Perhaps I’m getting sentimental. After all we are nearing the end of another year but this is the time when families are on a quest to visit the big banana, the big prawn, the big pineapple, the big sheep, the big crayfish, the big galah even a bloody big gumboot (it’s in The Otway Ranges and in honour of gumboot shod marathon runner Cliff Young if you haven’t found it yet). Large things built of fibreglass and concrete. Perhaps instead we should celebrate the awesome and amazing things.
Things like the beautiful mosaic seat at Nambucca Heads.
The Woakwine Cutting at Beachport, SA. Claimed as the country’s largest one man engineering feat. It shows what a bloke and a bulldozer can do. What did he do? He drained a swamp by cutting a narrow channel right through a hill to the sea to create acres and acres of arable farming land.
The drystone walls of Western Victoria that stretch for mile upon mile over hill and dale and built by homesick farmers eking out a living from a harsh new land in the only way they knew how.
The Living Desert Sculptures of Broken Hill. Art that so compliments its backdrop canvas of desert, that people sit out there at every sunset, breathe in the desert air and toast the sheer beauty of it all with a glass of champagne.
And achievements of the past like Scotsman John McDouall Stuart who trudged north from Adelaide through central Australia, leading the first team to reach the north and return. Who went on six expeditions to the inland. Stuart’s efforts defined the route to be used to build the Overland Telegraph to link Australia to the rest of the world. The Overland Telegraph was completed in 1877 and The Ghan Railroad later followed this route.
And West Australian engineer C. Y. O’Connor who silenced critics by building an efficient harbour in Fremantle then went on to build the Goldfields Pipeline, a wooden water pipeline from Perth to the parched desert goldfields of Kalgoorlie. The harbour is still in use today as is the pipeline including some original wooden sections. Filled with self doubt O’Connor committed suicide in 1902 by shooting himself while riding his horse into the sea.
itchingforhitching 
A fine post
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Thanks Derrick. I often wonder how those explorers and early settlers did what they did. Ill prepared, under nourished and no WIFI 🙂
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Love sunset at the sculptures in Broken Hill. We certainly have plenty of both big and amazing things don’t we?
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The weird, the wonderful and the ridiculous.
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Yep 😏
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That mosaic is absolutely breathtaking, I would love to experience it in person. 👌🏻
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I love the fact that it is a very long public seat.
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We live in an amazing country. I still have to see Broken Hill, hopefully one day. The rest I have seen and marvelled about. There is also a big gumboot at Tully, reputed to be the wettest place in Queensland. Great post
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We haven’t explored Tully yet, we followed the highway and sadly missed the town. You know what it’s like with a van behind you rarely get the chance to do a U turn.
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Not a lot to see in Tully, but we have wwoofed on a banana farm in the area back in 2010 and remained friends with them
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Wow!
Very amazing this is.
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I’m from WA and knew O’Connor was responsible for the Kalgoorlie pipeline, and that he committed suicide because he had thought it hadn’t been successful. Apparently he miscalculated the time it would take for the water to flow through. I didn’t know the details though of his suicide, nor that he was also responsible for giving us Fremantle Harbour. Thank you for that info.
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It is sad that he never knew that his works would continue to operate successfully for so long and for the betterment of the people of WA.
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