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Great photo thanks Toot.
I love this one too, entitled “heading to dinner with some friends” from Roger Federer.
The Queen’s death and subsequent commentary on her image appearing on so many things including currency prompted me to grab out my old coin box … found I have these from before her time …
It’s been 100 years since a photo taken on a Broome beach helped prove Einstein’s Theory of Relativity on 21 September 1922.
Members of the 1922 Perth Observatory team watch the total solar eclipse at Wallal. Photo: WA State Library.
They had arrived a few weeks earlier by lugger boat to build a giant telescope and camera to capture the phenomenon. It was an arduous undertaking and the huge telescopes that “looked like giant cannons pointing up to the sky” were built out of wood and canvas.
In 1922 a total eclipse visible south of Broome at Wallal on 80 Mile Beach allowed starlight to be photographed. A 40-foot camera and timber tower was built to capture the event. The eclipse itself wasn’t as important as the stars that would be visible in the darkness because curves in the starlight proved Einstein’s theory that space was curved.
The photographic glass plates couldn’t be developed at Wallal and were sent to Broome where a makeshift darkroom was set up at the Coastal Radio Station. That darkroom is now the bathroom at the Broome Bowling Club.
The Albert Einstein monument in Wallal. Photo: Chloe Bartram.
The Royal Australian Mint has released a one-dollar coin commemorating the Wallal expedition.
Internationally, there is growing hope of a light at the end of the tunnel. The World Health Organization has said the end of the pandemic is in sight. Experts are optimistic increased immunity and new vaccines will put the country in good stead in months to come, but have warned against complacency. Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton has warned that “peaks and troughs” of the virus and its variants would continue saying a new “lower and slower” wave could come before the end of the year.
Mr Mawer passed away “peacefully” in his sleep in his Central Tilba home on Saturday afternoon on the NSW South Coast.
“”He lived life to the full even in recent months. He insisted on sitting up for meals, he did his exercises every day and had plenty of visitors.”
Mr Mawer, who celebrated his 110th birthday on August 15, took the title of Australia’s oldest man in July last year after the passing of a Queensland man Dexter Kruger.
Born in 1912, Frank married his sweetheart Elizabeth, an Irish immigrant, in 1939. Elizabeth passed away in 2011 at the age of 92 after more than 70 years married to Mr Mawer. They raised six children. The extended family includes 13 grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren and 2 great-great-grandchildren.
Face masks are still required for everyone visiting a healthcare setting, residential aged care and disability accommodation and when outside of your home if you have a temperature of 37.5 degrees or higher, you have COVID-19 symptoms or you are awaiting a PCR test result.
Last Friday, Queensland recorded 183 people in hospital with COVID, including nine people in ICU. There were 10,009 new cases of COVID reported in the latest reporting period.
Queen Elizabeth II’s corgis and her beloved fell pony Emma were led out to witness her funeral procession at Windsor on Monday.
I think Prince George and Princess Charlotte behaved impeccably during the funeral.
I was particularly taken with the moment when Charlotte told George “you need to bow”.
Nestled among the flowers of the Queen’s funeral wreath was a handwritten card, which read: “In loving and devoted memory, Charles R.”
At King Charles’s request, the wreath on top of the Queen’s coffin contained flowers and foliage from the royal properties of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House, in London, and Highgrove House in Gloucestershire. Also at the King’s request, the wreath was sustainable, and affixed in a nest of English moss and oak branches.
The wreath contained myrtle, the ancient symbol of a happy marriage, cut from a plant that was grown from a sprig of myrtle in the Queen’s wedding bouquet in 1947. It also contains rosemary as a symbol of remembrance and English oak, a national symbol of strength, in a nod to the Queen’s constancy and steadfast duty. Other foliage includes pelargoniums, garden roses, autumnal hydrangea, sedum, dahlias, and scabious.
Speaking of birds …
Just how big was the largest bird known on Earth?
This Central Australian fossil discovery may help scientists know for sure.
A group of scientists from the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory have unearthed a set of 8-million-year-old articulated leg bones belonging to a female Dromornis stirtoni at Alcoota, 250 kilometres north-east of Alice Springs.
Dromornis stirtoni, also known at Stirton’s thunderbird, was a large flightless bird thought to have stood about 3 metres high and weighing up to 650 kilograms, which once roamed a site in Central Australia 8 million years ago.
Senior curator of earth sciences, Dr Adam Yates, said the discovery was exciting and he hoped there would be more of this individual female found.
