Rockets

Being in Woomera (and being fascinated by rockets and aircraft) I feel obligated to mention some of the technology developed here. The Woomera range was originally established as a joint project between the UK and Australia for the development of rockets after WWII. The types of rockets being researched and developed included ICBMs, antiaircraft missiles, satellite launch vehicles, sounding rockets (for atmospheric research) and antitank weapons. In addition, several atomic bomb tests were conducted in the 1950s and there were a variety of radar tracking sites for space/satellite/defense purposes.

The Skylark sounding rocket was used for many experiments related to atmospheric research and astronomy. It could lift a 200kg payload to an altitude of roughly 200km. Over 400 of them were launched worldwide from 1957 to 2000. The one pictured here has a an optional second stage on the bottom that added 4 seconds of burn time and an additional 90km of altitude. Multiple experiments were typically fitted into the nose cone.

The Black Knight Rocket was originally designed as a test vehicle for studying designs and materials for reentry. Originally it was intended to help with the development of the Blue Streak rocket but this program ended up getting cancelled. Later flights were done in conjunction with the US for studies needed for its manned space flight program. The initial rockets would reach altitudes of 800km and then fall back into the atmosphere reaching velocities above 3km/s. Later versions used a second stage rocket that fired after the rocket was falling back to earth and further increased the downward velocity to 5km/s.

The flights were done at night so the reentry could be seen optically. I found the following image of a Black Knight reentry. (stolen from http://www.spaceuk.org/bk/bk_pics/5.htm) The reentry head is the longer streak.

One of the most iconic vehicles here is the Jindivik target drone (aboriginal for "The Hunted One"). It was developed by Australia for the testing of antiaircraft missiles. It took off on a wheeled trolley. Once it gained sufficient airspeed, the Jindivik detached from the trolley which stayed on the ground. It took 5 people to remotely pilot the vehicle. Generally, the Jindivick tows a target (eg a flare) behind it for missile tests, though sometimes it was used as the primary target. It had no wheels and landed by sliding on its underside.

An image of one taking off:

Additionally, old fighters (like the Meteor below) and bombers were modified to be unmanned target drones as well.

Starting in the 50s, a lot of testing was done on anti-aircraft missiles. An example of this is the Thunderbolt missile pictured below. The 4 yellow rockets were additional boosters that detached shortly into flight. The missile used semi-active radar to find its target. A ground based radar was required to illuminate the target aircraft. The missile detected the radar reflection off the target and homed in on it.

Video of a Thunderbird test.

Finally, here is a piece of equipment used for the testing. A kinetheodolite. It was used to record the flight of the object under test (eg bomb or rocket). It took two operators to keep the camera on the target: one kept it aligned in azimuth and one in elevation. It's camera took images of the target and annotated them with the current azimuth and elevation of the pedestal.

Example image from a kinetheodolite (from the book Fire Across the Desert - Peter Morton). People would have to analyze each frame of data, recording the azimuth and elevation of the target and adding a correction if the target was not correctly centered in the crosshairs.  

Streaky Bay

After completing our travel through the Gawler ranges, we ended up a little over an hour from the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. We decided to take off for Streaky Bay then, to see the ocean! We showed up to the small town about dinner time and took a pleasant swim near the harbor. We kept feeling our hands were hitting something while swimming. It felt a bit like one of the water jets on the side of a pool. Towards the end, we realized there were tons of small transparent jellyfish that we were banging into.

Harbor area:

Our hotel:

According to the tourist guide, Streaky Bay is one of the centers of seafood in Australia and we couldn't wait to get a good seafood dinner. Unfortunately, the really good restaurant in town is only open 4 days a week. The only other place that served seafood was our hotel. They had about 8 seafood meals:
    several types of fish: deep fried and breaded
    shrimp: deep fried and breaded
    abalone: deep fried and breaded
    calamari: deep fried and breaded.
The oyster appetizer was the only dish that was not deep fried and breaded.
They did sell seafood in the shops there, but we didn't have any facilities for cooking our own meals. 

Non breaded oysters:

The following morning, we did a scenic loop 20 or 30 km down the coast. There were some spectacular views from the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

We found one place to do a bit of snorkeling. The water was pretty chilly. We saw a few fish and some seaweed, but nothing tremendously exciting. 

Duncan getting up the nerve to get wet:

On the return part of the loop we came to the dune section with beautiful fine white sand and no signs telling us we couldn't climb on them.

View at the top of the dunes:

 Weird sand formations:

I did the obligatory running jump down an edge of the dune.

Finally, we went up the coast a few kilometers to the Whistling Rocks. These are porous rocks where air and water is forced up tubes in the rocks by the impact of waves at the waters edge. The higher holes produce odd breathing sounds as air is forced up them. The ones at the water's edge would spray fountains of water into the air.
A sign describing the phenomena:

Water spraying from the blow holes as a wave hits.

Lizards

We saw a lot of lizards in the Eyre Peninsula. They were prolific in the Gawler Ranges especially. We didn't notice them at first, but once we did, we couldn't help but see them everywhere. All the ones we saw were pretty small. Their bodies ranged from 1in to 4-5 inches in length. Duncan got most of these shots since I didn't have my long range lens the first day. Here he is getting shots of a small orange lizard:

A shot of the lizard. The way he camoflauges into the rhyolites is pretty impressive. He has similar orange, black, and white specs to the rock. I spent time trying to identify these guys and concluded they were all members of lizardus unidentifius.

We saw lizards with different coloring in several other environments.
Lizard on granite:
Lizard on sand:

I think this is a skink. We spotted him about 10 ft away from us. He nonchalantly headed towards us. When he was less than a meter from me, I moved which scared him off. He soon approached within a couple feet again. This happened about 3 times. If this were a dog, I would have considered his behavior as one of timid curiosity.

Yet another lizard:

Duncan got this cool shot:

The Gawler Ranges

The next morning we headed off to visit the Gawler Ranges. These were formed 1.5 billion years ago by large volcanic activity. The amount of lava expelled was some 30000 times that emitted by Mt Saint Helens. Over the years, the valleys have been filled in with silt.

To get into the park, we had to drive about 60km, mostly on dirt roads. The roads were scenic and not bad to drive on. Being his company vehicle, Duncan had to (got to) do all the driving.

Once we got into the park, we found slightly more exciting roads and were glad for the high clearance of our "ute". (Australian for pickup truck/utility vehicle.) We met a couple that were attempting to do the 4wd drive loop in the equivalent of a VW van.

The vegetation was a bit different. We saw a lot of spinifex (a type of grass), which we don't have much of in Woomera. This variety I believe is porcupine grass, named because its stems are sharp and quite stiff. Generally, spinifex grows in areas that are dry and often lacking nutritional content. Unlike the chenopods which favor dry but nutritionally rich soil.
Spinifex:

A mix of acacia, saltbush and spinifex: (the colors are a bit garish, but that is what I was seeing all day with my polarized sun glasses.)

Some startled kangaroos look back at us after fleeing. I have determined that Red Kangaroos may or may not be red and Grey Kangaroos may or may not be grey. These may or may not be Red or Grey Kangaroos...

We stopped at several places that would have waterfalls during the rainy season. They all had a trickle of water seeping down them, and some had small pools of algae filled water and even tadpoles. We weren't completely sure where all the water for the waterfall would come from as the fall's catchment area did not seem to extend beyond a single hill or two.

The second falls we stopped at had a very nice formation of rhyolites which are formed as large volumes of lava cool. As it is cooling, cracks develop perpendicular to the surface that is being cooled by the air (the cracks are generally vertical). The rock becomes an assembly of vertical columns. As they wear away and crumble, they break along the crack lines and take on a form that causes causes them to also be nicknamed "pipe organs".

Duncan on top of the pipe organs.

We stopped at one of the falls to eat our lunch out of the back of the ute before it rotted in the hot sun.

In one region of the park we saw areas in the distance that looked a bit blackened and that were full of dead trees. It appeared there had been fires across a number of the hills to the south of us. Eventually, we came to a region where the fire had burned across the road. Much of the brush was gone and all the leaves on the trees were dead. The fires are not supposed to be real intense in this type of terrain. The vegetation is not that dense and the salt content of plants like the saltbush acts as a fire retardant.

Once section of road we drove on had a line of dirt down the middle. It looked like one half the road had been grated and they had left a ridge right smack in the center of the road. Sure enough, several minutes later a grater passed us coming in the opposite direction. He was regrading the dirt road to keep it smooth. 

Kimba

We have two days off and Duncan I have headed down to the Eyre Peninsula. Our first destination was Kimba. It is also an arid area, but we could see the environment changing as we headed south from Woomera. Everything in Woomera is baked and dead looking right now. They had a couple weeks in the 110s Fahrenheit (up to 47C):

The first thing we noticed was the density of the ground cover was much higher and the plants were a lot more green:

Then we came to areas that had similar ground cover, but also had a canopy of eucalyptus trees. I believe these are Red Mallee. They have a beautiful red tinge to them, that shows up really nicely when wearing polarized sunglasses:

On the way down, we also passed a lead vehicle coming in the opposite direction with a "Oversize" sign. A minute later, there was a police vehicle with lights flashing, driving halfway in our lane. The passenger was waving us over to the side of the road. Next came another police vehicle completely in our lane. Finally, the oversize vehicle came through. It was a monster dump truck disassembled into two parts. We're guessing that it was headed for one of the iron mines in this area.

Kimba is another small outback town. It bills itself as halfway across Australia (from east to west).

It is a bit of tourist destination as evidenced by with this giant Galah:

Woomera Part Deux

Trip 2 is finally under way. I wasn't sure it was ever going to happen between all our company's turmoil and the surprise ice storm in Atlanta causing the first of my flights to be cancelled. I called Delta at 3:30pm to reschedule my flights and got put into a queue to be called back. At 3:42am, they finally called me back and I got a 7am direct flight to LA with a 12 hour layover in LA. Ugh! I never want to see terminal 5 again...

Columbus was -1 degree Fahrenheit when I left for the airport at 4:45am. I was hoping for the largest temperature differential possible between Columbus and Woomera. When I arrived in Woomera, the high was only in the low 80s not the 110s it was a couple weeks ago. Logic tells me I shouldn't be disappointed...

The other travel issue was that my bike got lost in transit for 3 days. I took it through customs in Sydney and consigned it to the Virgin Australia ticket counter. For 2 days, they did not know where it was. I didn't want to stay in Adelaide waiting for the bike so I went ahead to Woomera and they promised to send the bike along when they could. Yesterday, they flew it into Olympic Dam and a couple of us drove up there to retrieve it. The flight hadn't arrived when we got there so we waited at baggage claim:

On our last trip, one of the guys we work with went to get a bag that had come in the previous day and found it had been sitting outside in baggage claim all night.

The plane arrived and there was my bike box right in front!

 On the way home, we stopped by Lake Mary in the hopes that the recent rain had filled it with a little water. No dice. At most, it was a little damp.

In the process we managed to get our vehicle mildly stuck in the sand and two of us had to get out and push.