-
·
Cinema Centre
I picked up the phone and was told that there had been an explosion at the Cinema Centre in Canberra and that a man had been killed. We were asked to investigate. The picture below shows the Old Cinema Centre in the centre of the picture and the Dendy Cinema Centre of today in the…
-
·
Narrabundah Community Affairs
Robert Menzies was prime minister of Australia from 1949 to 1966, and was Australia’s longest-serving prime minister. Gough Whitlam led the Labour Party to power for the first time in 23 years at the 1972 election. He went on to win the 1974 election before being controversially dismissed by the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John…
-
·
Lake Burley Griffin
My first job in Canberra with the Bureau of Mineral Resources was logging drill core during the investigations for a dam that would turn the Canberra floodplain into a lake as envisaged by Walter Burley Griffin. The Canberra floodplain was about half a kilometre wide and the low level bridges were frequently flooded. In 1911,…
-
·
Googong Dam – Construction
Googong Dam lies to the south of Queanbeyan, NSW, and is a water supply dam for Canberra. Googong Dam is a minor ungated earth and rock fill dam with a clay core and a concrete chute spillway plus a nearby 13 metres (43 ft) high earth fill saddle embankment. It dams the Queanbeyan River upstream…
-
·
The Grand Canyon
The first lecture I attended on Geology at Queensland University was delivered by Professor Bryan on the Grand Canyon. The landscape is geologically young, being carved within just the last 6 m.y. when the East Pacific Rise intercepted the coast of California and uplifted the Basin and Range blocks to form the Rockies. Three “Granite…