Posted by Jerry on March 24th, 2004 — Posted in History, Travel
I’ve just watched a fascinating TV program syndicated to Australia by the BBC on the ‘search for El-Dorado’ in the Amazon rainforest. Following Spanish explorer tales, the progam described how the myths of a large civilisation were debunked on the strength of soil fertility – or lack thereof. Rainforests may look fertile, but the amount of rainfall means that nutients are quickly leached from the soil leaving infertile clay substrates. We have a similar problem in Australia – since most of our land mass was once sea bed and hence below a thin layer of sandy top soil we have a layer of salt – which through over-cropping of the soil, quickly rises to the surface, causing ever increasing desertification of our farmlands.
Enter some persistent researchers who allow their curiosity to be drawn to seeming ‘islands’ of rainforest in otherwise barrren land. It turns out that beneath these fertile islands is a huge legacy of pottery shards – of pots that would be far too large for nomadic people scattered thinly across the landscape. The secret? The black soil – which appears to be artificial. Amazonian small-croppers, like those in Malaysia and Indonesia, clear land by slashing and burning. But by burning on the surface, all the nutrients get burnt to ash leaving only a small amount of added fertility value for farming. The difference appears to be that the Amazonian people of the past also felled trees and burnt the vegetation, but they did so by covering it with earth and producing, not ash, but charcoal. Charcoal is highly absorbant and would retain nutrients in the soil. As one researcher has noted, terra preta soil (black soil) enriched with mineral fertiliser gave 880 percent more yield than the same substrate enriched with the fertiliser alone. In other words the fertiliser was not being leached form the soil.
Now, if only we in Australia could apply that kind of process to our own soil – how much more productive could our land be?
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on March 14th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Motorcycling, Travel
What an exhilirating ride! Just popping out for a pie – 130km to Batehaven on the coast with the friendly folk from Action Motorcycles – the first of what they hope to be a monthly ride. They’re a good mob, and they accepted the antique Bol d’Or with good grace. There’s nothing quite like the howl that comes out of that four into one exhaust when it comes on song 😉
And there were some good corners to be had heading down the Clide Mountain – they’ve cleaned up the road a lot in the last couple of years. Pity that the bear seems to have disappeared from Pooh corner.
You can just see the antique trying to blend in among the modern bikes 😉
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on March 14th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Travel
Every year Canberra has a Balloon Fiesta at this time of year. So yesterday (Saturday 13 March), we got up early and headed into the city to see the balloons being launched in front of our Parliament House. There must have been about thirty of them! Most were the usual shapes, but there were some unusual ones, like: the house, the frog, the bunch of balloons, and above all, Van Gogh! It was too much of a temptation when van gogh headed over the Australian National University’s Canberra School of Art:
The image was taken by my partner, Sharon Boggon who lectures at the Art School.
cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on January 24th, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Travel
Amazing! just stumbled across this site while reading Chic Happens’ blog on 20six – the Tate collection online 🙂 196 images online from the general collection and a whole bunch of Turners – stuff we just don’t get to see in Oz unless the National Gallery of Australia scores a tour of a few works. So bouquets to the Tate. In 2000 I went to the Tate modern – great exhibition of Louise Bourgeois’ works in the turbine hall – a stunning steel spider and three towers labelled “I DO”, “I UNDO”, “I REDO” providing a range of perspectives on interiority, exteriority and moving forward. Great stuff!
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