Pictures of Time Beneath by Kirsty Douglas

Author:Kirsty Douglas [Douglas, Kirsty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Australia & New Zealand, Science
ISBN: 9780643097049
Google: 3_3FvOXoBBQC
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Published: 2010-01-15T03:57:02+00:00

Figure 24: View of Lake Callabonna, 1893. (South Australian Museum expedition, 1893. In E.C. Stirling 1900. The physical features of Lake Callabonna, Memoirs of the Royal Society of South Australia, 1(2): 1–15. National Library of Australia Nq 560.9942 ROY (2053869). Stirling’s explanation: View, looking south-west, showing part of the flat saline expanse of Lake Callabonna, with the western shore just visible as a dark streak. The elevation in the foreground is the top of the sand-dune at the foot of which, on the further side, somewhat to the right of the erect figure, the camp was situated. The vegetation is stubbly samphire (Salicornia). The bulk of the fossils were obtained on the flat to the (observer’s) right of the erect figure on the sand-dune.)

Stirling described the successful method used by the Hursts (without crediting them) to find subterranean bones, probing with a wire rod, whereby he ‘struck underground skeletons or parts of skeletons about a dozen times in a very short space of time’, and he expected that the conduct of subsequent operations, under the methodical and careful Mr Zietz, would ‘yield results which in scientific value will far exceed those already obtained’. Accordingly, he ‘told Mr Hurst [his] opinion’ and ‘gave him and his brother … a week’s notice in terms of the last agreement signed by him, and desired that the third brother (Wm. Hurst), who had been a sort of hanger on of the camp for the last six weeks, should also leave’. Henry Hurst asked Stirling ‘that he might be allowed to send in his resignation’, to which the director assented.

The museum committee held a special meeting on 31 August to discuss Stirling’s visit, at which he summarised his report, which itself borrowed heavily from his expedition journal. He informed them that he had left Zietz in charge with Cornock as his deputy. He retained Meldrum at a reduced rate of pay, and the other excavator Templeton, both of whom he found ‘willing obliging and handy’. Stirling regretted ‘the stringency of the measures I have been compelled to take, in the interests of the Museum’ and he was disappointed ‘in regard to the inadequacy of the results so far achieved the great expenditure into which we have been led by a continued course of mismanagement’. But he assured the board that ‘failure in the future to make the best of this extremely important discovery’ would compound the sin and ‘be humiliating in the extreme to all concerned’. He hoped that ‘the value of the future work will redeem the comparative failure of the past efforts to make the best use of a field of extraordinary promise’. He saw no difficulty that could not be surmounted ‘with patience, judgment, and foresight, save and except a continuance of wet weather which must completely paralyse all operations’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.