Hi John, Thanks that is interesting. I have always though about how our Australian Aboriginals determined time. Do you have any information on that?
Regards, Roderick Wall. John Pickard <john.pick...@bigpond.com> wrote: >Good afternoon, > >List members may be interested in this account of how some boundary-riders >in Queensland kept time in the early 1900s: > >"Many boundary-riders do not even possess a watch, their only timekeepers >being the sun and the stars. Some judge by the shadows. I saw one who had >pegs stuck in the ground, at a radius of 10ft, all round a tree. There were >ten of them standing exactly one hour apart, so that the shade, lying across >the first at 8 a.m., would be on the last at 5 p.m. A swagman with a watch >had camped with him one Sunday, and between then they had constructed this >crude sun-dial. Once when passing a camp, I asked the boundary-ride the >time, and was amused at the manner in which he obtained it. Taking a small >twig, he broke it into two pieces about 3in long, and, holding his left hand >palm upwards, he stood one piece between the second and third fingers, and >the other between the third and fourth. Then, facing due north, he held his >hand straight out before him and I noticed that the shadows of the twigs >were just a trifle east of a direct north and south line '"Bout, 'alf-parst >twelve," he said. " > >http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71523046 > >A boundary rider was a station employee who lived far from the homestead, >and whose job it was to ride along fences to check for breaks in the wire, >etc. > >Of course, telling the time with the 10-foot radius circle using the shadow >of a tree would be "as rough as guts" (in the Australian vernacular), but it >probably made little difference to the boundary rider. However, at least >some early outback Australians understood the geometry of sundials. See my >description of a dial made out of galvanised iron: > >Pickard, J. (1998). A 19th century vernacular horizontal sundial from >outback Australia. British Sundial Society Bulletin 98(1): 26-29. > >Personally, I prefer using CIA-time via my GPSs. Not as much fun, but way >more accurate. > >Cheers, John > >John Pickard >john.pick...@bigpond.com > >--------------------------------------------------- >https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial > --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
