recorded six major new ice routes in only eight days including Orion Direct (V,5 400m); this winter version of Bell's Long Climb was "the climax of a magnificent week's climbing by Smith and Marshall, and the highpoint of the step-cutting era".

 

The history of hill running on Ben Nevis dates back to 1895. William Swan, a barber from Fort William, made the first recorded timed ascent up the mountain on or around 27 September of that year, when he ran from the old post office in Fort William to the summit and back in 2 hours 41 minutes. The following years saw several improvements on Swan's record, but the first competitive race was held on 3 June 1898 under Scottish Amateur Athletic Association rules. Ten competitors ran the course, which started at the Lochiel Arms Hotel in Banavie and was thus longer than the route from Fort William; the winner was 21-year-old Hugh Kennedy, a gamekeeper at Tor Castle, who finished (coincidentally with Swan's original run) in 2 hours 41 minutes.

 

Regular races were organised until 1903, when two events were held; these were the last for 24 years, perhaps due to the closure of the summit observatory the following year. The first was from Achintee, at the foot of the Pony Track, and finished at the summit; It was won in just over an hour by Ewen MacKenzie, the observatory roadman. The second race ran from new Fort William post office, and MacKenzie lowered the record to 2 hours 10 minutes, a record he held for 34 years.

 

The Ben Nevis Race has been run in its current form since 1937. It now takes place on the first Saturday in September every year, with a maximum of 500 competitors taking part. It starts and finishes at the Claggan Park football ground on the outskirts of Fort William, and is 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) long with 1,340 metres (4,400 ft) of ascent. Due to the seriousness of the mountain environment, entry is restricted to those who have completed three hill races, and runners must carry waterproofs, a hat, gloves and a whistle; anyone who has not reached the summit after two hours is turned back. As of 2018, the record for the men's race has stood unbroken since 1984, when Kenny Stuart of Keswick Athletic Club won with a time of 1:25:34. The record for the women's race of 1:43:01 was set in 2018 by Victoria Wilkinson.

 

Ben Nevis is becoming popular with ski mountaineers and boarders. The Red Burn (Allt Coire na h-Urcaire) just to the North of the tourist path gives the easiest descent, but most if not all of the easier gullies on the North Face have been skied, as has the slope once adorned by the abseil poles into Coire Leis. No 4 gully is probably the most skied. Although Tower scoop makes it a no-fall zone, Tower Gully is becoming popular, especially in May and June when there is spring snow.

 

In 2018 Jöttnar pro team member Tim Howell BASE jumped off Ben Nevis which was covered by BBC Scotland.

 

On 6 May 2019, a team of highliners completed a crossing above the Gardyloo Gully, a new altitude record for the UK.

 

Also in May 2019, a team of 12, led by Dundee artist Douglas Roulston carried a 1.5-metre (4.9-foot) tall statue of the DC Thomson character Oor Wullie to the top of the mountain. The statue, which had been painted by Roulston with a 360-degree scene of the view from the summit was later sold at the Oor Wullie Big Bucket Trail charity auction to raise money for a number of Scottish children's charities.

 

The Ben Nevis Distillery is a single malt whisky distillery at the foot of the mountain, near Victoria Bridge to the north of Fort William. Founded in 1825 by John McDonald (known as "Long John"), it is one of the oldest licensed distilleries in Scotland, and is a popular visitor attraction in Fort William. The water used to make the whisky comes from the Allt a' Mhuilinn, the stream that flows from Ben Nevis's northern corrie. "Ben Nevis" 80/‒ organic ale is, by contrast, brewed in Bridge of Allan near Stirling.

 

Ben Nevis was the name of a White Star Line packet ship which in 1854 carried the group of immigrants who were to become the Wends of Texas. At least another eight vessels have carried the name since then.

 

A mountain in Svalbard is also named Ben Nevis, after the Scottish peak. It is 922 metres (3025') high and is south of the head of Raudfjorden, Albert I Land, in the northwestern part of the island of Spitsbergen.

 

A comic strip character, Wee Ben Nevis, about a Scottish Highlands boarding school student with superhuman strength and his antics were featured in the British comic The Beano from 1974 to 1977, named after the mountain.

 

Hung Fa Chai, a 489-metre (1605') hill in Northeast New Territories of Hong Kong was marked as Ben Nevis on historical colonial maps.

 

The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.

 

The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim  The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.

 

The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.

 

The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.

 

Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.

 

Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".

 

Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".

 

Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West.  Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way.  The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes. 

 

Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities.  Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land.  In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.

 

In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.

 

When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected.  This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms.  Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.

 

The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.

 

Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.

 

According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".

 

The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.

 

For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.

 

In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.

 

A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.

 

Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.

 

The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

 

Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.

 

There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.

 

Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.

 

The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.

 

These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.

 

The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.

Climate

 

The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.

 

Places of interest

An Teallach

Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)

Arrochar Alps

Balmoral Castle

Balquhidder

Battlefield of Culloden

Beinn Alligin

Beinn Eighe

Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station

Ben Lomond

Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Cairngorms National Park

Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore

Cairngorm Mountains

Caledonian Canal

Cape Wrath

Carrick Castle

Castle Stalker

Castle Tioram

Chanonry Point

Conic Hill

Culloden Moor

Dunadd

Duart Castle

Durness

Eilean Donan

Fingal's Cave (Staffa)

Fort George

Glen Coe

Glen Etive

Glen Kinglas

Glen Lyon

Glen Orchy

Glenshee Ski Centre

Glen Shiel

Glen Spean

Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)

Grampian Mountains

Hebrides

Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.

Highland Wildlife Park

Inveraray Castle

Inveraray Jail

Inverness Castle

Inverewe Garden

Iona Abbey

Isle of Staffa

Kilchurn Castle

Kilmartin Glen

Liathach

Lecht Ski Centre

Loch Alsh

Loch Ard

Loch Awe

Loch Assynt

Loch Earn

Loch Etive

Loch Fyne

Loch Goil

Loch Katrine

Loch Leven

Loch Linnhe

Loch Lochy

Loch Lomond

Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park

Loch Lubnaig

Loch Maree

Loch Morar

Loch Morlich

Loch Ness

Loch Nevis

Loch Rannoch

Loch Tay

Lochranza

Luss

Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)

Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran

Rannoch Moor

Red Cuillin

Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83

River Carron, Wester Ross

River Spey

River Tay

Ross and Cromarty

Smoo Cave

Stob Coire a' Chàirn

Stac Polly

Strathspey Railway

Sutherland

Tor Castle

Torridon Hills

Urquhart Castle

West Highland Line (scenic railway)

West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)

Wester Ross

The Ribblehead Viaduct or Batty Moss Viaduct carries the Settle–Carlisle railway across Batty Moss in the Ribble Valley at Ribblehead, in North Yorkshire, England. The viaduct, built by the Midland Railway, is 28 miles (45 km) north-west of Skipton and 26 miles (42 km) south-east of Kendal. It is a Grade II* listed structure. Ribblehead Viaduct is the longest and the third tallest structure on the Settle–Carlisle line.

 

The viaduct was designed by John Sydney Crossley, chief engineer of the Midland Railway, who was responsible for the design and construction of all major structures along the line. The viaduct was necessitated by the challenging terrain of the route. Construction began in late 1869. It necessitated a large workforce, up to 2,300 men, most of whom lived in shanty towns set up near its base. Over 100 men lost their lives during its construction. The Settle to Carlisle line was the last main railway in Britain to be constructed primarily with manual labour.

 

By the end of 1874, the last stone of the structure had been laid; on 1 May 1876, the Settle–Carlisle line was opened for passenger services. During the 1980s, British Rail proposed closing the line. In 1989, after lobbying by the public against closure, it was announced that the line would be retained. Since the 1980s, the viaduct has had multiple repairs and restorations and the lines relaid as a single track. The land underneath and around the viaduct is a scheduled ancient monument; the remains of the construction camp and navvy settlements (Batty Wife Hole, Sebastopol, and Belgravia) are located there.

 

In the 1860s, the Midland Railway, keen to capitalise on the growth in rail traffic between England and Scotland, proposed building a line between Settle and Carlisle. The line was intended to join the Midland line between Skipton and Carnforth to the city of Carlisle. On 16 July 1866, the Midland Railway (Settle to Carlisle) Act was passed by Parliament, authorising the company "to construct Railways from Settle to Hawes, Appleby, and Carlisle; and for other Purposes".

 

After the Act passed, the Midland Railway came to an agreement with the London & North Western Railway, to run services on the LNWR line via Shap. The company applied for a bill of abandonment for its original plan but Parliament rejected the bill on 16 April 1869 and the Midland Railway was compelled to build the Settle to Carlisle line.

 

The line passed through difficult terrain that necessitated building several substantial structures. The company's chief engineer, John Sydney Crossley and its general manager, James Joseph Allport, surveyed the line. Crossley was responsible for the design and construction of the major works, including Ribblehead Viaduct.

 

On 6 November 1869, a contract to construct the Settle Junction (SD813606) to Dent Head Viaduct section including Ribblehead Viaduct was awarded to contractor John Ashwell. The estimated cost was £343,318 and completion was expected by May 1873. Work commenced at the southern end of the 72-mile (116 km) line.

 

By July 1870, work had started on the foundations for Ribblehead Viaduct. On 12 October 1870, contractor's agent William Henry Ashwell laid the first stone. Financial difficulties came to greatly trouble John Ashwell; on 26 October 1871, his contract was cancelled by mutual agreement. From this date, the viaduct was constructed by the Midland Railway who worked on a semi-contractual basis overseen by William Ashwell.

 

The viaduct was built by a workforce of up to 2,300 men. They lived, often with their families, in temporary camps, named Batty Wife Hole, Sebastopol, and Belgravia on adjacent land. More than a hundred workers lost their lives in construction-related accidents, fighting, or from outbreaks of smallpox. According to Church of England records, there are around 200 burials of men, women, and children in the graveyard at Chapel-le-Dale and the church has a memorial to the railway workers.

 

In December 1872, the design for Ribblehead Viaduct was changed from 18 arches to 24, each spanning 45 feet (13.7 m). By August 1874, the arches had been keyed and the last stone was laid by the end of the year. A single track was laid over the viaduct and on 6 September 1874 the first train carrying passengers was hauled across by the locomotive Diamond. On 3 August 1875, the viaduct was opened for freight traffic and on 1 May 1876, the whole line opened for passenger services, following approval by Colonel F. H. Rich from the Board of Trade.

 

Ribblehead Viaduct is 440 yards (400 m) long, and 104 feet (32 m) above the valley floor at its highest point, it was designed to carry a pair of tracks aligned over the sleeper walls. The viaduct has 24 arches of 45 feet (14 m) span, the foundations of which are 25 feet (7.6 m) deep. The piers are tapered, roughly 13 feet (4 m) across at the base and 5 feet 11 inches (1.8 m) thick near the arches and have loosely-packed rubble-filled cores. Every sixth pier is 50 per cent thicker, a mitigating measure against collapse should any of the piers fail. The north end is 13 feet (4 m) higher in elevation than the south, a gradient of 1:100.

 

The viaduct is faced with limestone masonry set in hydraulic lime mortar and the near-semicircular arches are red brick, constructed in five separate rings, with stone voussoirs. Sleeper walls rise from the arches to support the stone slabs of the viaduct's deck and hollow spandrels support plain solid parapet walls. In total, 1.5 million bricks were used; some of the limestone blocks weigh eight tons.

 

Ribblehead Viaduct is 980 feet (300 m) above sea level on moorland exposed to the prevailing westerly wind. Its height, from foundation to rails is 55 yards (50.3 m). It is 442.7 yards (404.8 m) long on a lateral curve with a radius of 0.85 miles (1.37 km).

 

The viaduct is the longest structure on the Settle–Carlisle Railway which has two taller viaducts, Smardale Viaduct at 131 feet (40 m) near Crosby Garrett, and Arten Gill at 117 feet (36 m). Ribblehead railway station is less than half a mile to the south and to the north is Blea Moor Tunnel, the longest on the line, near the foot of Whernside.

 

During 1964, several Humber cars were blown off their wagons while being carried over the viaduct on a freight train.

 

By 1980, the viaduct was in disrepair and many of its piers had been weakened by water ingress. Between 1981 and 1984, repairs were undertaken as a cost of roughly £100,000. Repairs included strengthening the piers by the addition of steel rails and concrete cladding. For safety reasons, the line was reduced to single track across the viaduct to avoid the simultaneous loading from two trains crossing and a 20mph speed limit was imposed. During 1988, minor repairs were carried out and trial bores were made into several piers. In 1989, a waterproof membrane was installed.

 

In the 1980s, British Rail proposed closing the line, citing the high cost of repairs to its major structures. Vigorous campaigning by the Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Line, formed during 1981, garnered and mobilised public support against the plan. In 1989, the line was saved from closure. According to Michael Portillo, who took the decision in his capacity as Minister of State for Transport, the economic arguments for closing it had been weakened by a spike in passenger numbers, and further studies by engineers had determined that restoration work would not be nearly as costly as estimated.

 

In November 1988, Ribblehead Viaduct was Grade II* listed. The surrounding land where the remains of its construction camps are located has been recognised as a scheduled monument.

 

Between 1990 and 1992, Ribblehead Viaduct underwent major restoration. Between September 1999 and March 2001, a programme of improvements was implemented involving renewal of track, replacement of ballast and the installation of new drainage. Restoration has allowed for increased levels of freight traffic assuring the line's viability.

 

The Settle–Carlisle Line is one of three north–south main lines, along with the West Coast Main Line through Penrith and the East Coast Main Line via Newcastle. During 2016, the line carried seven passenger trains from Leeds to Carlisle per day in each direction, and long-distance excursions, many hauled by preserved steam locomotives.

 

Regular heavy freight trains use the route avoiding congestion on the West Coast Main Line. Timber trains, and stone from Ingleton quarry, pass over the viaduct when they depart from the yard opposite Ribblehead railway station. The stone from Ingleton is ferried to the terminal at Ribblehead by road. Limestone aggregate trains from Arcow quarry sidings (near Horton-in-Ribblesdale) run to various stone terminals in the Leeds and Manchester areas on different days – these trains reverse in the goods loop at Blea Moor signal box because the connection from the quarry sidings faces north.

 

Major restoration work started in November 2020 as a £2.1 million project to re-point mortar joints and replace broken stones got underway. Network Rail released a timelapse video of the works in June 2021.

 

Building the viaduct was the inspiration behind the ITV period drama series Jericho. The viaduct appears in the 1970 film No Blade of Grass and also in the 2012 film Sightseers. A number of other films and television programmes have also included the viaduct.

 

North Yorkshire is a ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and the Humber and North East regions of England. It borders County Durham to the north, the North Sea to the east, the East Riding of Yorkshire to the south-east, South Yorkshire to the south, West Yorkshire to the south-west, and Cumbria and Lancashire to the west. Northallerton is the county town.

 

The county is the largest in England by land area, at 9,020 km2 (3,480 sq mi), and has a population of 1,158,816. The largest settlements are Middlesbrough (174,700) in the north-east and the city of York (152,841) in the south. Middlesbrough is part of the Teesside built-up area, which extends into County Durham and has a total population of 376,663. The remainder of the county is rural, and the largest towns are Harrogate (73,576) and Scarborough (61,749). For local government purposes the county comprises four unitary authority areas — York, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, and North Yorkshire — and part of a fifth, Stockton-on-Tees.

 

The centre of the county contains a wide plain, called the Vale of Mowbray in the north and Vale of York in the south. The North York Moors lie to the east, and south of them the Vale of Pickering is separated from the main plain by the Howardian Hills. The west of the county contains the Yorkshire Dales, an extensive upland area which contains the source of the River Ouse/Ure and many of its tributaries, which together drain most of the county. The Dales also contain the county's highest point, Whernside, at 2,415 feet (736 m).

 

North Yorkshire non-metropolitan and ceremonial county was formed on 1 April 1974 as a result of the Local Government Act 1972. It covered most of the North Riding of Yorkshire, as well as northern parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, northern and eastern East Riding of Yorkshire and the former county borough of York. Northallerton, as the former county town for the North Riding, became North Yorkshire's county town. In 1993 the county was placed wholly within the Yorkshire and the Humber region.

 

Some areas which were part of the former North Riding were in the county of Cleveland for twenty-two years (from 1974 to 1996) and were placed in the North East region from 1993. On 1 April 1996, these areas (Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland and Stockton borough south of the River Tees) became part of the ceremonial county as separate unitary authorities. These areas remain within the North East England region.

 

Also on 1 April 1996, the City of York non-metropolitan district and parts of the non-metropolitan county (Haxby and nearby rural areas) became the City of York unitary authority.

 

On 1 April 2023, the non-metropolitan county became a unitary authority. This abolished eight councils and extended the powers of the county council to act as a district council.

 

The York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority held its first meeting on 22 January 2024, assumed its powers on 1 February 2024 and the first mayor is to be elected in May 2024.

 

The geology of North Yorkshire is closely reflected in its landscape. Within the county are the North York Moors and most of the Yorkshire Dales, two of eleven areas in England and Wales to be designated national parks. Between the North York Moors in the east and the Pennine Hills. The highest point is Whernside, on the Cumbrian border, at 2,415 feet (736 m). A distinctive hill to the far north east of the county is Roseberry Topping.

 

North Yorkshire contains several major rivers. The River Tees is the most northerly, forming part of the border between North Yorkshire and County Durham in its lower reaches and flowing east through Teesdale before reaching the North Sea near Redcar. The Yorkshire Dales are the source of many of the county's major rivers, including the Aire, Lune, Ribble, Swale, Ure, and Wharfe.[10] The Aire, Swale, and Wharfe are tributaries of the Ure/Ouse, which at 208 km (129 mi) long is the sixth-longest river in the United Kingdom. The river is called the Ure until it meets Ouse Gill beck just below the village of Great Ouseburn, where it becomes the Ouse and flows south before exiting the county near Goole and entering the Humber estuary. The North York Moors are the catchment for a number of rivers: the Leven which flows north into the Tees between Yarm and Ingleby Barwick; the Esk flows east directly into the North Sea at Whitby as well as the Rye (which later becomes the Derwent at Malton) flows south into the River Ouse at Goole.

 

North Yorkshire contains a small section of green belt in the south of the county, which surrounds the neighbouring metropolitan area of Leeds along the North and West Yorkshire borders. It extends to the east to cover small communities such as Huby, Kirkby Overblow, and Follifoot before covering the gap between the towns of Harrogate and Knaresborough, helping to keep those towns separate.

 

The belt adjoins the southernmost part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and the Nidderdale AONB. It extends into the western area of Selby district, reaching as far as Tadcaster and Balne. The belt was first drawn up from the 1950s.

 

The city of York has an independent surrounding belt area affording protections to several outlying settlements such as Haxby and Dunnington, and it too extends into the surrounding districts.

 

North Yorkshire has a temperate oceanic climate, like most of the UK. There are large climate variations within the county. The upper Pennines border on a Subarctic climate. The Vale of Mowbray has an almost Semi-arid climate. Overall, with the county being situated in the east, it receives below-average rainfall for the UK. Inside North Yorkshire, the upper Dales of the Pennines are one of the wettest parts of England, where in contrast the driest parts of the Vale of Mowbray are some of the driest areas in the UK.

 

Summer temperatures are above average, at 22 °C. Highs can regularly reach up to 28 °C, with over 30 °C reached in heat waves. Winter temperatures are below average, with average lows of 1 °C. Snow and Fog can be expected depending on location. The North York Moors and Pennines have snow lying for an average of between 45 and 75 days per year. Sunshine is most plentiful on the coast, receiving an average of 1,650 hours a year. It reduces further west in the county, with the Pennines receiving 1,250 hours a year.

 

The county borders multiple counties and districts:

County Durham's County Durham, Darlington, Stockton (north Tees) and Hartlepool;

East Riding of Yorkshire's East Riding of Yorkshire;

South Yorkshire's City of Doncaster;

West Yorkshire's City of Wakefield, City of Leeds and City of Bradford;

Lancashire's City of Lancaster, Ribble Valley and Pendle

Cumbria's Westmorland and Furness.

 

The City of York Council and North Yorkshire Council formed the York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority in February 2024. The elections for the first directly-elected mayor will take place in May 2024. Both North Yorkshire Council and the combined authority are governed from County Hall, Northallerton.

 

The Tees Valley Combined Authority was formed in 2016 by five unitary authorities; Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland Borough both of North Yorkshire, Stockton-on-Tees Borough (Uniquely for England, split between North Yorkshire and County Durham), Hartlepool Borough and Darlington Borough of County Durham.

 

In large areas of North Yorkshire, agriculture is the primary source of employment. Approximately 85% of the county is considered to be "rural or super sparse".

 

Other sectors in 2019 included some manufacturing, the provision of accommodation and meals (primarily for tourists) which accounted for 19 per cent of all jobs. Food manufacturing employed 11 per cent of workers. A few people are involved in forestry and fishing in 2019. The average weekly earnings in 2018 were £531. Some 15% of workers declared themselves as self-employed. One report in late 2020 stated that "North Yorkshire has a relatively healthy and diverse economy which largely mirrors the national picture in terms of productivity and jobs.

 

Mineral extraction and power generation are also sectors of the economy, as is high technology.

 

Tourism is a significant contributor to the economy. A study of visitors between 2013 and 2015 indicated that the Borough of Scarborough, including Filey, Whitby and parts of the North York Moors National Park, received 1.4m trips per year on average. A 2016 report by the National Park, states the park area gets 7.93 million visitors annually, generating £647 million and supporting 10,900 full-time equivalent jobs.

 

The Yorkshire Dales have also attracted many visitors. In 2016, there were 3.8 million visits to the National Park including 0.48 million who stayed at least one night. The parks service estimates that this contributed £252 million to the economy and provided 3,583 full-time equivalent jobs. The wider Yorkshire Dales area received 9.7 million visitors who contributed £644 million to the economy. The North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales are among England's best known destinations.

 

York is a popular tourist destination. A 2014 report, based on 2012 data, stated that York alone receives 6.9 million visitors annually; they contribute £564 million to the economy and support over 19,000 jobs. In the 2017 Condé Nast Traveller survey of readers, York rated 12th among The 15 Best Cities in the UK for visitors. In a 2020 Condé Nast Traveller report, York rated as the sixth best among ten "urban destinations [in the UK] that scored the highest marks when it comes to ... nightlife, restaurants and friendliness".

 

During February 2020 to January 2021, the average property in North Yorkshire county sold for £240,000, up by £8100 over the previous 12 months. By comparison, the average for England and Wales was £314,000. In certain communities of North Yorkshire, however, house prices were higher than average for the county, as of early 2021: Harrogate (average value: £376,195), Knaresborough (£375,625), Tadcaster (£314,278), Leyburn (£309,165) and Ripon (£299,998), for example.

 

This is a chart of trend of regional gross value added for North Yorkshire at current basic prices with figures in millions of British pounds sterling.

 

Unemployment in the county was traditionally low in recent years, but the lockdowns and travel restrictions necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative effect on the economy during much of 2020 and into 2021. The UK government said in early February 2021 that it was planning "unprecedented levels of support to help businesses [in the UK] survive the crisis". A report published on 1 March 2021 stated that the unemployment rate in North Yorkshire had "risen to the highest level in nearly 5 years – with under 25s often bearing the worst of job losses".

 

York experienced high unemployment during lockdown periods. One analysis (by the York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership) predicted in August 2020 that "as many as 13,835 jobs in York will be lost in the scenario considered most likely, taking the city's unemployment rate to 14.5%". Some critics claimed that part of the problem was caused by "over-reliance on the booming tourism industry at the expense of a long-term economic plan". A report in mid June 2020 stated that unemployment had risen 114 per cent over the previous year because of restrictions imposed as a result of the pandemic.

 

Tourism in the county was expected to increase after the restrictions imposed due the pandemic are relaxed. One reason for the expected increase is the airing of All Creatures Great and Small, a TV series about the vet James Herriot, based on a successful series of books; it was largely filmed within the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The show aired in the UK in September 2020 and in the US in early 2021. One source stated that visits to Yorkshire websites had increased significantly by late September 2020.

 

The East Coast Main Line (ECML) bisects the county stopping at Northallerton,Thirsk and York. Passenger service companies in the area are London North Eastern Railway, Northern Rail, TransPennine Express and Grand Central.

 

LNER and Grand Central operate services to the capital on the ECML, Leeds Branch Line and the Northallerton–Eaglescliffe Line. LNER stop at York, Northallerton and on to County Durham or spur over to the Tees Valley Line for Thornaby and Middlesbrough. The operator also branch before the county for Leeds and run to Harrogate and Skipton. Grand Central stop at York, Thirsk Northallerton and Eaglescliffe then over to the Durham Coast Line in County Durham.

 

Northern operates the remaining lines in the county, including commuter services on the Harrogate Line, Airedale Line and York & Selby Lines, of which the former two are covered by the Metro ticketing area. Remaining branch lines operated by Northern include the Yorkshire Coast Line from Scarborough to Hull, York–Scarborough line via Malton, the Hull to York Line via Selby, the Tees Valley Line from Darlington to Saltburn via Middlesbrough and the Esk Valley Line from Middlesbrough to Whitby. Last but certainly not least, the Settle-Carlisle Line runs through the west of the county, with services again operated by Northern.

 

The county suffered badly under the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. Places such as Richmond, Ripon, Tadcaster, Helmsley, Pickering and the Wensleydale communities lost their passenger services. Notable lines closed were the Scarborough and Whitby Railway, Malton and Driffield Railway and the secondary main line between Northallerton and Harrogate via Ripon.

 

Heritage railways within North Yorkshire include: the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, between Pickering and Grosmont, which opened in 1973; the Derwent Valley Light Railway near York; and the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway. The Wensleydale Railway, which started operating in 2003, runs services between Leeming Bar and Redmire along a former freight-only line. The medium-term aim is to operate into Northallerton station on the ECML, once an agreement can be reached with Network Rail. In the longer term, the aim is to reinstate the full line west via Hawes to Garsdale on the Settle-Carlisle line.

 

York railway station is the largest station in the county, with 11 platforms and is a major tourist attraction in its own right. The station is immediately adjacent to the National Railway Museum.

 

The main road through the county is the north–south A1(M), which has gradually been upgraded in sections to motorway status since the early 1990s. The only other motorways within the county are the short A66(M) near Darlington and a small stretch of the M62 motorway close to Eggborough. The other nationally maintained trunk routes are the A168/A19, A64, A66 and A174.

 

Long-distance coach services are operated by National Express and Megabus. Local bus service operators include Arriva Yorkshire, Stagecoach, Harrogate Bus Company, The Keighley Bus Company, Scarborough & District (East Yorkshire), Yorkshire Coastliner, First York and the local Dales & District.

 

There are no major airports in the county itself, but nearby airports include Teesside International (Darlington), Newcastle and Leeds Bradford.

 

The main campus of Teesside University is in Middlesbrough, while York contains the main campuses of the University of York and York St John University. There are also two secondary campuses in the county: CU Scarborough, a campus of Coventry University, and Queen's Campus, Durham University in Thornaby-on-Tees.

 

Colleges

Middlesbrough College's sixth-form

Askham Bryan College of agriculture, Askham Bryan and Middlesbrough

Craven College, Skipton

Middlesbrough College

The Northern School of Art, Middlesbrough

Prior Pursglove College

Redcar & Cleveland College

Scarborough Sixth Form College

Scarborough TEC

Selby College

Stockton Riverside College, Thornaby

York College

 

Places of interest

Ampleforth College

Beningbrough Hall –

Black Sheep Brewery

Bolton Castle –

Brimham Rocks –

Castle Howard and the Howardian Hills –

Catterick Garrison

Cleveland Hills

Drax Power Station

Duncombe Park – stately home

Eden Camp Museum –

Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway –

Eston Nab

Flamingo Land Theme Park and Zoo –

Helmsley Castle –

Ingleborough Cave – show cave

John Smith's Brewery

Jorvik Viking Centre –

Lightwater Valley –

Lund's Tower

Malham Cove

Middleham Castle –

Mother Shipton's Cave –

National Railway Museum –

North Yorkshire Moors Railway –

Ormesby Hall – Palladian Mansion

Richmond Castle –

Ripley Castle – Stately home and historic village

Riverside Stadium

Samuel Smith's Brewery

Shandy Hall – stately home

Skipton Castle –

Stanwick Iron Age Fortifications –

Studley Royal Park –

Stump Cross Caverns – show cave

Tees Transporter Bridge

Theakston Brewery

Thornborough Henges

Wainman's Pinnacle

Wharram Percy

York Castle Museum –

Yorkshire Air Museum –

The Yorkshire Arboretum

The Storm (19/365)

 

“We must look for the opportunity in every difficulty instead of the difficulty in every opportunity.” – Unknown

 

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April 23, 2015 on our trip to the blipmeet at Wanaka, Central Otago in New Zealand. www.polaroidblipfoto.com/browse/me

 

Our first morning in Cromwell. We woke to heavy fog which took a while to lift. We have arrived at Mt Difficulty Estate Winery so John can do some tasting.

 

The unique microclimate of the Bannockburn area is partially created by the presence of Mount Difficulty which overlooks the southern Cromwell basin, and is the namesake of Mt Difficulty Wines. Mount Difficulty is integral in providing low rainfall and humidity for the region. Bannockburn enjoys hot summers, a large diurnal temperature variation and long cool autumns; conditions which bring the best out of the Pinot Noir grapes. These conditions, along with soils which are ideal for viticulture, provide an excellent basis not only for Pinot Noir, but also for Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay. The soils are a mix of clay and gravels, but all feature a high pH level; grapes produce their best wines on sweet soils.

For More Info and photos: www.mtdifficulty.co.nz/aboutus/ourstory.html

The over the head, backwards throw (and he made it, two points - it stuck in the center of the big tire).

 

The tire-thrower, the other players and I were impressed - it was a perfect toss.

“The greater the difficulty the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.” ~ Epictetus

 

I really wanted to make this look like it was a shot from an anime so I played about a bit :)