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| About 110
km from Broken Hill, New South Wales is
a famous pub in Menindee.
Tom Pain's Pub later renamed the Maidens
Hotel was base camp in October 1860 for
the ill-fated Burke
and Wills expedition to the Gulf of
Carpentaria. When I visited the pub in July
1987, there were some rather offbeat posters
on the bulletin board dealing with male
impotence and bodily functions. I don't
know if Burke and Wills saw these posters.
Twenty-three km (14 mi) northwest of Broken
Hill is another famous pub, the Silverton
Hotel. Here you may see the three-legged
dog or a horse or camel parked outside.
Silverton
(population less than 100) was the first
mining town in the Murray Outback region.
In 1889, the silver mines closed and everyone
moved to Broken Hill. In September 1989,
I spent a week in a field camp across the
street from the Silverton Hotel. There is
nothing as refreshing as an ice-cold beer
after a day pounding rocks in the Outback.
Nearby Broken
Hill is in excellent shape compared
to most Outback towns. One hundred billion
dollars have been generated since 1883 from
the "Line of Lode", one of the world's richest
lead-zinc-silver ore bodies. It has been
said that Broken
Hill probably contributed more to the
growth and development of the Australian
economy than any other place in the nation.
I would recommend underground mine tours
at BHP's Delprat's mine, where you go 130 m below the surface,
or further out at the Daydream
mine, which opened in 1882 one year
before Broken Hill. There are also surface
tours of the Pinnacles
Mine, where you can collect minerals,
and the South Mine, which operated from
1888 to 1972. These days, Broken
Hill is known for its mineral-related activities, architecture, famous artists
like Pro Hart and Jack Absalom, and the art galleries and Sculpture
Symposium. |
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| About 100
km southwest of Darwin near Bachelor is
Litchfield National Park. Here, it is possible
to hike and swim in numerous waterfalls
that cascade from a sandstone escarpment.
The magnetic termite mounds are particularly
intriguing. Most termites withdraw into
the inner galleries or underground chamber
of a mound when the outside conditions are
too hot, cold, dry, or wet. Regulating internal
temperature in the above ground portion
of a termite mound on a tropical floodplain
is a problem for the base of the mound can
be underwater for weeks. The magnetic or
compass termites (Amitermes meridionalis)
of Litchfield National Park build long,
wedge-shaped mounds up to 2 m tall that
are especially adapted for such an environment
with the longer axis oriented north to south.
Go to the image of the cathedral termite
mound on the left to find more information
on how termites adapt to and change their
environment. |
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