Country and Railway Scenes

Central Coast N.S.W. scene.

Old MacDonaldtown Loco Yards. Well I have just received an email telling me correctly that there is no snow in Sydney, so this could not possibly be the loco yards in MacDonaldtown. What happened was I was supposed to color where it is white with sepia brown and a much darker chocolate brown, The far shed was supposed to be a tan colour. However when I got to this stage in the digital painting, I liked it so much that I stopped. If iIreceive any more email I suppose i will finish it. Thanks for pointing it out to me. (Ric) Coming home to Mossvale in the motor coach. (Ric) "The bloody train is late again" (above) by Ric North Queensland town. *************************************************************************** .Great Artesian Basin Also know as "Channel Country," it's one of the largest artesian groundwater basins in the world and a vital source of water for Australian agriculture. LAKE EYRE BASIN Lake Eyre itself is over 50 ft.(16 m) below sea levell and located in the driest part of Australia. Usually it holds little water, and , due to the severe drought conditions in the country it has none. Lake Eyre Basin is considered the world's largest internal drainage system, covering about one-sixth of the country. Rivers here flow based on rainfall, and because of that rare commodity, isolated water holes are vital for local communitiand wildlife. NULLARBOR PLAIN This sparsely populated slice of southwestern Australia is extremely dry with very little surface water and very few people, It can be crossed by the using the Eyre Highway, named after the famed explorer Edward John Eyre, who was the first person to survive an East-West crossing of Australia in the mid-1800s. Along the southern coastline on the Great Australian Bight, (Bight: a bend or curve in the shoreline) the local terrain is unparalleled. Enormous stretches of pure white sand are found in the Bilbunya Dunes and the Baxter Cliffs along the Bight are absolutely stunning. TANAMI DESERT Similar to the Great Sandy Desert, it has large areas of red sand plains, scrub vegetation and a few scattered hills. It's mostly uninhabited with some isolated mining and livestock

All this waste expanse of waterless interior could be irrigated if tunnels were bored from the east of the mountains where there is plenty of rainfall and turn those coastal rivers into the Darling basin to the west. Aussies have lived off the sheeps back, then from mining and cattle raising. With this extended drought and others to come, planning must occur. .. * The most famous - or infamous - of Australian bushrangers, Edward Ned Kelly, was born in June 1854 at Beveridge in Victoria. In 1841 his father John Red Kelly of Tipperary, Ireland, had been sentenced to seven years transportation, his crime either stealing two pigs or a calf or shooting at his landlord. Kelly reputedly served time with fellow Tipperarian Francis MacNamara, Frank the Poet, at the convict settlement of Port Arthur in Damn Demon's Land. MacNamara was the most significant voice of convict poetry, the words of "Moreton Bay" are based upon his "Convict's Arrival". (Ned Kelly used lines from the ballad in his 1879 Jerilderie Letter in which he justified his doings.)

No, don't worry I'm not with another woman. I'm phoning because I forgot to bring the water and sandwiches. I've got a flat tire and there's no spare.

. .