I very much enjoyed the link, John. Thanks for sharing it. Dear Rod, Aboriginal people in Australia have a very different sense of time than Westerners do. They have a sense of time as "near" and "far." Things near in time are not events that happened close in sequence, but events that are more important to the person. Things far away in time are those that are less meaningful, even though they could have happened yesterday. This is important for health care workers to know when interacting with traditional people.
I have some notes on this from an exhibition on Time, but perhaps others will find more up-to-date information online. Sara Sara J. Schechner Altazimuth Arts 42°36'N 71° 22'W West Newton, MA 02465 http://www.altazimutharts.com/ Sara J. Schechner, Ph.D. David P. Wheatland Curator of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments Department of the History of Science, Harvard University Science Center 251c, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617-496-9542 | Fax: 617-496-5932 | [email protected] http://scholar.harvard.edu/saraschechner http://chsi.harvard.edu/ -----Original Message----- From: sundial [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Pickard Sent: Saturday, March 07, 2015 6:11 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Telling time in outback Queensland in the early 20th century Hi Rod, Short answer: no! Long answer: still no, but a bloke named Duane Hamacher (University of NSW) is the Australian guru on Aboriginal astronomy, and has published extensively on this. I haven't had time to trawl through his stuff to see what he says about telling time, but there may be something in his publications (http://www.nuragili.unsw.edu.au/profileduanehamacher.html) FYI, I have a paper in press refuting a suggestion by a local Aborigine that stone walls near Jindabyne (southern NSW) were erected by Aborigines as an astronomical alignment. They are dry stone walls erected as fences in difficult terrain. The European landowners may have used Aboriginal labour (paid a fraction of what whites were paid!), but there is no way that the walls are alignments. However, if you look at Hamacher's papers you'll find several which document stone arrangements which are astronomical. Cheers, John John Pickard [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: rodwall1234 Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2015 9:56 AM To: John Pickard ; [email protected] Subject: Re: Telling time in outback Queensland in the early 20th century 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 <[email protected]> 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 >[email protected] > >--------------------------------------------------- >https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial > --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
