All things are interesting things.
All things are interesting things!
On a remote sheep station in rural New South Wales, Jane Pye has identified thousands of culturally modified trees, including a potential new type that warrants protection.
Scar Trees website: https://scartrees.com.au
Some plant and tree species form symbiotic supportive relationships, like this example of silver-leafed ironbark and spinifex grass - with a quantum physics twist!
In 1969, just after Star Trek: The Original Series wrapped filming, William Shatner visited Australia. Among other things, he visited Andamooka, South Australia, and went underground at an opal mine!
This is one of the first radios capable of receiving a voice transmission, using a triode vacuum tube as a very primitive but functional amplifier.
The Lightning Flash Newspaper supported Lightning Ridge and surrounding areas for decades, with a distribution of thousands of copies, sent all over the world.
Corrections: 4:17 - Val was a boilermaker, not a fitter and turner.
The opal miners of Lightning Ridge have always been inventors and problem solvers, including Frank Thomas who built (or modified) this bicycle!
Sending equipment (and people!) to space requires communication - one of the first terrestrial radios was incredibly simple but functional: the crystal radio set!
Special thanks to Warwick Schofield and the Tamworth Regional Astronomy Club.
Opal specimens can tell us so much about opal formation and opal science. Not all opal is gem-quality, but it's all fascinating!
Special thanks to Paul Sedawie and to Jenni Brammall from the Australian Opal Centre. Special thanks also to Shaun Galman and Elizabeth and Bob Smith.
The Lightning Ridge Historical Society website has just launched! So much content: profiles on historical figures, never-before-seen photographs, updated timeline of local history, so many things.
An interesting business venture from the 1960s, offering accomodation and opal mining -- and probably very little success or profit!
Special thanks to Barbara at the Lightning Ridge Historical Society.
Just a quick video to talk about the Certificate in Opal Studies course available from the Gemmological Association of Australia.
(The GAA and its people have supported Curiosity Mine in the past, and will continue to do so into the future. I was given free access to the course and asked to make a quick video if I felt it was deserved, which I did, and I have.)
The Australian Opal Centre's new world-class museum building on the historic Three Mile opal field is looking amazing -- in this video we take a tour of the facility and check out some of the architectural features, temperature control systems, layout and explore the visitor experience! We also travel back in time to 2016 to see how far we have come!
Special thanks to Jenni Brammall, the Australian Opal Centre, BARPA, Darcstudio, and everyone who has contributed to the Australian Opal Centre!
All of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are female....and from the Northern Hemisphere. What if they were from the Southern Hemisphere instead?
We have some pretty awesome dinosaurs in the Souther Hemisphere, and to prove the point I've taken it upon myself to re-cast the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park with their Australian counterparts!
(This video was made without consulting palaeontologists, so if anything is incorrect in this video, I take full responsibility.)
One of the last things you would expect to be inspired by the opal fields of Lightning Ridge is a ballet, and yet...
In the Wild West of Australia in the late 1800s, three doctors performed miracles at Lightning Ridge!
Here are 10 Australian flags that don't get the attention they deserve!
The Albury Pioneer Cemetery has a lot of small but fascinating stories to tell.
Some bush fruits are named (unofficially) after supermarket fruits, despite having no botanical similarity -- join Warwick Schofield as we investigate the Wild Lemon, Wild Orange, Bush Passionfruit and Wild Apricot...
This video was made with Warwick Schofield, with support from Margaret Schofield and Kay Wotherspoon.
We stop by to visit the grave of Charles Dickens' youngest son, Edward "Plorn" Dickens, who moved to Australia in 1868 because.....reasons.
Lightning Ridge: Spectre of the Black Opal is an e-book by Roy Lester Pond about supernatural and extraterrestrial surprises on the opal fields of New South Wales!