A MUSEUM's
LIFE SUMMARY: "Conceived with the Mining Act of 1874, the Museum of
Mines, Sydney, was born on 6 March 1876. Re-named the Mining and
Geological Museum, it had a near death experience when the Garden Palace was
destroyed by fire on 22 September1882. At Federation the museum was
located in the Outer Domain, Sydney. It had a new curator, a new
collection, and yet another new temporary home. Federation was a time of
great idealism for the new Curator, George W Card. He compared the
‘Mining Museum’ with other similar geological institutions throughout the
world with whom he regularly corresponded and exchanged specimens. Card
wrote the only published Handbook to the museum in 1902. He worked
towards securing a permanent home to showcase the geology and mineral deposits
of NSW and saw this achieved in 1909. For most of the 20th century the
Museum persistently functioned from this home in The Rocks, Sydney. The
Museum continued despite fighting off recurring inquiries into its function
and struggling for funds, but after a long and fulfilling life, the Museum, as
the Earth Exchange, died on 29 September 1995. Following claims by
relatives, its remains were packed into storage boxes and interred at
Lidcombe" (Former Collections Manager, geologist Phillip Black, who
worked at the museum 1979-1991) .
Most of the
museum's collections are known to be today at Londonderry, or else on display
at the Australian Museum.
Miscellaneous material was dispersed and may or may not survive
still. Some such items from the disbanded museum may yet be traced, and
equally some fruitful attempt to find out what happened to the staff should be
possible as well(?). Thus far one of the well known items from the
museum has been located. This is the "earthquake machine".
It turns out this was rescued and re-housed by Sydney's artistic fraternity,
and has been lovingly restored as an example of the late-capitalist
culture's "entertainment-industrial-technological" complex (see
below).
The Garden Palace, built for the 1879 Great Exhibition,
viewed from the eastern side from across Farm Cove.
Garden Palace, viewed from Macquarie Street
side.
Garden Palace entrance on Macquarie Street.
These front gates were unaffected by the fire.
A young Queen Victoria, under the main dome at the
completion of the Garden Palace.
Two levels of display bay space extend off along both
sides of each cruciform arm.
These spaces were filled with the displays of the Great
Exhibition.
Handbook (1902) to the mining and geological museum,
Sydney with special references to the Mineralogical collections.
As this states, the Geological
Surveyor began collecting (and also likely soliciting donations)
in 1875. In the Department of Mines Annual Report
for 1876, the donations made that year to the
"Museum of Mines" in Sydney are listed.
The Garden Palace building.
(Drawing by Simon
Fieldhouse)
View from the Royal Botanic Gardens side
The Garden Palace ruins after the fire. In
the Illustrated Sydney News, 1882.
The obelisk is left standing.
The obelisk was intended as a display monument to the
rising gold output of the colony.
Ghost of the Garden Palace building superimposed on
present day Botanic Gardens park. Now almost
totally forgotten or unknown to most Sydney people it was
a huge building; several times bigger than the
Queen Victoria Building. It's loss on September 22,
1882 was reported by the Herald as news "the
whole colony - indeed the whole of the Australian
colonies, and we might add, the whole of the
civilised world - will hear with deep regret".
(Image: Sydney Morning Herald 15 Sep 2007 ).
[The outline may be wrongly positioned -
check.]
From the figures mentioned above in 1902 it seems that in numerical
terms the collection consisted very largely of material collected by the Rev.
W. B. Clarke (the "Father of Australian Geology") when it was
destroyed. All of Clarke's library and manuscripts were being
housed with the specimens and were lost. Thus vanished the the physical
evidence that would have told much about why it was that
W.B. Clarke early gained acclaim as the "father" of Australian
geology. After the Garden Palace tragedy Mr Wilkinson and the
Survey set about re-building the collection. It was re-opened to the
public again by 1886, in a small temporary building erected
at the back of the
Geological Survery premises at 233 Macquarie Street. In 1893 it moved to
a building behind the Sydney Hospital.
One of the best known names associated with the museum is that of
George Card, Mineralogist and Curator for many years. Card promoted the
museum and aided the growth of the collections. He published a handbook
of the Museum in 1902. Under Card the museum moved into what was hoped
to be its permanent home at the Rocks in November 1909.
In the same year, 1909, the NSW government purchased the important
mineral collection (ca. 3000 specimens) made by Broken Hill publican Edward
William Aldridge.
Aldridge's garden at the Duke of Cornwall
Hotel
In 1889 Mr. Edward Aldridge, a broad, sharp thinking entrepreneur
bought the Duke of Cornwall Hotel in Broken Hill and would set up there a most
glorious gardens and mineral museum. Eventually there were
aviaries containing over 1,000 birds and many animals. He had
commenced collecting immediately forming the first major Broken Hill mineral
specimen collection with the collection being amassed essentially over the
three years from 1888 to 1891. The Duke of Cornwall Hotel was situated only
about 200 meters from Block 11 so Aldridge was in a prime position to attract
miners coming off their shifts and buy specimens from them. Aldridge also
presumably had enough money from the Hotel receipts to fund his collecting. As
a publican he was something of a showman and took the trouble to put his
collection on public display in showcases upstairs in his Hotel. The
collection and occasional visits by public figures to view it, were referred
to on occasion in local newspapers. Having decided after a few years to
sell his collection, in 1892 Aldridge asked Charles W. Marsh - a mineralogist
for whom marshite is named, to examine and catalogue the collection for him.
Marsh spent four months living in Aldridge’s hotel working on the collection,
noting specimens of other rare minerals in the process although unfortunately
for later researchers did not record localities for these. Since Aldridge was
experiencing money problems at the time he refused to pay Marsh for the
cataloguing work who took him to court over the payment dispute but Marsh was
not successful.
Aldridge contacted the British Museum to offer the collection for sale
but was told that the Museum would not consider this without seeing it.
Aldridge transport 150 boxes to England himself, to put it on display to try
and sell it. Since the British Museum was only prepared to buy some of the
specimens but not the whole collection Aldridge had to come back to Australia
with most of it unsold. Eventually the collection was purchased in 1908
by Sydney University for £7,050 - the money being provided by the benefactor
Sir Hugh Dixson, of Abergeldie, Summer Hill. This was a great deal
of money at the time but it did not help Edward Aldridge for long, as he died
in 1909.
The collection, then of 143 boxes of specimens and three boxes of
photographs was transported to Sydney University in 1909. The boxes of
photographs have unfortunately now vanished. The collection was then broken up
and split five ways. The Australian Museum received about 125 specimens, the
Museum of Applied Arts And Sciences received about 200, the Geological and
Mining Museum about 200, with about 500 being sent off to England for
exhibition, and the majority and best specimens staying at Sydney
University. The Sydney University specimens were on display for about
thirty years but in 1948 the management decided to use the display area for
another purpose and the specimens were placed into temporary storage with
knowledgeable local collectors such as Albert Chapman and Laurie Lawrence
allowed to acquire some of them. The remaining specimens were stored in the
Geology Building until the building was demolished ca. 2006. The
specimens originally sent off to London for exhibition had been forgotten
about. The Mining Museum's Palaeontologist, Lawrence Sherwin, was in
London in 1972 and packed up the specimens there for repatriation to
Australia. They were sent to the Geological & Mining Museum for
housing. (Source: The Dixson collection has been
reseached by John Rankin).
During and after World War I the museum languished, with negligible
funding. The government of the day wanted to close it by it is believed
Card instigated a strong campaign to win public support, and it survived that
threat.
Again in the Depression years, the Public Service Board questioned the
necessity for the museum. An enquiry was held to reduce perceived
duplication with Sydney museums that had similar display, the Mining Museum,
Australian Museum and Technological Museum. One of the results, in 1934,
was that the mining museum was instructed to transfer all meteorites and
tectites to the Australian Museum, since these were not objects that
originated in New South Wales.
In 1988 the
New South Wales Government acquired another highly significant collection, the
Albert Chapman Collection, and this was placed in the Geological and Mining
Museum.
Albert
Chapman, hailed as Australia's greatest mineral collector, was born in Mackay,
Queensland in 1912. Albert's father was a sea captain and amateur naturalist,
who often brought home natural history specimens such as sea shells and
encouraged Albert to collect minerals. In the 1920s, aged 12, Albert
collected rocks on the shores of the Parramatta River, Sydney, where he later
lived, and became interested in the sparkling crystals they contained. Some of
these rocks that had been used in breakwaters came from Prospect Quarry and
the crystals were zeolites. He also found at Parramatta garnet gneiss
from South America, which was ballast dumped from ships. He later visited the
Prospect quarries, finding there beautiful prehnite and other minerals.
The mines of Broken Hill, also attracted him at an early stage, and many
collecting trips were made. Albert assembled one of the top ten private
mineral collections of the world. He still maintained a keen interest in
minerals right up to his death, on 20 July 1996, aged
84.
When Albert
Chapman felt that age was becoming a handicap, he sold the collection to the
New South Wales government for a fraction of its true value to ensure it
remained in this country. His mineral collection was purchased by the
New South Wales Government in 1988, with assistance from Conzinc Riotinto
Australia, North Broken Hill and BHP. The collection was housed in the
Geological and Mining ('Earth Exchange') Museum until its closure. It
was then transferred to the Australian Museum.
REF (Chapman
collection) :
Graham, I.T.
and Pogson, R.E., 2007. The Albert Chapman Mineral
Collection. Rocks and Minerals, 82 (1): 29-38.
During the
1970s-1980s a split existed in the management of matters within the Museum
building. Whereas the place was originally regarded as the
"Geological Survey Museum" (as shown in the extract of the 1902 Handbook
above) the overall status now became that the "Mining Museum" (as it was
commonly referred to still within the Department) was formerly under the
Information Division of the department (Director Mr R.R. Lucas)
reporting to the Secretary (Mr G. Rose) of the Department. Yet at the
same time at least one floor space of the museum was occupied by scientific
staff of the Geological Survey (reporting via one of the Survey's Assistant
Directors, Jeanette Adrian, to the department's Assistant Secretrary for the
Mineral Development Division, Mr D.R. Pinkstone). Various modifications
of administration occurred over time but this basic division of having two
parts of the museum (referred to internally in the building as the 'museum'
and 'specialist services' staff respectively) lasted for many
years.
FINAL CLOSURE WAS IN 1996 (? late
1995)
The final closing of the Museum
was underway in late 1995. The State Opposition prepared a motion
to rescind the closure but because of various delays this was not debated in
State Parliament until 1996, by which time the closure and commenced
dismantling of things had in fact become a fait accompli which even the
movers of the motion by then doubted would or could be reversed.
The finer details of the winding
down of the museum, and the exact date it shut its doors to the public,
remains to be found and added (the official closure date was 29 September 1995). There is also a story yet to be told by those who were concerned that
the treasures of the museum not be lost or debased. One priceless large
fossil fish specimen was recovered from an industrial wastes "dumpmaster" bin,
along with proper wreckage, in the back yard, where workmen clearing out
the building had mistakedly thrown it. Most of the museum's earliest
records (covering the pre-Earth Exchange phase) have never been
found. At time of closure the museum has 26 full-time and
22 part-time staff. Following closure the Government sought
Expressions of Interest for removal of materials deemed available for
disposal. Tenders for this closed on 21 November 1995. Items not
taken by tenders were disposed of by public action in December.
But few employees were retained in connection with winding up and the gutting
of the museum building. These operations were put under the management
of Mr Paul Crombie. Mr Crombie was assigned several assistants for
the task.
According to Phillip Black,
quoted above, the Museum "died" on 29 September 1995. However, the death
was only more widely realised later on, and the following comment in the
Australian Institute of Geologists newsletter dates from January 1996.
The long life of Sydney's "Mining Museum" came to an end in "1996" (but
decision made in 1995). Prior to its closure it was renamed as the
"Earth Exchange". None of those who worked there ever succeeded in
finding out why the Government chose that particular name, or what it was
supposed to mean (they were often asked this question by members of the
public, on what the name meant, but the only possible answer was that nobody
knew). There are several other known uses of "Earth Exchange" as a
name. Most are connected with waste minimisation or resource
optimisation. One ( http://www.earthexchange.com/ ) is
for identifying or matching earth materials deficit and surplus sites and
suppliers/users etc. This is in the UK but smaller attempts at the same
thing have been tried in Australia too. A second usage is as for a
widely known thrift store (which calls itself "The second-hand store with an
environmental message") in the Zachary Square Shopping Centre at Maple
Grove in Minnesota. It is presumed that the name came from some
consultancy that the government had used prior to the refurbishment but it is
not know if such consultancy had any connection with Maple Grove. In
Sydney there is currently a business of this name/type, located at Homebush
Bay ("Earth Exchange" Office 10, 1
Burroway Rd, HOMEBUSH BAY, NSW 2127, Ph: (02) 9748 6447 - listed
as dealing in recycled goods and wholsaling).
In the latter years the Museum
had a large association of friends and volunteers, named FOGMM - Friends of
the Geological & Mining Museum. These people assisted in the
operation of the museum in various ways.
In January 1996 the
President of the Australian Geoscience Council, Professor Chris Powell,
wrote: "I report, with regret, that the Earth Exchange Museum in the Rocks
area of Sydney has been closed through the withdrawal of an annual $1.3
million subsidy from the NSW State Government. News of the closure
reached the Executive only after the decision had been taken; there was no
consultation with the AGC or the GSA." (AIG News No. 43, Jan 1996).
As Prof. Powell (op. cit.) also went on to note,
there was a strong connection here to geology teaching in the schools: "To cut
off, without consultation, an institution which has been visited by over
100,000 people a year and over 25,000 students carrying out educational
exercises, makes hollow the the commitment of some governments to education
and learning ... Meanwhile the nation prepares for the Olympics!".
The geological fraternity may have been slow to
take note of and comment on the closure of the museum but the NSW Parliament
was even slower. The above comment in AIG was in January 1996
whereas the matter was not raised in the NSW Parliament until 2 May 1996 ( Hansard
record thereof ), although some members of Parliament had been aware of
matters late in 1995.
The Hansard record reveals some detail on what was
the precipitous timing of the closure announcement.
Four days before the Minister informed the Earth
Exchange that it was going to be closed, the Department of Mineral Resources
head office had written a letter to the Earth Exchange stating that it had
received confirmation from Mr M. Lambert, secretary to the Treasury, dated 15
August 1995, approving for the Earth Exchange funding of $1.355 million per
annum for the three financial years 1995-96, 1996-97 and 1997-98. The
Earth Exchange was told therein that it was going to be funded until the end
of 1998. Only four days later the Minister conveyed to it the the
grim news that its termination had been decided upon.
Likewise, a report made by the then director of the
museum stated that on 8 August the Trust chairman, Mr McDonald, met with the
Minister and others. The Minister said at the meeting that he recognised
concerns about funding matters, and that he would raise them at a meeting with
the Premier later in the day. He also said that he would make representations
to the Treasurer. That at the time was taken as a big success! Yet
within two weeks following the 8 August meeting the announcement of closure
was made.
The museum was suddenly advised that it was to
close on 29 October and would receive $1.5 million, basically as wind-up
residual funding. Staff at the time generally formed the opinion that
the sudden termination decision may have been an off the cuff decision by one
or two persons within Treasury. The Minister was asked in
Parliament to advise on that particular matter, but did not shed any light on
who made the decision, or how.
Mr Martin, the then Minister for Mineral Resources
and Fisheries stated that the museum had been closed because of falling
attendance figures and the museum's "inability to attain its intended goal of
becoming financially self-supporting" (not exactly the 'museum's goal or any
traditional goal but rather part of the imposed broader neoliberal policy
"reforms" going on throughout the government at the time).
The government had initially hoped that industry
would "adopt" the museum and that it (government) could progressively withdraw
from funding the place. This wishful thinking never eventuated to the
degree desired. Mr Martin stated that the government was no longer
"prepared to subsidise, without the assistance of industry" the continued
operation of what had "become a costly business".
Of course societies in many places had long managed
to support State museums with never the slightest thought that industry
subside was any absolute necessity, but that was never mentioned - as by this
time both sides of the NSW parliament were in fact basically of the same mind
to get rid of non self-supporting burdens on consolidated revenue.
Mr Martin reminded the Opposition of that fact by pointing out that the
previous Government agreed with not continuing to subsidise the operations of
the Earch Exchange (On 10 March 1994 the former Treasurer wrote that he was
unconvinced the museum should be funded indefinitely from Consolidated Fund,
particularly if it seemed financially unviable).
Mr Martin gave
wrong (or at least not entirely correct) advise to Parliament when he stated:
"The public is able to enjoy the mining and mineral collections of the former
museum, and that will continue to be the case ... rehoused in venues in which
they are able to blend with surrounding exhibits in a harmonious and fitting
way". For apart from the Albert Chapman collection which would continue
on display at the Australian Museum most other material either went into
storage or was disposed of (exhibition background materials, not
specimens).
Mr Martin also stated that "Items of mining and
historic interest have gone to the Powerhouse Museum" (possible, but not
checked). And that the Maitland bar gold nugget was sent to the Sydney
Mint Museum for public display.
Mr Martin referred to the termination of the museum
as the "Government's action to rationalise the Exchange's
functions".
As the museum post termination ceased to have any
functions at all this was certain a case of very extreme "rationalisation" of
functions.
Beginning the museum's decline under the new
political climate of "become self funding" the museum had been forced to
change from a free public venue to one charging a significant entry fee.
This was deemed by some as "economically rational" and essential at the
time. However the decision to have steep entrance fees was likely an
imposed one somehow, because the museological fraternity was very well aware
of the adverse effects of Thatcherism and "user pays" measures on bodies like
museums. It was known that in the 1970s in the UK the introduction of
entry fees had reduced attendance to 20%, a very sobering
fall-off.
In retrospect for the Earth Exchange the high cost
of admission doubtless contributed to many people being unwilling to pay to
see "rocks and things" which they otherwise may have been curious to
view. Most staff at the museum were appalled at the charges it was
forced to impose and many predicted this would spell the end of the place (the
new cost of admission imposed for a family of four was $27 at the Earth
Exchange - greater than the $14 then charged at the Powerhouse and Australian
museums).
Another political view (held by Mr Thomson) was
that the location was foolhardy and quite poor. Mr Thomson declared that
the museum was "not competing effectively with the vast number of other
museums in Sydney". Therefore he thought it logical that its best
displays should be taken and given to those museums he deemed to be more
successful.
Other possible factors in the longevity or
otherwise of the museum had been competing land uses. The Rocks area had
been a major unions/goverment battleground on the matter of redevelopment - a
battle which actually "saved" much of the historic Rocks area from demolition
and massive highrise redevelopment. At that time the whole area had been
re-vested ownership-wise in the Rocks Redevelopment Authority. At that
time the museum was told it could stay where it had always been as a
"lease", perhaps the first introduction of a feeling of doubtful
permanence for the place? At the time of closure it emerged that the
building was then owned by the Farm Cove Authority, and confirmed that the
museum only had a leasehold tenure. It was also widely stated at the
time that an Aboriginal art organisation was after the building for displays,
but after the museum was closed and evacuated nothing ever came of that and
the art interests in fact found more commodious accomodation in the nearby old
Maritime Services building.
Educational
functions:
The Mining Museum was for a long time very closely
connected to the teaching of the geology in NSW schools.
We now know that geology per se died in the
schools too, but which came first the chicken or the egg? Was there a
dimished need perceived for the museum because
it was determined or recognised that geology teaching would be downsized or
ceased? Or was that already underway before the Museum closed?
Replacing
the geological education function the museum had fulfilled for school children
for many years Mr Martin launced something called "The New Miners"
program. This was announced as a new curriculum item for New South Wales
schools. Whatever "The New Miners"
program was, it is virtually forgotten about today.
One of the
functions the Museum education officers had been involved in was the making up
and distribution of specimen sets to schools. This was done from
Londonderry core store north of Penrith. Rocks were collected in
44 gallon drum lots from many localities, broken to small pieces and put into
the boxed sets. After such 'mass involvement with schools came to
an end this activity went on hold. An attempt was make in 1997 to give
away the stocks of rocks that had been held for making up specimen
kits. This was advertised to schools and was reported in the local
press as follows: "The Department of Mineral Resources had tonnes of
rocks collected from across the country and invited teachers to sort through
them for suitable teaching aids at their core library in
Londonderry."
(Penrith
Press, 15 August 1997, page 8.)
The Earth
Exchange phase:
In its final
phase the museum was known as the Earth Exchange.
By the late 1980s a mining industry-led Committee of Management was formed to develop the museum as a facility which could be used to raise public awareness about the value of geoscience and mining to the NSW public. A major sponsorship fund-raising campaign was initiated and within a few years sufficient public and private sector funds eventually
totalling some $23 million was raised to build and design a modern, interactive museum with some outstanding innovative displays which explained volcanoes, earthquakes, and underground mining operations.
The Management Committee was quite committed to to the view that a modern science museum with interactive displays could more effectively communicate geology and mining more effectively than an undeveloped museum which was regarded by them as representative of old style facilities which were not attractive to a more discerning public. Certainly the Management Committee was encouraged by the investment of government and corporations in the new Powerhouse Museum (opened in 1988) as a replacement to the old Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences which was located in an old building in Harris Street
The ‘jewel in the crown’ of The Earth Exchange was without any shadow of doubt the Albert Chapman Mineral Collection, an outstanding collection of the economic mineral crystals from Broken Hill. This collection was acguired for the sum of $1million with funds totaling $750,000 provided by a special grant approved by the then Premier Nick Greiner and $250,000 provided by the three major mining corporations associated with Broken Hill. The acquisition was controversial because the mining company funds were directed to The Earth Exchange instead of to the Australian Mining because the Australian Museum had not agreed to meet Albert’s asking price of $1million. The success of the acquisition enraged the Trustees of the Australian Museum to the extent it is thought (based on anecdotal information) that The Earth Exchange was decidedly out of favour in the museum community or the Arts Portfolio, particularly following the election of the Carr Labor Government in 1995. It is interesting to note that when the museum was eventually closed by withdrawal of its government funding, the Albert Chapman Mineral Collection was assigned to the collections of the Australian Museum.,
The acquisition and display of the Albert Chapman Collection captured the imagination of government and corporate supporters.
To further the commercial objectives of the new museum, The Geological and Mining Museum Trust was established under its own Act of Parliament in 1989, and the name of the museum changed to "The Earth Exchange". The reason for the name change was quite simple
- it was considered that the Geological and Mining Museum needed to go through the same branding transformation as the Powerhouse Museum (the former Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences). One of Australia’s top brand designers, Flett Henderson and Arnold (who designed Telstra’s current logo) was commissioned to undertake this task. The name ‘The Earth Exchange’ was finally selected as it designated both a place of value
(e.g. like The Stock Exchange) and a place where knowledge and information was exchanged. The original accompanying graphic depicting the planet Earth was beautiful and complemented the name.
Regrettably, following the change of Directors in 1990, the incoming Director discarded the original design and selected a modernistic design which arguably devalued the whole brand transformation process.
When opened, the new museum charged a commercial entrance fee, and for a while only Taronga Zoo and The Earth Exchange were the only public attractions charging an entrance fee while the Powerhouse and Australian Museums were virtually totally subsided from the public purse until a decision was made some years later to bring these museums into line with the other
attractions.
CHRONOLOGY
Some chronology for the "Mining Museum"
site:
- 1700s - Late 18th century maps and plans do not indicate anything at the
site.
- 1807 - Meehan's map shows the area leased to Robert Campbell Esquire
(Campbell's substantial old storehouses, next to the Museum on the opposite
side of Hickson Road are now tourist shops or eateries).
- 1840s - The land may have been within the Cunnyngeham's shipyard (cf.
later Water Police area).
- 1901 - Plan of Sydney in Fitzgerald's Royal Commission indicates the site
as intended for a power station.
- 1902 - In 1902 (or before?) possibly became the site of an old quarry,
operator not yet known. The excavation at George Street North would have stood
approximately three storeys above Hickson Road. There was either some
independent quarrying phase of else the first excavations were all along part
of the planned power station construction? The 1902 plans drawn by Government
Architect Walter Vernon for an Electric Light Station and Workshop show
provision for a six level structure facing George Street and a similar
structure facing Hickson Rd., with an octagonal chimney stack on the northern
side, and an attic level behind Romanesque style parapets and gabled roofs. In
1903 revision to the plans drawn by Vernon for the Electric Light Station and
Workshop showed a two level structure facing George Street and a three levels
high structure facing Hickson Rd., with an octagonal chimney stack 60 metres
in height on the northern side, and simple gabled roofs.
- 1902/04 - Construction underway for a power station and workshops.
Uncertainty and hiatus seems to have happened, probably in 1904. The lower
part of the building was constructed for a power station and workshops but
work ceased and it stood unfinished and roofless for some time. No generating
equipment was ever installed.
- 1908 - Abandoned for power generation purposes and the site given to the
Mines Department for a museum (likely considerably interdepartmental
correspondence might be preserved leading up to this?). [State Archives
records have NOT been searched.]
- 1908/09 - The upper levels of the building modified from origin planning,
to now better suit changed purpose for a mining museum and chemical
laboratories and a new entrance onto George Street was constructed.
- 1909 - The building was given as the Mining Museum in August
1909. The collections were moved in and it opened to the public on
1 November 1909.
- 1930 - The Julian Ashton's Art School was given tenancy of the first floor
in the building. [This art school moved out of the Museum building in
the 70s, but is still (2008) operating elsewhere along George Street North in
the Rocks.]
- 1972 - A Museum shop was established.
- 1973/74 - The Julian Ashton's Art School moved out of the building and
the floor it had occupied was used for museum display expansion. The Museum
greatly expanded its role in schools education in the subject of geology and
appointed qualified teachers as Education Officers in this regard.
- 1985 - An overseas study tour was carried
out in connection with the redevelopment planning of the
Geological & Mining
Museum
(‘the Mining Museum’). The tour lasted from
April 8 to 27, 1985
. The tour members comprised Brian Garner, the
then Museum Director; Peter Mould, Project Architect; and Ms Patricia Jones,
representing the NSW Chamber of Mines and Extractive Industries. The aim of
the tour was to examine a range of relevant museums to study aspects of
building design, exhibition techniques, services provided to visitors, and
funding sponsorship arrangements. Museums were visited in the
USA
(
Los Angeles
,
Chicago
, and
Washington
),
Canada
(
Toronto
),
UK
(
London
and Coalbrookdale), and
West Germany
(
Munich
and
Bochum
) (GS 1985/196).
During the redevelopment of the new museum,
the designs of the museum were further changed following the aquisition of the
prestigious Albert Chapman Mineral Collection and a visit by the new museum
director (1987/1990), Angus M Robinson, to major museums in the
US
which included The Exploratium Museum in
San Francisco
and the
Los Angeles
County
Museum
.
- 1987/89 – With the establishment of a
Management Committee comprising mining industry representatives, the ‘Mining
Museum's’ management was changed to a more commercial model, and
‘commercialisation measures’ began to be introduced, culminating in part
divestment of responsibility for the museum by government with the
establishment of a Trust under its own Act of Parliament under the direction
of a full commercially-focused Board. The Trust’s first chairman was Mark
Bethwaite, then Deputy Managing Director of Renison Goldfields Ltd, one of the
major sponsors of the redevelopment.
Given the $20 million plus investment by
government and industry sponsorship funding for the refurbishment of the new
museum, it was hoped that the mining and exploration industry would contribute
to the operational funding of the museum, supplemented by an annual grant by
government and other revenues from commercial activities including catering
functions. In 1989 the building
was transferred to the Geological and Mining Museum Trust under a 99 year
lease secured with the Sydney Cove Redevelopment Authority, and the name of
the Museum was changed to "The Earth Exchange", commensurate with
the parallel re-branding of the NSW Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences to the
new name, The Powerhouse Museum. The museum was closed, and physically
emptied, pending re-development with a changed and "more
interactive" style, and also one better promoting the value to society of
the mining industry
- 1991 - The museum was closed for a long
period for refurbishment works and its internal character very largely
changed. Redevelopment was largely completed by December 1990 under the
stewardship of Lindsay Sharpe, the former director of the
Powerhouse
Museum
, and it re-opened to the public as The Earth Exchange in March 1991.Some
special features at the new displays included walk through facsimile
earthquake machine, erupting volcano, and Mt Isa mine exhibit. The "more
interactive" style identified as desirable at the time of the early
refurbishment planning in the late 1980s had been pursued to culminate in a
touch screen computer program termed The Infomine (developed by
Learnware Technologies Pty Ltd).
- 1996/2007 - The hopes
for the mining and exploration industry helping greatly to maintain the
museum, and for various other changed-direction plans (including mining
industry and energy promotions - an Energy Information Centre was established
in the building) were not successful and the museum closed permanently in 1995
after the State government ceased its majority funding contribution. The
highest quality "show" specimens in the Museum, many collected by
Albert Chapman from Broken Hill and other places, were all transferred to the
Australian
Museum
where they continue to be on display. Other collections were transferred
to the Chemical Laboratory at Lidcombe, and later on when that building too
was closed they were moved to the Department's core storage facility in
Londonderry
. A number of specialist earth science staff
moved with the collections, which continue to be well cared for, and can be
visited by researchers on arrangement.
- 1997 - The building was first indicated as 'promised' for an Aboriginal
art centre but this did not eventuate. Since 1996 it was re-fitted for close
office space but for some years remained unoccupied, still under the control
of the Ministry for the Arts, to which it had been transferred after the
dissolution of the Trust. [?Current occupants].
SITE
DESCRIPTION
Views from George Street North (above) and Hickson Road
(below)
After the museum's refurbishment as The Earth Exchange its main
entrance was shifted to this side of the building (no photo available) and the
address was given as 18 Hickson Road, The Rocks. By then all five floors
of the building were used for displays and it also incorporated in the north
east corner of the bottom floor an "Energy Information Centre". This had
come about because of the merger of the Mines and Energy departments of the
time into a single NSW Minerals and Energy Department. The museum
was generally open 10.00am - 5.00pm seven days a week (except Good Friday and
Christmas Days).
From the relocated entry foyer at the Hickson Road level the stair
access to the display galleries rose around replica of a coal mine shaft and
main cage. Levels off the shaft contained a continuous miner and
longwall miner as two representative working levels, and service facilities on
the third.
Basement level ca. 1970. This is the Hickson
Road level. Another excavated level lies below, then known as the
"Sub-basement". The 'Photographer' room corner has a large
window/entrance which was later opened up
as the main entrance, in the Earth Exchange
phase. The layout shown here reflects the time when the
museum functioned as a working part of the Geological
Survey of NSW. Later on the Museum was
placed under a "Trust" and such a direct link withered,
also meaning that the museum lost
its nature as a 'working' museum or place with
significant scientific capability.
At the early stage of redevelopment planning for the
museum, in the mid 1980s, it was still being thought of as primarily an
educational and learning centre. It was envisaged to have books,
references, access to the department's very good photolibrary (photography has
been in practice long connected with the museum as were other laboratory type
services). Access to Departmental computerised information systems was
thought essential. The way things progressed, however, worked out
very differently. In effect the museum became more and more
divorced from the department, and from active geology generally.
The sense of serious or committed "Geology" was to slowly drain from the
museum and factors of commercialism, tourism, spin and pragmatic
showmanship of 'whatever it takes' attitude was to grow. The
original spirit of the museum seemed to indicate something a Public Service
department was proud of and wished to show off to the public.
Consversely, the Earth Exchange over time because something which Departmental
geological staff began speaking more and more disparingly from. With
lessening level of geological expertise within it, some the museum's displays
no longer made geological sense or were frankly regarded as being in gross
error in some cases. The museum also came, in its latter days, to
entertain/explain the paranormal properties of gemstones - something which
certainly was "popular" but which regular professional geoscientists typically
disparaged.
Details of the museum building's chimney as seen from the
adjacent Sydney Harbour Bridge.
This museum site is adjacent to Sydney Harbour Bridge in
George Street North. It is fairly deeply excavated and may have been the
site of some excavation of sandstone for construction use prior to when built
on. As far as is known it has only ever carried one building, which is
the presently existing one. The museum ran for many years and was
visited by generations of people interested in rocks, minerals and
fossils. It was the museum of the Mines Department (commenced elsewhere
in more meagre accomodation) and hence was first known as the Mining Museum,
and later as the Geological & Mining Museum (during which years it was
still colloqually or familiarly referred to just as the Mining Museum).
This reflects the original "practical mining" focus. The geological part
of the name was added later as the prestige of the establishment was increased
by moving into dedicated and substantial new premises (a big improvement on
the original premises which were recorded to have been leaky). Most of
the original collection of the Department was lost in the Garden Palace fire
in Sydney, after which the collection was rebuilt, appealing to mines and
contacts in New South Wales and further afield to donate specimens.
The Museum
existed as a storage, research, display and teaching centre for almost 90
years at this site.
The building was run for with the Department of Mines Chemical Laboratory (and also a live-in
caretakers' quarters) on its top floor, and an Art School, the Julian Ashton
Art School on the floor between the Chemical Laboratory and the display
floors. The Chemical Laboratory left when a very much bigger special building
was purpose built for it at Lidcombe.
Site description and establishment:
The building is of Federation Warehouse style, designed by architect, Walter
Liberty Vernon, the first NSW Government Architect. The base of the
building is excavated into the sandstone almost to flush with George Street
North frontage. It is not certain if it was purpose excavated or if there was
any former quarrying on this site simply for sandstone excavation, but it
likely was a quarry of some extent to start with. There were, from time to
time, plans (or 'dreams'/vision) about feasibility of excavating an
underground 'mine' below the site purely for display purposes. The Museum for
a long time had a small 'mine' constructed on one of the floors, blackened out
inside and with artificial lighting and models. Although obviously a
'fake' mine, this was always popular with school children.
The building has a tall chimney stack which is still a landmark in Sydney.
The tall chimney is because the building was originally designed, but only
partially constructed, as a DC power station. Plans changed before it was
completed and it was then redesigned and completed to become a Museum and
Chemical Laboratory.
The change during the course of
building construction was associated with a decision to generally change from
direct current (DC) supply to alternating current (AC) power supply in NSW.
(Tropman 1996: 15)
COLLECTIONS
The N.S.W. Government, mainly via
the Department of Mines., long ago began collecting minerals, fossils and
rocks. A lot of the collecting was done in connection with the
work of the Geological Survey, but separate distinct efforts were also made to
gather examples of ore from working mines. Because of the Mines
Department context, the minerals collection was generally known as an Economic
Mineral Collection (ca. 24, 000 specimens). The fossils collection
(Palaeontological collection) is over 45, 000 specimens). The
rocks collection is also very large. These collections date mainly from
1883. There is little from before that date because the State’s
geological collections were destroyed by the great Garden Palace Fire of
1882.
At the closure of the
Geological and Mining Museum, which was the repository of NSW Government
mineral and fossil collections, some of the most display-worthy minerals,
largely from Broken Hill, were transferred to the Australian Museum where much
of such material likely remains on display to the public. The select
specimens that were transferred to the Australian Museum had come to the
Mining Museum via renowned mineral collectors Albert Chapman. The
Albert Chapman mineral collection was purchased by the New South Wales
Government in 1988, with assistance from Conzinc Riotinto Australia, North
Broken Hill and BHP. Albert's collection was displayed in the Geological
and Mining ('Earth Exchange') Museum until its closure in late
1995. The transfer of this collection to the Australian Museum
took place in December 1995. There the Australian Museum opened it to
public display again on 27 September 1996.
The bulk of the Mining Museum
collections, however, were transferred to storage at the Department's Chemical
Laboratory at Lidcombe (a.k.a. Mineral Resources Developmental
Laboratories).
Later on, the Mines Department Chemical Laboratory at Lidcombe
gradually became a very underused facility (as the Government got out of doing
chemical analyses and the number of employees greatly downsized) and
eventually this building was divested too. The collections have since
all transfserred now to the Department's bore core storage site at Londonderry
north of Penrith.
OTHER ASSORTED MEMORIES AND
DESTINATIONS
The key contents of the Museum
were the systematic collections. These mostly are now at
Londonderry, apart from the fine display specimens which went to the
Australian Museum.
Other assorted display material
was given or sold to an array of interested parties. Some that was
gold related made its way to a private gold museum at Hill End.
A very large fossil tree which
museum staff had arranged to have transported to Sydney from Blackwater in
Queensland took years to track down and was finally found at the Newcastle
Museum, where it is well cared for.
Below it is traced what has become of the Museum's "earthquake
machine", which first ended up at "Artspace" at 43 -
51 Cowper Wharf Road Woolloomooloo NSW 2011 Australia - but later on was taken
'on tour', to California.
"It's believed that the original suggestion to have an 'earthquake machine' in the museum was by Kay Koenig, a then collections manager".
Fate of
The Earthquake
Machine
Preface
D.V.
Rogers
It has been almost five years since I removed
the Earthquake Simulator from the former Earth Exchange Museum. Back then I
decided that I would approach the recommissioning of this unique machine as an
exercise not only in endurance, but the development of a skill base that could
be applied in the future to a series of works in both an arts related context
and maybe some realworld use. I do not see my work with the earthquake
simulator as some ground breaking re-invention that could change or save
lives, merely a system of tools representing and mappingour current state of
shifting tectonics and digital information networks.
The control for the earthquake simulator has
been developed under Linux and the release for this installation is
Seismonitor v0.9. Why version 0.9? It merely signifies a starting point, a
reference to a beginning and certainly not an end. Much more is to be done,
the future is near and how far away is a stable v2.0? First there are the DVA tests, the exploration
of a QDDS
data feed, the turntable and more collaborative science. Science has had to
continually redefine its conception of the world. So has art?
Importantly there are several people who have
been the greatest supporters of this work. To Richard Gracie, thank you for
your continual support from the beginning with technical and conceptual
concerns, your hard labour and your enthusiasm and ideas are always gratefully
received. To Des Devlin for pushing me in the direction of Linux, your
encouragement, your Linux support, your hacking of smio.c and your skills with
Perl, thank you! Richard and Des some day, somehow I hope you will be
rewarded.
Ben Blakebrough and Miles Van Dorsen thanks
for the attitude, the bits and pieces, the time and for being who you are.
Thanks also to Dr Warren Jasper for developing the driver for DIO48H, Curt
Wuollet for the correspondence, smio.c and pointers and to the Open Source
Community in general. Andrew Michael of the USGS, thank you for the score and
recordings of his Earthquake Quartet #1 and the musicians who performed for
the opening. Thank you John Conomos for the essay. Thanks Garry Manson for the
loan of the compressor. Thanks Denis Beaubois for cameras, listening and
sub-patronage and to the late HGStenbo for the CAD work. Tjeerd Van Dyk, thank
you for the transport, and Rentcorp for the forklift. Denis Ritchie, thank you
for developing the C language in the first place.
Thank you to the Australia Council for the
Arts, New Media Fund for keeping me out of a real job for the past twelve
months. Thanks to Amanda McDonald Crowley from her ANAT days and to Nicholas
Tsoutas for approaching me twelve months ago and seeking my interest in
showing at Artspace - it would not be happening otherwise!
Lastly and most importantly thanks to Victoria
- my love, my partner and mother of our two children, my greatest
supporter!
D.V. Rogers
January 2002
A tender
for removal
D.V.
Rogers
During November 1995 while driving a taxi on
the streets of Sydney, listening to the radio was among other distractions, a
common activity to pass the drudgery of a shift. The actual date is now
unclear to me, and was not documented, but while listening to ABC 2BL Radio
(702am), my attention was taken by the then director of The Earth Exchange
Museum who was announcing the closure of the museum. The director was
describing the various exhibits at the museum which had at that point not
found a home. An earthquake simulator was one of these exhibits.
Calling the museum I made a general enquiry
about the simulator, requesting the possibility of a visit and an inspection
of the machine. Visiting the museum I was taken by the size of this readymade
machine and the components consisting of a high delivery air compressor,
hydraulic powerpack, hydraulic actuators, solenoids and programmable logic
controller. I was informed that the simulator would be scrapped if a new
site was not found.
Logistically it would be difficult to remove!
Suspended on the second floor of the museum in Hickson Road on four vertical
steel columns. To remove the machine it had to be cut into sections to get it
out. Having only recently been befriended by Ben Blakebrough in setting up a
workshop in Leichhardt, and now with space available to locate it, the
decision was made to offer the museum a tender for removal. My offer was to
remove the simulator at no cost and that the simulator would over time be
re-commissioned and in some way in the future directed towards some kind of
'creative' outcome. The tender for removal was approved two days later.
The original simulator design was for a
completely pneumatic system which a Sydney based company, Latitudes, did the
design work for. This pneumatic system did not generate enough movement
quickly enough throughout the platform. Consulting engineers Gardener Willis
and Associates then modified the design of a pneumatic system to run almost
exclusively by hydraulic actuation. Tysci Industries became involved in
completing the work in implementing the hydraulics for the simulator.
Familiarising myself with the machine I spent
as much time as possible at the museum during February and March of 1996, the
unit was tagged and a plan was conceived in how it would be removed.
Systematically I slowly stripped it down, removing the rubber floor covering,
lifting the floor pieces out, removing all hydraulic actuators and valve
banks. A crane was hired to lift out the hydraulic powerpack and air
compressor. Reluctantly the compressor was sold soon after to subsidise costs
of the removal.
The last thing removed was the sub-frame of
the simulator. It was decided where this structural frame would be cut, and
Ben did the oxy work. Block and tackles were used to swing these pieces out of
the floor cavity over a couple of days without injury. The simulator was now
cut up into sixteen pieces, squeezed into a lift, craned onto a five ton
truck, then dropped in the yard at the Leichhardt workshop. This was now April
1996 and here it stayed almost untouched for most of the next two
years.
With very little engineering skills I set
about planning how I would re-use the simulator components and contemplated
whether I would recommission the device or re-engineer a new machine. The
argument was fairly straight forward in that I had acquired this unique
machine which at the time of removal was a going concern and the most likely
outcome was to use it as a tool for the development and learning of skills
that in most cases would be very difficult to have access to otherwise. The
decision was made to return the simulator to its original state of operation
with the new design being a modular configuration enabling the simulator to be
moved and installed in various possible future locations.
What exactly and how the simulator would be
used in an installation / performance context since the removal of the
simulator remained a secondary concern. The primary focus of the work in front
of me was to treat it as a learning and research tool enabling for a solid
base for future works and collaborations that might attempt to re-direct the
tools, techniques, and tenets of science and industry away from their typical
manifestations in practicality or production.
Recomissioning of the earthquake simulator
finally began around April 1998. A small development grant was received from
the Australia Council For The Arts and subsequently followed up in 1999 by a
"Scientific Serendipity Research Grant" from the Australian Network For Art
And Technology (ANAT). Culminating in close to 3000hrs to recommission the
simulator, the following work was finally completed in March 2000:
* Redesign of 3-Phase start up unit for the
hydraulic powerpack * Laying out a working model to test all hydraulic rams
and solenoid valve actuators * Reconfigure Festo Programmable Logic
Controllers (PLC) and eliminate existing hardware problems * Learn to operate
Festo Software Tools (FST) operating system * Redesign driver board unit,
eliminating malfunctional relays communicating to solenoid valves * Design for
a new modular structural sub frame and a modified top frame. * Actual
engineering fabrication of the design was implemented and realised
From the outset in taking on such a large work
I believed that eventually the conceptual concerns of the project would likely
explore notions of presence and absence in researching the future possibility
of remote automation using minimal bandwidth data transmission, and widely
available, low cost components enabling for the remote switching of the
earthquake simulator by means of globally monitored seismic activity.
I was fortunate to receive further funding
from the Australia Council For The Arts, New Media Board in October 2000. This
new work grant was towards the research, design and implementation of a real
time control system, enabling the earthquake simulator to interpret and
conceptually output the variable effects of globally monitored earthquakes by
means of near real time, remote data transmission.
The original Festo Programmable Logic
Controller (PLC) that controlled the hydraulic and pneumatic solenoids of the
simulator has been replaced by a standard PC with a Computerboards CIO-DIO48H
digital I/O card and a 48-channel solid-state relay rack. The proprietary
software that controlled the PLC stepped through a series of sequences within
a closed environment. Seismonitor v0.9 has been written to both move the
system into an open (Linux) operating environment and introduce a
near-real-time, IP-based interactivity to the system.
dvr@allshookup.org
December
2001
Venerated RELIC of the Museum: The earthquake
simulator machine in its new home.
(Re-promoted as artwork: "Manmade earthquake simulator
with no humam emotions")
EARTHQUAKE QUARTET #1
Quartet for Voice,
Trombone, Cello, and Seismograms
Composer Andrew Michael
http://quake.usgs.gov/~michael/
Earthquake Quartet #1 is a concept piece that
attempts to express two ideas about earthquakes. In its initial section, we
hear a musical description of the earthquake cycle. In this cycle the motion
of tectonic plates slowly builds up strain in the earth's crust and this
strain is then suddenly released during earthquakes. The latter part of the
piece is based on the idea that society and culture, including music, takes
place with the earthquakes as an often-ignored backdrop. However, geologic
processes are an intrinsic part of our existence and ignoring the slow cycle
described in the initial section will have its consequences.
I composed this two-minute piece during
November and December, 1999, following the devastating earthquakes in Turkey
and Taiwan. It had its premiere at a lecture titled The Music of Earthquakes
on December 16 at Moscone Hall in San Francisco as part of the annual Fall
meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The musicians at the premiere were:
soprano and USGS Geophysicist Stephanie Ross, cellist and Stanford University
Geophysics Graduate Student David Schaff, and myself, USGS Geophysicist Andrew
Michael, on trombone. The seismograms are audible because we have sped them up
80- to 100-fold so that the frequencies are now in our hearing range.
The unusual mix of instrumentation is based on
the birth of this work, which is an outgrowth of The Music of Earthquakes
lecture that I have been giving since 1997. This lecture mixes performance and
lecture, music and science, acoustic instruments and computer-generated
sounds. A musician controls the source of the sound and the path it travels
through their instrument in order to make sound waves that we hear as music.
An earthquake is the source of waves that travel along a path through the
earth until reaching us as shaking. It is almost as if the earth is a musician
and people, including seismologists, are the audience who must try to
understand what the music means. By listening to both music and the audio
playbacks of the earth shaking, we explore this analogy and find new ways to
learn about the earth, earthquakes, musical instruments and music. Several
times, members of the audience pointed out that I was using music to help
explain scientific principles but had not included the seismic sounds in any
of the music. The quartet closes this loop and has allowed me to use our
scientific data, as a musician, in order to express my feelings, as a
seismologist, about the relationship of society to earthquakes.
The earthquakes are the 1992 magnitude 7.3
Landers earthquake in southern California as recorded at Parkfield, California
This is the large rumble heard near the beginning. The repetitive four beat
pattern is made up of two earthquakes both of which occurred at Parkfield. On
beats 1 and 3 you hear a magnitude 2 earthquake recorded on two stations only
a couple of kilometres away. On beats 2 and 4 you hear a magnitude 5.1 event
recorded about 10 kilometres away and 120 kilometres away near Hollister,
California. Here, the fourth beat is the slower moving S wave while the pickup
to the fourth beat is the faster moving P wave. Listeners, especially cellists
and/or trombonists, may recognize that one theme from the second section is a
rhythmically distorted quote from the Allemande of Bach's second suite for
solo Cello which is then further inverted and modified.
Some Playing Instructions
In the opening section the musicians are
instructed to stop playing when large earthquakes occur. Once the earthquakes
become rhythmic, the musicians are to take the rhythmic character from the
quakes and the challenge is to maintain the inflexible tempo set by the audio
track rather than the usual ebb and flow that is possible when playing with
other musicians. At the end, the musicians are told once again to stop when
the large earthquake occurs but their parts do not actually show them when
this happens. It is supposed to be a surprise.
Andy Michael, Seismologist, USGS
Download
mp3 File of Actual Performance Recording (5975mb)
Andrew Michael's Earthquake Quartet #1 was
performed for the opening of Seismonitor on the 10th January, 2002, by Sydney
based musicians Inga Liljestrom(vocals), Natasha Rumiz (Viola), Michael Lira
(Double Bass) and Simon Bartlett (Trombone). The score was slightly adapted
for this performance as the Cello part was replaced by Viola and Double
Bass.
Terrai Electronca
John
Conomos
"Every day the urge grows stronger to
get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its
reproduction"
(Walter Benjamin 1936)
D.V. Rogers' enthralling new installation,
Seismonitor, is a fine instance of the artist's underlying belief that
contemporary artists who wish to transcend the traditional realm of cultural
representation need to expand their definition of art materials and
contexts.
Seismonitior is a multifaceted, imaginative
installation - an apocalyptic machine in its large contours of telematic art,
engineering and interface design - mapping out the earth's breathing terrain
of spatio-temporality, of moving tectonics and global digital information
networks. Rogers has persuasively succeeded in creating a hypnotic, kinetic,
telematic work which addresses his inventive manifold interests in exploring
the complex and poetic interface between art, science and technology.
Seismonitor's museological origins as an
earthquake simulator at the now defunct minerals and mining museum, The Earth
Exchange, need to be mentioned in order to appreciate its rich cultural and
technological significance. As a recording tele-technological device of data
information and measurement, Seismonitior came about as a direct result of the
1989 Newcastle earthquake. In the museum, the simulator became an
entertainment device, where the public would stand on it experiencing a 5.7
magnitude earthquake - similar to the one in Newcastle.
Essentially, Seismonitor not only vividly
highlights its intricate links to late-capitalist culture's "entertainment -
industrial - technological" complex, but it also functions as a vital and
witty Duchampian found object in that the artist retrieved the earthquake
simulator from the museum in 1996 and reconfigured it as telematic art. It is,
therefore, an intriguing open-ended installation that investigates
telepistemological questions about access, knowledge, perception and agency at
a distance. Seismonitor, in the context of our most influential
tele-technologies like the telescope, the telephone, television, and more
recently,the Internet and telerobots, is concerned with the
techno-cultural-epistemological quest to study knowledge at a distance. In
this case, to interpret and output the variable effects and performance of
globally monitored earthquakes by means of real-time remote data
transmission.
Crucially, Seismonitor 's overall thematic,
formal and sculptural configurations vividly suggest Rogers'
cross-disciplinary approach to his work as being that (to evoke the legacy of
Russian Constructivism to the new media arts) of an "artist-engineer."
Specifically, the installation represents a major investigation towards
articulating, in the artist's own words, "a machine control (automaton)
arising from live representation (mirror) of a remote physical environment
(earth)". Seismonitor is a bold exploration of certain critical principles of
control and means of control salient to engineering, seismology and
information database retrieval.
Moreover, the installation's stimulating
inter-disciplinary concerns of art, science and technology reflect the genre's
own complex artistic practices: Fluxus, Earth art, video art, Minimalism,
Performance art, Conceptual art and Process art. Given the installation's own
apt gallery context, it is also significant to note that installation art and
alternative art spaces developed together since the 1960s. Consequently,
Seismonitor reflects in its own engaging interactive mode of spectatorial
participation, the archetypal issues raised by installation art: site
specificity, institutional critique, temporality and ephemerality.
Seismonitor also manifests, in its kinetic
mis-en-scene of concerns and techniques of re-presentation, the influential
work and writings of Robert Smithson and his ideas of site and non-site. For
Smithson, Earth art represented a deconstruction of modernism and its idealist
ideology of landscape of deserts, mountains, and storms at sea and the
romantic sublime. Smithson's notions of "site" and "non-site" refer to the
transfer of material from outside an art gallery to an indoor space.
Cognitive entropy, for Smithson, was the main
focus of his work; it represented the postmodern condition and it had to be
overcome. Smithson in his famous 1966 Artforum essay "Entropy and the New
Monuments" praised Minimalist art's "monumental inaction" and regarded it as
an ultimate realism that necessitated an imaginative response. Hence,
Smithson's earthworks of "entropic" sites.
In a critical sense, Seismonitor is a
pun-encrusted installation given its heritage of the Duchampian tradition of
'post-object' art and Earth art, especially since it was 'found' at Sydney's
The Earth Exchange Museum and that it is an earthquake simulator. On the
latter, Seismonitor is rich in its popular cultural connotations: earthquakes
belong to the disaster movie genre , and most significantly, are relevant to
Roberto Rossellini's "neo-realist" art cinema in the related form of
volcanoes. The two Rossellini movies that need to be singled out here are
Stromboli (1949) and Voyage to Italy (1953).The volcano in Stromboli
represents the absolute, nature as indifferent and cruel, whilst in Voyage to
Italy, the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 captures in time (as in a photograph)
the eerie contours of the embraced bodies of a couple in the earth itself.
This is a traumatic scene which concretises for the movie's unsettled female
protagonist (Ingrid Bergman) the existential realisation that "life's so
short".
On a certain metaphorical plane, Seismonitor
as an installation recording the earth's movements (breathing), suggests
telematic art (art in general) as a creative activity that suggests ideas,
intuition and techne being (re)animated by human presence. We breath life into
art as an ongoing form of ontological self-affirmation in the flux of life.
The ancient Greek concept of pnuema (breath) has a particular aesthetic and
technological resonance for Seismonitor.
If installations have became the postmodern
artform of the late twentieth century, then Seismonitor is a classical
instance of a firmly established and flourishing genre that captures, in terms
of Anne-Marie Duguet's definition of installation art, the idea of an
installation as a "performance-inducing 'apparatus' (dispositif)" 1.
Seismonitor's conceptual and formal architecture suggest, in the light of
Duguet's view of installations, a multi-layered work with various modes of
enunciation that produce certain effects of perception, pleasure, awareness
and representation.
Seismonitor's telepistemological sigificance
suggests that we need to be imaginative, tenacious and sceptical in creating
new forms of human-machine communication. Rogers clearly strives to create a
poetical view of telematic art: customizing the human-computer interface in
order to see what 'vibrates' beyond our horizons: geographical and personal.
Seismonitor is a work that is 'earthed' (so to speak) in that it simulates an
earthquake, but moreover, it avoids the more specious forms of techno-utopias
which posit a wired world of universal intelligence and access - a cyberspace
world which fails to recognize its elitist, ahistorical and
Platonic/rationalist limitations reconfiguring the corporate cyborg as the
collective norm. Instead, Seismonitor is rich in its techno-cultural
pluralism, a work which suggests an utopian realism, a work which is directed
towards the future, possessing the quality of (what Ernst Bloch calls) "the
-not-yet-known."
1 Anne-Marie Duguet, "Does Interactivity
Lead to New Definitions in Art?" in Hans Peter Schwarz and Jeffrey Shaw (eds),
Media Art Perspectives, Edition ZKM, Cantz Verlag, 1995;
148.
( http://allshookup.org/artspace/conomos.htm
)
The poster announcing
the opening of the exhibition of the re-commissioned man-made earthquake
simulator
OTHER GEOLOGICAL AND MINING MUSEUMS
The Geological and Mining Museum of
Sydney is now only a memory, but others like it live on in the
world.
Here are some examples.
1) Geological and Mining
Museum
MINERALS AND GEOSCIENCE DEPARTMENT MALAYSIA
Jalan Sultan Azlan
Shah,
http://www.jmg.gov.my/english/knowledge_museum_prk.htm
The museum is located within the JMG
Malaysia building complex which is about 5 km to the east of the Ipoh City
along Jalan Sultan Azlan Shah, and faces opposite Sekolah Tuanku Abdul
Rahman
The museum exhibits a wide array of
specimens related to the field of geoscience and mining activities in
Malaysia, besides introducing to the public to the various activities carried
out by the Department.
MUSEUMS WITH STRONG MINERAL COLLECTIONS
Directory of mineralogy museums
grouped by country in alphabetical order
The Gravity Slope Colliery was built on
the eastern side of the Delaware and Hudson tracks in the Dark Valley section
of town. It was a huge red structure constructed in 1911-12 and stood for over
thirty years. It used the chance cone method of separating coal and much of
the culm from the White Oak Colliery refuse bank was processed there. At
one time there were 1700 men employed there and 3 full shifts worked day and
night. There were 120 mules in use and it was a sight every morning to see the
boys driving the mules from the white oak mule barn down the tracks to the
mines at gravity slope. The main slope, named Gravity Slope No. 3, was opened
in 1911. However the processing plant or "Breaker" was dismantled in the
1940s. Mining at the colliery continued till 1955. This ended the
Delaware and Hudson comany mining in Archbald, one hundred and ten years after
its first mine opened in 1845.
Archbald Borough has received a $200,000 grant from
the National Park Service (NPS) “Save America’s Treasures” program to help
restore the Gravity Slope Colliery’s four remaining buildings. This grant was
secured through the office of Rep. Donald Sherwood, and requires a 50/50
match. More money, however, will probably be needed to complete the
project. Archbald Borough also received a $35,000 grant from the
Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority (LHVA) to complete a structural
assessment of the property. They have applied for additional LHVA funding to
augment NPS money for further restoration efforts. Archbald Borough,
using $45,000 in borough funds, purchased the fan house and surrounding land,
from Mary Anna Dubas on March 8, 2005.
The plan is for an interpretive site in Archbald at
the Gravity Slope Colliery’s remaining structures. Interpretation would
have an industrial theme, with visitors learning about the complexities of the
anthracite industry, including labor history. Included in the display would be
a section about local mining disasters. The displays would stress the enormity
and encompassing nature of the anthracite industry, and how it affected, and
still affects, the life of the region.
The Gravity Slope Restoration Committee, with over
twenty five members, is very involved in the renovation of this historic site.
Comprised of members from all walks of life and areas of expertise including
contractors, mechanics, teachers, the environmental community, engineers,
college educators, and nurses, to name just a few. The committee meets
frequently.
HOMESTAKE
MINE, BLACK HILLS
The Homestake-Adams Research
Center; Black Hills Natural History and Culture Center, Deadwood,
SD.
After gold was discovered there was no practical
way found to stop a gold rush to the area. The government instead
of withdrawing the military as agreed by treaty dispatched several units to
forts in the surrounding area to try to keep people from entering the Black
Hills. Soon demands were made to open up the Black Hills to white
settlement. In the same year as the discovery, later in 1874, a party of
white prospectors (the Gordon Party) reached French Creek and built a stockade
there. Prospectors began to flow into the area from every
direction, beyond the Army's capacity to expell them. The
government soon gave up trying to stop the encroachment and by the end of 1875
there was and estimated 4,000 prospectors and settlers already in the Black
Hills.
Initial prospecting centered in and around French
Creek where gold had been found by Custer's party. By late 1875 mining had
spread north to Whitewood Creek near the later town of Deadwood. On
April 9,1876, Moses and Fred Manuel located the Homestake claim, near the
current town of Lead. This soon proved to be the richest find of gold in
the area. They sank a shaft in the side of a draw; built a crude mill and took
out $5,000 worth of gold that spring. The city of Lead was named for that
discovery, referred to as a lead ("leed"). George Hearst sent L.D.
Kellogg to investigate reports from the Black Hills. In June of
1877, Kellogg for Hearst optioned on the Homestake and Golden Star
claims. This was an area of about 10 acres total. Hearst and his
partners incorporated as The Homestake Mining Company in California on
November 5, 1877.
George Hearst arrived at the mine in October 1877,
and took active control of the property. The mine had to bring all
equipment by wagons from the nearest railhead at Sidney, Nebraska. Yet
despite the remote location, an 80-stamp mill began crushing Homestake ore in
July 1878. The partners sold shares in the Homestake Mining Company, and
listed it on the New York Stock Exchange in 1879. The Homestake would
become one of the longest-listed stocks in the history of the
exchange.
Hearst gradually consolidated and enlarged the
Homestake property - said to be by both fair and foul means. He bought out
some adjacent claims, and secured others in the courts. A Hearst
employee once killed a man who refused to sell his claim, but was acquitted in
court after all the witnesses disappeared. Hearst purchased newspapers
in Deadwood and used them to to influence public opinion. An opposing
newspaper editor was beaten up on a Deadwood street. Hearst himself
feared he could be on the receiving end of violence, and wrote instructions to
provide for his family should he be murdered. In the end, however,
Hearst was the one who walked out alive, and very rich.
The gold ore mined at Homestake was always low
grade (less than one ounce per ton), but very large. Through to 1965, the mine
produced 28 million ounces (870 t) of gold and 6 million ounces (190 t) of
silver.
Homestake mine, Lead,
South Dakota
Timbering in the
Homestake mine (date uncertain).
Homestake mine
1889
By 1880 the richer placer deposits were all but
depleted and hard rock mining was progressing around the towns of Lead and
Deadwood. Most of the early mines had closed by the early 1900s as high
grade near surface ore was exhausted.
Only the Homestake Mine in Lead continued to
operate. It lasted almost 126 years until it too began cessation in 2001
and was closed by 2002. On December 14, 2001, the Homestake Gold
Mine officially shut down after more than 125 years of continuous operation.
That day the Homestake Mining Company itself was merged into Barrick Gold
Corporation. The Homestake Gold Mine by 2001 was the oldest, largest and
deepest mine operating in the Western Hemisphere. It reached more than
8000 feet below the town of Lead and in the end it encompassed not the
original ca. 10 acres but approximately 8,000 acres of patented mineral
claims. The mine produced 40 Million ounces of gold from 1876 to
2001.
The Barrick
Gold Corporation (which had merged with the Homestake Mining Company in
mid-2001) agreed in early 2002 to keep dewatering the mine as negotiations for
use as a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL)
proceeded. Progress was slow and maintaining the pumps and ventilation
was costing $250,000 per month. Eventually they were switched off on
June 10, 2003. It was not till July 10, 2007, that the mine was
finally confirmed by the National Science Foundation as as the location for
DUSEL. When completed, the DUSEL facility will be the world's
deepest laboratory for ultra-low-background experiments on dark matter and
neutrinos , as well as providing a site for biology, geology, and mining
research.
The mine's gold may be gone, but a vast deposit of researchers’
gold remains in the form of varied and voluminous data about the Homestake site.
The data include information about the history, mining practices, microbial research in
mineral processing and waste treatment, and engineering activities.
The archive holds a tremendous
literature on the mining properties, distribution of geologic units, and
economic potential. Production of over 42 million ounces of gold during the
126 year lifetime of the mine meant that generations of talented geologists
and engineers studied all manner of things at and around the mine.
Topics in geoscience ranged from environments of deposition of the host rocks
of the mineralization, the mineralization itself, regional metamorphism
experienced by the Precambrian host rocks, and the subsequent effects of a
host of younger intrustions of Tertiary age.
In May 2005 the Homestake Mining Company
donated its amassed collection of over 10,000 cubic feet of operational and
maintenance records related to the Homestake Mine to the Adams Museum and
House facility in Deadwood. The collection includes thousands of historic photographs and glass negatives,
architectural drawings, maps of the mine and area, blueprints and patents,
geological records of the Black Hills, original correspondence, daily
journals, Homestake operation and production records, original artwork, an
extensive geological specimen collection, equipment manuals, and scientific
records.
The Adams Museum and House
received a five-year, $100,000 per year commitment from the Adams-Mastrovich
Family Foundation to help support the relocation, inventorying, cataloguing,
and provision of digital access for the records, thus establishing the
Homestake-Adams Research Center.
In 2005, Homestake Mining Company
transferred ownership of the archive of drill cores taken by the company over many years of operation; about
91 km of core. The South
Dakota Geological Survey is archiving the core.
The primary portal for the Homestake materials collaboration is
now
http://www.lbl.gov/nsd/homestake. This site contains much information and many links
for communication with the members of the Homestake Scientific
Collaboration as well as providing a location for storage of previous presentations,
meetings, and news.
As one 2007 report noted all this:
""""""""
2007 - Homestake Archives Finds New
Home
The Adams Museum & House (AM&H) has the opportunity to protect and
make accessible for the first time ever the history of the Homestake Mining
Company, thanks to Barrick Gold Corporation’s generous donation of the
archival materials.
The AM&H’s 10,000 cubic foot Homestake Mining Company archival
collection is of national significance. While there are many aspects that make
the Homestake Mining Company unique, it is also representative of an industry
of iconic proportions that dominated and helped settle much of Western
America. Mining deeds, land claims, mineral surveys, annual reports,
exploration and production records, photographs, assay ledgers, timber
contracts and a plethora of other mining-related documents, dating from 1876
to 2002, detail the company’s 126-year history in Lead, South Dakota, and far
beyond.
The contents of the collection are rich and wide-ranging in scope. Over
25,000 historic photographs, slides, videotapes, film and glass plate
negatives provide visual documentation of the mine’s business activities.
Architectural drawings and plans reveal the design, style and planning that
went into the structures at the mine and homes and buildings in the city of
Lead as well as in surrounding towns. The geologic specimen collection of
James A. Noble, chief geologist at the mine from 1931-1947, explicitly details
the unique and varied mineralogy of the region. While the mine was physically
located in Lead, South Dakota, the company’s headquarters were in San
Francisco, California. Due to the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire that
destroyed much of San Francisco, any pre-1906 company records will be found
only in this collection.
The Homestake collection will be the core component of the Black Hills
Natural History and Culture Center, located in Deadwood, South Dakota. In
addition to functioning as an archive repository, the Center will be a sight
for hosting scientific and historical lectures, classes and seminars. Relying
heavily on materials from the Homestake collection, the Center will also
feature exhibits that explain and demonstrate the cultural, environmental,
commercial, scientific and technical characteristics of the business of
mining. The AM&H is committed to universal access and interpretation of
the Homestake collection through digitization with images available on the
AM&H’s Internet website and open on-site visitation to the Center.
The City of Deadwood committed over $1.5 M to purchase and
retrofit a building to serve as a climate-controlled and secure research
center that will be operated by the non-profit AM&H and open to the
general public.
""""""""
GEOLOGICAL SITE
MUSEUMS
MAMMOTH SITE,
HOT SPRINGS, SD
Discovered in 1974 when Phil and
Elenora Anderson began excavation for housing project construction, this is
now a major scientific attraction: "Travel back to the time when Ice Age
mammoth, camel, and giant short-faced bear roamed the Great Plains of North
America. Imagine a sudden collapse of a 60 foot deep karst sinkhole.
Bubbling from the bottom, a warm spring percolates through the layers of
limestone, now creating a large steep-sided pond. Picture thirsty animals
venturing down to the water below...then, after drinking, animals unable to
gain a foothold to escape. The sinkhole was a deathtrap."
“The Mammoth Site is not just a
window into the past—it’s as close to being a true time machine as you’ll
find, with some of the best ice-age fossils on the planet on permanent
display.” Ross MacPhee, Division of Vertebrate
Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, New York City.
Mammoth Site, Hot
Springs, South Dakota
On 22 July 2008 at Mammoth Site, uncovering mammoth No.
57. On 23 July 2008 the count
rose to 58, based on tusk count. To date at the site has yielded 58
mammoths (55
Columbian and 3 woolly), as well as 85 other
species of animals, plants,
and several unidentified insects.
Mammoth bones dwelling. Reconstruction, Mammoth
Site, Hot Springs, South Dakota.
(Museum display - "the walk-in mammoth bone
hut")
Thank you for making
known the cool past of elephantkind. A random sample of modern
elephant opinion.
Mammoth Site in Hot Springs is an ongoing
geological excavation where a sink hole existed, preserving the remains of
numerous species of animals in addition to the mammoth. It is now
completely enclosed, and the above view is of one of the areas being
excavated.
Over 26,000 years ago, large
Columbian and woolly mammoths were trapped and died in a spring-fed pond near
what is now the southwest edge of Hot Springs, South Dakota. The pond was
formed from a sixty-foot deep sinkhole that filled with warm artesian spring
water. As animals came to drink, they could not escape from the steep-sided
watering hole, and for over 700 years their remains collected with layer upon
layer of preserving silt and sediments.
Mammoth Site is the world's largest Columbian
mammoth exhibit and research center for Pleistocene studies. Dr. Larry
Agenbroad is the site Director. It is the only place that woolly mammoth
and Columbian mammoth remains have been found together. The Columbian variety
is believed to have roamed what is now the United States from around 130,000
to 11,000 years ago. As at 2008, the remains of fifty-eight
mammoths have so far been exposed.
This region of South Dakota is composed of
Spearfish Shale overlying Minnelusa limestone. Approximately 26,000 years ago,
a cavern in the limestone collapsed as well as the shale at the surface. This
allowed a vertical shaft, or breccia pipe, to form. The resulting sixty-foot
deep sinkhole, 120 by 150 feet across, was produced and subsequently filled
with warm artesian spring water percolating up through the
limestone.
Mammoths go down
slippery slope to water, but are unable to return up it.
As the animals were trapped and died, the silt and
mud preserved some of their remains from decay, but petrification did not
occur, resulting in fragile preservation of the bone. As time passed,
the hardened mud plug became a hill as the surrounding soft red Spearfish
Shale eroded away.
Will the mammoth be brought back ever?
Not from the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs SD, but maybe in permafrost areas DNA
will be found adequate for so trying. As with the project with the
Australian Museum etc. to bring back the Marsupial wolf or thylacine, opinions
are mixed as to whether man should even try to rebirth a mammoth
look-alike. But simply because this is now conceivable to try there will
be scientists who will try to bring mammoths back to the world of the
living. And if enough trying is done it does seem rather inevitable that
they will eventually do it.
REFERENCES:
John Paul Gries; Roadside Geology of South Dakota;
2003; http://mountain-press.com/item_detail.php?item_key=46
The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota; http://www.mammothsite.com/
South Dakota: Mammoth Site; http://www.trailsandgrasslands.org/mammoth.html
South Dakota: Mammoth Site - Field Guide; http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_n9_v106/ai_20135607
Will Mammoths Walk Again?; http://www.exn.ca/mammoth/Cloning.cfm
Cloning A Mammoth; http://robby.nstemp.com/custom3.html
Dr. Larry D. Agenbroad, Resurrecting Extinct
Megafauna; http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/agenbroad.html
What Killed The Mammoths?; http://sciencebulletins.amnh.org/biobulletin/biobulletin/story981.html
South Dakota Ice Age Mammals; http://www.northern.edu/natsource/EARTH/Iceage1.htm
Badlands National Park; http://www.nps.gov/archive/badl/exp/home.htm
GRAY FOSSIL
SITE, TN
"The ETSU and General Shale Brick Natural History Museum and Visitor
Center at the Gray Fossil Site is dedicated to understanding, preserving, and
interpreting biodiversity of the Southern Appalachians through time, using an
interdisciplinary approach."
Near Daniel Boone High School in Gray.
The Gray Fossil Site is nearly five acres in size
and 100 feet deep.
East Tennesse State University and General Shale Brick
Natural History Museum
and Visitor Center at the Gray Fossil Site in northeast
Tennessee.
The Gray Fossil Site is a Late Miocene assemblage
located near the town of Gray in Tennessee. The site was discovered by
geologists in May 2000. They were investigating unusual clay deposits
exposed during widening of Route 75 south of its intersection with Interstate
26.
A museum and research center were opened at the
site in August 2007.
The site is interpreted as a semi-circular sinkhole
that harbored a pond environment over a long period of time. Among
the many vertebrate remains found are those of frogs, turtles and
tapirs.
The site is regarded as the world's prime tapir
fossil find and it is also yielding new and rare discoveries such as the most
complete skeleton of Teleoceras (an ancient rhinoceros) yet found in
eastern North America, the tooth of a new species of red panda that marks only
the second record of this animal in North America, and a newly identified
species of an ancient plant eating badger.
Discovery:
Crews widening Tennesse Highway 75 in 2000 reported
differentiation in the clay they were excavating near Daniel Boone High School
in Gray. Harry Moore, manager of the Tennessee Department of
Transportation’s geotechnical engineering office in Knoxville was called on
May 15, 2000, by a construction field officer with news that the highway
construction’s contractor, Summers Taylor Inc., was having excavation
difficulties caused by a soft clay deposit in the new roadway new path near
Fulkerson Road.
Moore dispatched office geologist Larry Bolt to
examine the the problem on May 17, and the officials later discussed how to
resolve the issues, deciding that the contractor should undercut the clay some
five feet below the roadbed grade and backfill with chunks of
limestone. When Bolt returned to the site May 31 to inspect the
undercutting process and examine the clay with three geologists from the
Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, they noticed small
fragments of dark brown material in the excavated clay. These fragments
turned out to be bone, of tapir fossils of Miocene age.
To new road would have to be diverted to save
the fossil site. Moore later wrote: “With a shudder, I thought
what might have happened if the Tennessee governor had had no interest in
geology or fossils. We might well have lost one of the major scientific
finds of the last 50 years.” Not only did the State of Tennessee
divert a road and save the site but it later helped gain a federal grant of $8
million towards a museum at the Gray site.
SOME UNUSUAL
MUSEUMS
PETRIFIED
WOOD PARK AND MUSEUM, LEMMON, SD
Petrified wood park and
museum, Lemmon SD ( http://www.lemmonsd.com/petrefied.html
).
Billed as the
"World's largest petrified wood park and museum" this feature was built in
1930-1932 by men from the town of Lemmon under the command of visionary Ole S.
Quammen.
"Thirty to forty
otherwise unemployed men received sustenance during this period," explains a
sign at the site. Quammen, an amateur geologist, had the men scavenge rocks
and fossils and haul them back to Lemmon. Their labors yielded a castle, a
wishing well, a waterfall, the Lemmon Pioneer Museum, and hundreds of pile
sculptures - all made mostly of petrified wood.
The park became public
property in 1954 when it was donated by Quammen's heirs to the town
council.
A plaque honors Ole
S. Quammen (father of Mrs. Harry C. Olson as "the creator and donor of
this, the world’s largest petrified wood park of its kind." In
2002, extensive repairs and renovations restored the park to its Depression
Era glory.
A hundred conical
sculptures are spread around the park at sizes up to 20ft. tall. Some
are made from petrified wood and others from spherical "cannonball"
concretions, brought from North Dakota's Cannonball River. The "trees"
are decorated with Christmas lights for an annual holiday "Fantasyland"
display.
A building referred to as "the Castle" was crafted from a
variety of petrified wood and thousands of pounds of petrified dinosaur and
mammoth bones. Inside a room with a gate and spires, dinosaur bones are
set into the interior walls.
Visitor
comments:
1) Best kept secret in S.Dakota. We heard
about it for years and also saw it in the South Dakota Magazine. - Tom
& Ruth, Canistota, SD
2) Incredible! - Paula, Stacy, Nick & Alex, Rhindander, WI
3) We have stopped every time we go through for the
past 20 years. - Curt & Sarah,
Kalispell, MT
4) Thank you for preserving these points of
interest. - Carl, Deb &
Matt, Aberdeen, SD
5) Very interesting!!! - Marvin & Betty, Winter Haven, FL
6) Beautifully created.- Aarey, Queen Creek
AZ
7) It is very cool and unlike anything we have at
home. - Sam, Philadelphia,
PA
8) Coolest thing in South Dakota so
far!! - Christian, Roseville,
MN
9) Absolutely wonderful! Really wanted to see it
again. - Pat & Mike, Toronto Ontario,
Canada
10) Nice to see the family things. - Sara & Krista, Coon Rapids
11) WOW - Amazing - Sue & Mike, Chippewa Falls, WI
12) There is nothing to compare. TOO Cool!! -
David, Fort Pierre,
SD
13) Excellent. Best we've ever seen. - Vern & Laura, Fallon, NV
14) Wonderful - Glad we didn't miss this.
- Dave & Diane, Vancouver,
B.C.
15) Incredible, Amazing for sure. - Bart & Lieven, Hombeek, Belgium
16) Most amazing museum we've ever visited. Thank
You! - Kenny & Naomi, Madison,
WI
SOME
ASSORTED LINKS AND INFORMATION
Other Museums of field sites:
Age of Fishes museum,
Canowindra
http://www.ageoffishes.org.au/
Lightening Ridge
Opal and Fossil Centre
http://www.wj.com.au/opalfossil/index.html
Wellington Caves
http://www.visitwellington.com.au/bwWebsite/followon.aspx?PageID=4664
Outer Barcoo Interpretation Centre
http://www.isisford.qld.gov.au/visitors/OBIC.shtml
Lark
Quarry Conservation Park
– Winton Trackway
http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/projects/park/index.cgi?parkid=186
Australian Museum Resources
http://www.austmus.gov.au/geoscience/index.htm
http://www.austmus.gov.au/chapman/index.htm
More links
come come from the
Australian Museum website
http://www.austmus.gov.au/geoscience/resources/links.htm
Online
resource directories
Museums with geological collections: Australia
Museums with geological collections: worldwide
ASSORTED LINKS
Online
databases
Gold
in Australia
Minerals and mining: various fact sheets
Geology and landforms: maps
Geological time scale
Plate
tectonics and continental drift
Meteorites and Impact Sites
Earth
Science news and events
Geological Societies
Mineralogical Associations/Societies
Economic Geology Societies
Australian Geological Surveys
Mineralogy
Mineral Collecting in Australia
Gemstones
Limestone Caves
Known University Museums (links not yet checked for)
Earth Sciences Museum
MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY ,
NSW
Earth Sciences,
Singleton Museum of
UNIVERSITY OF
MELBOURNE
, VIC
Fossil Collection,
Plant
UNIVERSITY OF
TASMANIA
Geological
Collection
UNIVERSITY OF
TASMANIA
Geological
Collection
UNIVERSITY OF
TECHNOLOGY
, SYDNEY ,
NSW
Geological
Collection
UNIVERSITY OF
WOLLONGONG
, NSW
Geology and
Geophysics Collections
UNIVERSITY OF
SYDNEY, NSW
Geology Collection
DEAKIN UNIVERSITY
Geology Collection
ROYAL
MELBOURNE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, VIC
Geology Collection
UNIVERSITY OF
NEW ENGLAND , NSW
Geology Museum
AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY ,
ACT
Geology Museum
JAMES COOK
UNIVERSITY ,
QLD
Geology Museum
UNIVERSITY OF
CANBERRA
, ACT
Geology Museum
UNIVERSITY OF
QUEENSLAND
Geological
Museum
UNIVERSITY OF
WESTERN
AUSTRALIA
Geology Research and Teaching
Collection
UNIVERSITY OF
SOUTHERN
QUEENSLAND
Geology,
Rock & Mineral
Museum
CURTIN UNIVERSITY ,
WA
Geology,
Tate
Museum of
UNIVERSITY OF
ADELAIDE
, SA
Natural Sciences Collection
MONASH UNIVERSITY ,
VIC
Palaeobotany Collection
UNIVERSITY OF
ADELAIDE
, SA
Seismogram Collection
UNIVERSITY OF
QUEENSLAND
