Adventure Ausrama Blog

The Ghan, running from Adelaide to Darwin, is our most luxurious train. Its forerunners were the Afghan camel drivers. In 1840, drivers and their animals were introduced to transport goods, even pianos and furniture, to settlements of the great dry inland.  They were brought into  the country from Afghanistan because their home country’s climate was as hot and dry as Australia's. The camel drivers’ nationality was shortened to ‘Ghan’ and the route has been called by this name ever since.   In 1860 24 camels were imported for the Burke and Wills expedition that was endeavouring to cross Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. They reached the fringe of the Gulf in February 1861. However, Burke and Wills died on the way back south on the banks of Cooper Creek, just by a tree that has the word "dig" carved in its trunk. Provisions had been buried there for the explorers, but they failed to dig and died of malnutrition. This tree is now known as the Dig Tree...

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Turning carbon dioxide in carbon monoxide may seem like a silly thing to do, considering carbon monoxide is a deadly poison. However, if this can be done easily and cheaply it could reduce pollution: it is used to produce fuels and plastics. A catalyst has been made that does the conversion into carbon dioxide. It does the task rapidly. Last year the world's first commercial capture process at a coal power plant began operating. Waste gases were bubbled up through vats of amine solution. This is very expensive though. The new process became possible when it was made to work in water. Electrocalysts have been used for two decades to take an oxygen molecule from a CO 2 atom. As it now safely functions in water a whole new horizon opens up to clean up the environment. conversion occurs at a rate of 290,000 atoms a second, an improvement of 26 times the pre-water process. Little maintenance of the system is needed. It has only been done in the lab so far. Plans...

Australian stockmen used to lives of absolute isolation, controlling cattle for months on end, going into small towns infrequently. Drovers spending their lives in pubs drinking beer was a myth. Today, the Internet has allowed people who live and work in outback stations to stay in contact with friends and relatives. Businesses are run using computers. Information flow is now immediate, where in the past getting a newspaper only a day or so old was a luxury. People now know if rain is on its way. This was always an unknown factor years ago. The horse is not the only mode of transport. Motorbikes are used on stations. Some people even own and fly a helicopters and planes. Processing of cattle now day just a few days. Few animals are missed with transportable trapping devices placed at strategic points. Staff has been halved. Workers can usually get back to the station every day. Drovers no longer work 100 hour weeks; they used to give stamped letters to passing m...

There is an energy crisis slowly creeping up on us. We go about our daily business enjoying the benefits of computer advances while not realizing that massive amounts of energy are being consumed. Mobile phones are designed with very little hard storage. Reliance on cloud services is increasing at a rapid pace. Many developing countries do not enjoy continuous energy supplies. When the electricity goes off so does cloud storage. In advanced countries aluminium producers were blamed for eating up too much power, now everyone is responsible. A new study, The Power of Wireless Cloud , clearly shows that the continuing use of electricity is not sustainable. Energy use by cloud services will be equivalent to 4.9 million cars over the period 2012-2015. This is known by comparing energy from petrol to power station input. It is not just the cloud. Wi-Fi will use more power than anything else. Computing networks are not "clean". Many do not consider that most electricit...

Australia goes its own way in lower carbon power generation by opening a solar-diesel power station, the world's first, in Western Australia. Solar panels track the sun during the day. The station is built in a location that holds the record for the most days of maximum temperature. Use of the solar panels will lessen greenhouse gas emissions by 1119 tonnes a year. the local Aboriginal community is fully supportive of the power plant in the Pilbara. Aboriginals named it Pippunyah, the name of the river nearby. Funding came from the Federal Government in its renewable remote power generation program via the Office of Energy in Western Australia. It is unfortunate that solar power generation had to be combined with fossil fuel generation. Even getting natural gas there would have been better than diesel. It seems there is no perfect solution to the pollution problem. New systems only seem to meet requirements half way. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysa...

The state of the weather is a problem on Earth with predictions not always being correct. In space, however, there is a more serious weather problem. Solar storms can kill. Detectors at the South Pole measure neutrons. When the level reaches a certain point astronauts on the International Space Station shelter in a shielded capsule. Advances have been made in predicting solar storms which can destroy satellites. Unfortunately, little can be done to protect them, but the safety of astronauts is paramount. Storms move at different speeds. The faster the speed the more energy in particles, which makes them more intense and dangerous. Ironically, because there are more low-energy particles in a solar storm they do most overall damage. The early arrival of these low-energy particles does forewarn the onslaught of the high-energy neutrons. The number of solar flares gives an indication of future activity, though this is only a possibility at best. Neutron sensors at th...

Flee from the fleas! A police station has been evacuated in Darwin because a prisoner brought fleas into the jail house. The fleas spread all through the watch house and even to a police van. Police had to wear gloves and tuck their pants into their socks to keep out the menace. They were also ordered to take a shower when they finished each shift. But all this was in vain. After a week of scratching in agony they abandoned the station. The place has now been thoroughly fumigated. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/ http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Society