‘Modern man is a forest butcher’, warned the pioneering science journalist Hugh McKay in 1923. ‘He is also an oil-spendthrift and a coal waster’, McKay continued, ‘recklessly spending his capital of fuel… with never a thought of the tomorrow when he will stand shivering and motionless in the middle of a coal-less, oil-less, treeless, steel-less [...]
¶
Posted 14 November 2006
† Tim Sherratt
§
articles and book chapters § weather
‡
°
Also tagged: apocaplypse, arms race, atomic bomb, climate change, Cold War, dung beetles, fear, global warming, Hugh McKay, Mark Oliphant, progress, Tim Flannery, time, turning points
The glow of his campfire framed a simple tableau of pioneer life. Across this ‘untenanted land’, Edwin Brady mused, ‘little companies’, such as his own, sat by their ‘solitary fires’. ‘They smoked pipes and talked, or watched the coals reflectively’. Around them, the ‘shadowy outlines’ of the bush merged into the dark northern night, and [...]
¶
Posted 01 March 2005
† Tim Sherratt
§
articles and book chapters § atomic age
‡
°
Also tagged: Alfred Deakin, atomic bomb, atomic tests, Australia Unlimited, Cold War, defence, Edwin James Brady, frontiers, Littleton Groom, progress, progressivism, race, science, secrets, uranium, White Australia
The clouds of radioactive fallout are descending and humanity is doomed to extinction. In Nevil Shute’s book, On the Beach, the inhabitants of Melbourne await their end – the final victims of a 37 day nuclear war that has destroyed the northern hemisphere. John Osborne, played by Fred Astaire in the film version, decides to [...]
¶
Posted 01 July 1996
† Tim Sherratt
§
atomic age § conference presentations
‡
°
Also tagged: AAEC, ANU, ASIO, atomic bomb, atomic energy, Bikini Atoll, Cold War, CSIRO, David Rivett, Emu Field, George Briggs, Les Martin, Lucas Heights, Maralinga, Mark Oliphant, Monte Bello Islands, progress, secrets, uranium, Woomera
In the Riverview Observatory, Father O’Connell readied his seismographs – seven of them. The possibility of breakdown had to be considered, and now, with the coal miners out – a blackout at the wrong moment … So the clockwork instruments were oiled and tested, set up alongside their electric successors. Springs taut, whirring, they waited. [...]
