NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
A new contributor.
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2003 Mar 25, 09:20 +0000
From: George Huxtable
Date: 2003 Mar 25, 09:20 +0000
May I welcome the first contribution to this list from Kieran Kelly. He is an Australian authority on travel in the outback, and a great enthusiast for the work of Augustus Gregory, an unsung explorer of Australia around 1850. Kieran has recently produced a book on Gregory entitled "Hard country, hard men", in which he also recounts horseback travels of his own expedition, following some of Gregory's hoofprints. Gregory was clearly a brilliant celestial navigator, skilled at lunars, and I understand that Kieran is currently working on that aspect of his travels. One story he has told me concerns Gregory's artificial horizons, when he would shoot star altitudes in the brilliant windless nights of the outback, reflected in the surface of a pannikin of black tea. There's a lesson here. At least he could drink it afterwards, which wasn't possible with a Mercury horizon. So it's good to welcome Kieran on-board, as a serious land-traveller, and not just an armchair pundit like so many of us (me included). George Huxtable. ================================================================ contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by phone at 01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK. ================================================================
