Twelve men from the Soviet Union on a scientific expedition to the remotest part of planet Earth, Antarctica, in 1961, found themselves on the horn of an incredible dilemma. One of their number, none other than the expedition doctor, suddenly became acutely stricken with appendicitis. What to do? No one else was medically trained and outside medically help was thousands of kilometres away, the patient couldn’t be transported there and waiting would prove fatal. So the surgeon, Leonid Rogozov, did the only thing he could do to try to save his own life…as mind-numbingly inconceivable as it sounds he operated on himself!
Novolazarevskaya Station, Antarctica, in winter (Photo: Sky News/Getty Images)
Auto-appendectomy was virtually unheard of, let alone performing such an impossibly dangerous procedure in a non-hospital environment, but Dr Rogozov rolled the dice. Firstly, he planned the operation systematically and meticulously (despite being in agonising pain), choosing two members of the expedition to be his surgical assistants, their roles were to hand him surgical instruments and hold a mirror to avail him of a view of his abdomen. The degree to which he prepared the operation exceptionally well can be seen in that he had the foresight to assign a third man to be present in the makeshift operating “theatre” in the event that one of the assistants fainted. As Rogozov needed to stay conscious he submitted only to a local anaesthetic and proceeded slowly in excruciating pain. Finding the inverted view of the mirror more a hinderance than an aid he dispensed with it and operated instead by touch with his bare hands.
The Soviet Union’s pioneering auto-appendectomy (Source: Vladislav Rogozov)
Somehow after nearly two hours the doctor succeeded in removing the offending appendix (while noting that its gangrenous appearance indicated it in all likelihood would burst the following day). Operation successfully completed, Rogozov stitched up his gaping wound and even had the presence of mind to instruct the assistants on how to wash the instruments properly and hygienically clean the room, before finally allowing himself a dose of antibiotics and sleeping tablets to induce sleep. After just two weeks rest the extraordinary doctor was, true to form, back at work. Truly remarkable, real Ripley’s “believe it or not” sort of stuff! [Sara Lentati, “The man who cut out his own appendix”, BBC, 05-May-2015, www.bbc.com].
Dr Rogozov recuperating after the operation (Source: Vladislav Rogozov)
The Antarctic ordeal wasn’t entirely over for Dr Rogozov. Mission completed, the expedition was meant to be picked up by a Soviet vessel about 12 months after the doctor’s self-appendectomy, however exceptionally bad weather and thick sea ice prevented it from getting close enough. Consequently there was a further lengthy delay before all the explorers were eventually evacuated by single-engine aircraft, a distinctly hairy manoeuvre in the treacherous polar conditions. Back in the USSR Leonid Rogozov was hailed as a hero of the Motherland and honoured with the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, although the good doctor did his utmost to shun the huge publicity focused on him, preferring simply to return to his medical clinic work in Leningrad.
Leonid I Rogozov in happier times during his Antarctic stay (Source: Vladislav Rogozov)
ᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑ
Footnote: As a consequence of the 1961 Soviet expedition’s medical quasi-catastrophe, several countries including Australia made appendectomies mandatory for Antarctic explorers about to embark on an expedition to the farthest southern continent.
Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (GLF) in 1958—communist China’s bold venture to transform the nation’s economy from agrarian to industrial—necessitated some drastic social engineering, and more than a little tinkering with nature. The “Paramount Leader”, repudiating the advice of state economists, consistently advocated the efficacy of population growth for China (Ren Duo, Liliang Da – “With Many People, Strength is Great”) …he stated that “even if China’s population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution, the solution is production” (‘The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History’, (1949)). One strategy of Mao’s for protecting the imperative of national productivity and boosting output involved an extreme “solution” in itself.
Four Evils Campaign poster (source: chineseposters.net)
Pest controllers: As a plank of the GLF Mao spearheaded the “Four Evils Campaign”, four “pests” of the natural world were targeted for elimination – rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows…the first three especially concentrated in large numbers certainly could pose a threat to public health and hygiene, but why sparrows? Mao singled out the sparrow because it consumed the grain seed and rice from agricultural fields. What followed was a government propaganda campaign exhorting the people to fulfil their patriotic duty and zealously hunt down these proscribed “enemies of the state”. The regime enlisted the civilian population in a military-like operation, a coordinated mass mobilisation, dedicated to this singular task. The mass participation event included the very young, armies of children aged five and older were despatched from their homes armed with slingshot and stones, to formicate all over the countryside and wipe out vast numbers of sparrows often with frightening effectiveness.
“Patriotic duty” of young Chinese (source: chineseposters.net)
Mao v Nature: Mao’s war on passerine birds was part of a wider war on nature. Mao encapsulated the objective for China in one of his oft-repeated slogans: Ren Ding Sheng Tian (“Man must conquer nature”). Mao’s modernist conception of the world saw humans as fundamentally distinct and separate from nature, so in order to fashion the world’s most populous republic into the socialist utopia that he envisioned, nature, this external thing, had to be harnessed and defeated (Zhansheng ziran). The result was a drastic reshaping of China’s physical landscape, the over-extraction of resources, intensive farming schemes, massive deforestation, riverine pollution, over-hunting and over-fishing [Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature (2001)]
Eurasian Tree Sparrow: top of Mao’s nature hit-list
A monstrous ecological imbalance and a species endangered: The nationally coordinated campaign against the four pests proceeded with phenomenal speed and ruthless efficiency. By early 1960 an estimated one billion sparrows had been destroyed🄰, nearly wiping out the species altogether in China…a fateful consequence that was to prove catastrophic for the country’s food production. The authorities had not heeded the expert advice from Chinese scientists🄱 that sparrows fulfilled a vital function in feeding off not just crops but off insects including locusts. With the removal of this natural predator, locusts in plague quantities were free to ravage the nation’s fields of grain and rice, and ravage they did, in Nanjiang 60% of the produce fields were ruined [‘Mao and the Sparrows: A Communist State’s War Against Nature’, Agata Kasprolewicz, Przekroj, 22-Mar-2019, www.przekroj.org] .
The Great (man-made) Famine, 1959–1961: The resulting Great Famine in the PRC caused up to 30 million deaths and an estimated similar figure or more in lost or postponed births, making it the worstfamine in human history judged by population loss [‘Berkeley study: Historic famineleavesmultiplegenerationsvulnerable to infectiousdisease’, Berkeley Public Health, www.publichealth.berkeley.edu]. The plunge in agricultural output linked to the sparrow decimation project was further exacerbated by other factors such as Peking’s procurements policy, increase in grain exports from 1957 (redirecting grain away from domestic consumption which otherwise could have allowed millions of Chinese to survive the famine); the priority on industrialisation diverting huge numbers of agriculturalworkers into industrial sectors adversely affected the food scarcity crisis.
Fujian province propaganda poster, 1960 (image: US National Library of Medicine)
Postscript: Reprising the eradication campaign In 1960 the Chinese government upon realising the folly of its sparrow offensive, overturned its proscription of the birds, declaring war on bed bugs in their place. The disastrous sparrow mega-kill episode however didn’t bury the Four Evils campaign forever. The Chinese government in 1998 launched a new version of the movement, posters were seen in Beijing and Chongqing urging citizens to kill the four pests…the first three were the usual suspects as in 1958, but this time cockroaches were substituted for sparrows. Unlike the original sparrow campaign the 1998 version was not successful [‘The Four Pests Campaign: Objectives, Execution, Failure, And Consequences, World Atlas, www.worldatlas.com].
🄰 along with 1.5 billion rats, over 220 million pounds of flies and over 24 million pounds of mosquitoes
🄱 there were doubters within the hierarchy of the Communist Party who had misgivings about the wisdom of the Paramount Leader’s policy, but most found it expedient to remain silent for fear of the personal consequences of incurring the wrath of Mao
Anyone who has heard anything about the Sargasso Sea will have probably learned that it is unique among the planet’s seas in that it is completely bereft of any land boundaries and that it is full of seaweed. The boundaries of the sea are the four directional currents (N-S-E-W) which together create a clockwise-circulating system of ocean currents known as the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. This novel geographical oddity results in a clear, deep blue sea which is relatively warm and calm compared to the rest of the cold and often turbulent North Atlantic.
Sargasso Sea (old Dutch map)
The Sargossa’s seaweed is planktonic (ie, floating freely), a genus of seaweed called Sargassum—hence the source of the sea’s name which is thought to be of Portuguese origin (also cf. Sp. sargazzo (“kelp”)—a golden-brown-coloured algae which reproduces vegetatively on the surface and never attaches itself to the sea-bed floor during its lifecycles, which marks it out from the typical behaviour of seaweed on the high seas. The sargassum forms itself into concentrated patchesA⃣ which drift around the sea’s circumference while being ecologically beneficial to the local marine life – providing a habitat, sanctuary and food for turtles, shrimp, fish, porbeagle sharks, eels and the like.
image: National Ocean Service
Sargassum on steroids The Sargasso and its seaweed (more correctly gulfweed) has been much in the news recently due to increasing amounts of it washing up on the shores of beaches in eastern Mexico, Florida and the Caribbean, causing a nuisance to sunbathers, coastal dwellers and even a potential hazard, and happening earlier in the calendar year than in previous yearsB⃣. Marine scientists attribute the recent explosion of gulfweed (the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt) to human activities such as intensive soya farming in the Congo, the Amazon and the Mississippi, which dumps nitrogen and phosphorus into the ocean (Barberton 2023).
A carpet of pelagic sargassum covering the beach on the Barbados east coast (photo: H Oxenford)
Sargasso loreThe Columbus expedition on route to the East Indies (or so he thought) in 1492 gave us the first recorded sighting of the seaC⃣and navigators and sailors have been long been wary of the suspected dangers thought lurking in the mysterious sea…in fear of their vessel being permanently entrapped in its becalmed, windless waters (known as “the Doldrums”) or inextricably entangled in the ubiquitous brown belts of seaweed. Columbus and later navigators sought to transit through the sea by manoeuvring around the masses of seaweed, fearful as Columbus was that the algae mats concealed coral reefs that would wreck their ships.
Christopher Columbus (source: hoidla.spordimuuseum.ee/)
Eco-hazards: the North Atlantic garbage patch While the imagined threats to sailors and ships have not materialised over time, the real threats, aside from the runaway sargassum blooms, are those that are posed against the long-term health of the sea itself. Passing shipping has had a negative impact on the ecosystem of the Sargasso Sea. Storms and hurricanes transporting massive amounts of human-made pollution, followed by the characteristic stillness of the Sea, has made it susceptible to large-scale garbage accumulation, especially of microplastics (with volumes increasing exponentially the danger of increased plastic ingestion by marine life is a major concern). Other threats to the Sargasso come from climate change and overfishing of its waters. The future harvesting of sargassum seaweed is also a concern for marine biologists.
Sargassum floating on the Sargasso Sea (photo: David Doubilet/National Geographic)
Endnote: Bermuda Triangle intervention in the Sargasso circle? While the Sargasso Sea has no land borders, there is land in the form of the tiny Bermuda islands on the Sea’s western fringe. The intriguing nature of the Sea is further accentuated by association with Bermuda, or more specifically with its Bermuda Triangle reputation – a series of legends and mysteries that have grown up over the last century about a supposed abnormal pattern of aircrafts and ships disappearing without trace in the loosely-defined “Triangle” areaD⃣.
source: Shutterstock
Dimensions: the Sargasso Sea is elliptical in shape and encompasses an area of >1,000 mi in width and 3,000 mi in length; the Bermuda Triangle (aka Devil’s Triangle) is roughly 500,000 sq mi of water in a space bounded by Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda.
source: bibliotecapleyades.net
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A⃣ a “golden floating rainforest” (Dr Sylvia Earle)
B⃣ and not confined to the eastern side of the ocean, the media has reported the presence of giant sargassum blooms from West Africa right across to the Gulf of Mexico (‘The Aussie tackling an ocean-spanning seaweed monster’, Angus Dalton, Sydney Morning Herald, 26-April-2023, www.smh.com.au)
C⃣ though 4th century AD Roman writer Avienius referenced an ancient Carthaginian exploration of it that supposedly took place, and there were claims on behalf of Arab mariners from the 11th and 12th centuries
D⃣ critics have generally debunked the idea of the Bermuda Triangle as a nemesis, arguing that there is no evidence that mysterious disappearances occur more frequently there than on other well-frequented oceanic transit route, that the “phenomena” is a manufactured one, sustained by conspiracy theorists and media sensationalism
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Articles and other publications consulted
‘About the Sargasso Sea’, Sargasso Sea Commission, www.sargassoseacommission.org/
〝 The principle of preventing the spread of infectious disease by which people, baggage…likely to be infected or coming form an infected place are isolated at frontiers or ports until their harmlessness has been proven…〞 ~ Port Nepean Q-Station‘s definition of ’Quarantine‘
Since the initial strains of Covid-19 turned the world upside down and inside out early last year, the word ‘quarantine’ has found a renewed vigour in the lexicon. In a previous blog the history of Sydney’s early animal quarantine station for imported livestock was outlined – ‘Sydney Foreshore’s Animal House of Detention and Segregation on Hen and Chicken Bay’, 21-Apr-2018. Human quarantine in Sydney has a much longer history. The story starts with governor of the colony of New South Wales Ralph Darling. In response to the cholera pandemic sweeping Europe and the risks of ship-borne disease being transported on vessels coming to the colony, Darling initiated a Quarantine Act in 1832 “subjecting Vessels coming to New South Wales from certain places to the performance of Quarantine”❅.
(Source: researchgate.net / Peter Freeman Pty. 2000)
Darling set aside the entire North Head peninsula (277 hectares)—on indigenous Gayamagal country in Manly on Sydney’s northern beaches—for the grounds of the quarantine processing centre. The exact site chosen for the Q-station, Spring Cove, overlooking Sydney Harbour, was already housing an infected and quarantined merchant ship, the Bussorah Merchant.
In the early years of the station’s operation, the practice was to keep sick passengers on board the vessels on arrival at Spring Cove. After complaints from the merchants about the delay and cost of keeping the ships tied up at North Head, the authorities started bringing the sick onshore to free up the transport ships, this required the construction of more substantial permanent accommodation and storage facilities at the Q-Station to replace the original makeshift buildings [‘North Head Quarantine Station’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
Passengers disembarking at North Head Q-Station, 1940s (Photo: State Library of NSW)
Q-Station longevity
The old Quarantine Station enjoyed a surprisingly long lifespan at the North Head site, surviving albeit with decreasing utilisation until 1984⌖, this despite periodical calls for its closure…as far back as 1923 Manly Council alderman and later mayor Percy Nolan was advocating for the Q-Station’s removal in favour of open public space [Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Quarantine Station. Proposed Removal’, 31-May-1923 (Trove)].
Slabs of cut sandstone near the station’s wharf bear the markings of passengers detailing the dates and ship names of their journey to North Head
First class expectations
Conditions and facilities at the Q-station were regularly under scrutiny from the better-off passengers. First class passengers were not slow in bringing deficiencies in housing to the attention of the authorities, leading in the 1870s to the building of a new section of Q-Station passenger accommodation in what was known as “the Healthy Grounds” (Wiki).
A 1881 smallpox epidemic resulting in a large number of internee deaths❧ at North Head facility exposed major shortcomings in the management of the Q-Station, including the lack ofa medical superintendent with a grasp of infection control; no clean linen and towels, soap or medical supplies for patients isolated with smallpox [Allen, Raelene, Smallpox epidemic 1881, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/smallpox_epidemic_1881, viewed 06 Sep 2021].
Aerial view of Nth Head Q-Station – c.1930 (Image: Office of Environment & Heritage)
Bulwark against plagues, viruses, bacteria, etc.
Over the decades the Q-Station at Manly has housed the victims of numerous diseases including smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, measles and the bubonic plague, as well as victims of natural disasters. The Q-Station provided a refuge for returning WWI veterans suffering from TB and VD. At war’s end it served as the frontline defence against the lethal assault of the Spanish Flu.
(Photo: environment.
nsw.gov.au)
Gradual obsolescence
Post-WWII, as air travel gradually replaced passenger ships, the Q-Station’s role diminished in importance. In its final decades of operation the quarantine station was put to diverse use…housing the unvaccinated (eg, pregnant immigrants), accommodating Vietnamese orphans and as a temporary abode for women and children evacuated from Darwin after Cyclone Tracy decimated that city in 1974 [‘The plague, smallpox and Spanish flu: How Sydney quarantined sick travellers throughout history’, Sarah Swain, 9 News, 2020, www.9news.com.au; ’Q Station on Manly’s North Head echoes with history of pandemics past’, Kathy Sharpe, Mandurah Mail, 21-Jul-2021, www.mandurahmail.com.au].
The stairway (connecting the wharf with the housing) replaced the funicular in use during Q-Station period (Photo: Sydney Coast Walks)
No longer a quarantine station, the surviving 65 heritage buildings are set against the beautiful natural bush land of the Sydney Harbour National Park. Today the old Q-station is converted into a hotel complex (104 rooms including nine self-contained cottages, managed by Accor) with all the tourist trappings, including sleepovers and nocturnal “Ghost and Paranormal tours”.
Pt Nepean Q-Station (Photo: Parks Vic)
Footnote: Port Nepean, North Head’s counterpart In Melbourne, that city’s historic quarantine station can be found on the Heads of Port Phillip Bay. Port Nepean Quarantine Station can point to a similar eventful history to that of the North Head facility. Like it, the Melbourne Q-Station owes it’s existence to an infected immigrant ship…the arrival of the SS Ticonderoga in 1852 with 300 passengers stricken from disease, necessitating the ship’s quarantining at Port Nepean, which led to it’s establishment as a Quarantine Station (originally called “the Sanitary Station”). By the 20th century Port Nepean Q-Station had developed a number of innovative processing features including the memorably named “Foul Luggage Receiving Store”. The station’s Disinfectant and Boiler buildings also became models for other quarantine stations in Australia [‘Quarantine Station’, Parks Victoria, www.parks.vic.gov.au]. At one point animals were also quarantined at the location. By 1978 Port Nepean had ceased operating as a quarantine facility and was closed in 1980. Subsequent uses of the site and holdings include a military encampment and a temporary refuge for 400 Kosovar refugees fleeing the Bosnian War in the early 1990s.
➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿
❅ “to prevent the introduction of the disease called the malignant Cholera and other infectious disease”
⌖ during that one-and-a-half centuries the Q-Station was the initial home in Sydney for an estimated 13,000 passengers
❧ and the need to build a third Q-Station cemetery to accommodate the rise in mortality
There’s only a handful of natural travertine rock formations𝔞 in the entire world, but after 1886 there was was one less. In that year in New Zealand’s Rotorua/Bay of Plenty area, the terraced hot springs wonderland known to Pākehā New Zealanders as the “Pink and White Terraces”𝔟 (Ōtukapuarangi and Te Tarata) were obliterated from sight in a massive eruption from nearby Mt Tarawera (Māori: “burnt spear/peaks”)𝔠.
🌋 Charles Blomfield’s painting of the volcanic occurrence
Fallout from the volcano’s eruption blanketed some 15,000 sq kms of countryside with ash in the air travelling as far away as Christchurch, over 800 km to the south. The explosion of volcanic craters reduced Lake Rotomahana (“warm lake”) to mud and ash. The deafening noise and lightning of the dome volcano exploding caused some in Auckland to think that Russian warships were attacking the city [‘The Night Tarawera awoke’, New Zealand Geo, www.nzgeo.com]. The human casualties were almost all Māori, about 120 people died, as well as 10 Māori settlements destroyed or buried.
Blomfield’s painting of Te Tarata
19th century tourist attraction
Nature’s violent removal of the Rotomahana travertines brought an abrupt end to a lucrative little 19th century tourism earner for the local region. Artist Charles Blomfield who painted the two terraces on multiple occasions was an eye witness to the tourist boom, observing groups of “moneyed people” bathing in the hot springs𝔡 while their lunches of potatoes and koura were cooking in the boiling pools (NZ Geo)𝔢. Village residents benefitted—some Māori guides netted incomes of up to £4,000 a year—but the First Nation community also copped the downside from the economic boost, rising illness and rampant alcoholism [‘Tarawera Te Maunga Tapu’, Rotorua Museum, www.rotoruamuseum.co.nz].
The glistening travertine pools of Lake Rotomahana
Lost and found?
For 120 years New Zealanders thought that all trace of the iconic terraces—the two largest known formations of silica sinter on earth—had vanished. Scientific curiosity in recent decades has speculated whether the terraces has been destroyed altogether or perhaps permanently entombed. Recently, Geologists, drawing on Ferdinand von Hochstetter’s 1859 topographic and geological survey of Lake Rotomahana as a primary source, believe they have found traces of the lost White Terraces in the naturally-restored, crater-enlarged lake [‘A natural wonder lost to a volcano has been rediscovered’, Robin Wylie, BBC, 28-Apr -2016, www.bbc.com]. The terraces are thought submerged under sediment and 50-60 m of lake water.
1860 lithograph of Hochstetter talking to the Māori rangatira of the White Terraces 🔻
New Zealand’s miniature ‘Pompeii’
Right in the firing line of Mt Tarawera when it exploded in 1886 was the tiny village of Te Wairoa and its inhabitants the Tuhourangi people. Engulfed and obliterated by the eruption, it became known as the “Buried Village” of Te Wairoa. These days it has brought back tourism to the area. The excavated village is New Zealand’s most popular archaeological site.
(Source: Flickr.com)
Postscript: the Rotomahana travertines are destroyed but is at least one terraced hydro-thermal springs in the North Island remains. Wairakei Terraces, situated 90 km south of Tarawera in Taupō, is a smaller version of the Pink and White Terraces. This commercial operation is a combination of the synthetic (man-made geyser) and the natural (pink, blue and white silica steps).
🔻Pamukkale, Turkey
🌋 one of the most outstanding examples of travertine formations on the planet is the “Cotton Castle” of Pamukkale in eastern Turkey, with its glistening white-terraced geo-thermal springs sharing the site with the ruins of a Greco-Roman city Hierapolis, making it a world-class tourist magnet. Other extant travertines include Badab-e-Surt in Iran, Mammoth Hot Springs in Wyoming, USA, and Egerszalok in Hungary.
Pink Terraces (Photo: Charles Spencer/ Te Papa)
•••➖•••➖•••➖•••➖•••➖•••➖•••
𝔞 travertines are formations of terrestriallimestone and calcium carbonate deposits around mineral (especially hot) springs, which are often terraced
𝔟 their names in the Māori tongue translate respectively as “fountain of the clouded sky” and “tattooed rock”
𝔠 nicknamed Te Maunga Tapu (“the sacred mountain”), the volcano lies within a caldera (collapse crater) area
𝔡 the actual numbers of Europeans who visited New Zealand’s version of the “8th Wonder of the World” was not as high as might imagine, owing to the terraces not being easily accessible – from the closest settlement Rotorua it was a trek south over hills by horse or buggy followed by a canoe trip and the last section on foot [New Zealand’s Pink and White Terraces’, (Tourism NSW), www.media.newzealand.com]
𝔢 English novelist Anthony Trollope was one of the European ‘celebs’ who fronted up to bathe in the pools and sleep in a whare (Māori hut) next to the terraces (NZ Geo). Trollope found nothing like its waters in the world – “youstrike your chest against it, it is soft to the touch, you press yourself against it and it is smooth” [Australia and New Zealand, (Vol.II, 1873]
Its been called a ghost town but the island’s massive concentration of iron ore under the sea⧆ exerts a powerful magnetic pull on passing ships and boats. The island of Jussarö is one of some 40,000 (and counting) islands off the coast that form Finland’s vast archipelago⌖.
The “ghost town” tag comes from the closure of the island’s iron ore mining works in 1967☯ due to a decline in the world price for the mineral (‘Jussarö’, www.en.jussaro.net) …leaving the landscape scattered with the remnants of old industrial buildings abandoned to nature.
⇑Hanneke Wrome (Image: alchetron.com)
Compass interference, a danger to shipping
The dense concentration of iron ore deposits within the island has been known to make the navigation equipment of passing vessels in the Gulf of Finland go haywire. The magnetic force emitted by the island tends to make ships malfunction and their compasses point in the wrong direction. Historically, a consequence of this has been a large incidence of marine accidents and shipwrecks in the vicinity. In 1468 the Hanseatic League cargo ship ‘Hanneke Wrome’ (or ‘Vrome’) was caught in a storm and wrecked near Jussarö island with the loss of over 200 lives and a vast quantity of expensive fabric, barrels of honey, gold coins and jewellery (‘Finland’s abandoned iron ore mine’, Abandoned Spaces, Bojan Ivanov, www.abandonedspaces.com). Perhaps the most famous shipwreck, known as “Jussarö I”, is a early 16th century ship belonging to the fleet of Swedish king, Gustav I Vasa (‘Jussarö Island’, www.visitraseborg.com). Given this hazard, Jussarö has been a haven for pilot stations and lighthouses (the island’s earliest pilot station dated from early 19th century).
⇑Sundharu lighthouse
Raseborg’s teeth “ship trap”
Several smaller islands and islets south of Jussarö collectively known as Raseborgs gaddama (Raseborg”s Teeth”) are particularly prone to shipwrecks. This area is known to have caused disturbances in navigation as early as the 17th century. In 1751 Swedish naval cartographer “Jonas Hahn was able to explain the phenomenon by the high iron content in the underwater rock formation in the area”. The Sundharu lighthouse was stationed on one of the skerries here to try to counter the danger (‘Finnish cases: Four case study areas. Case 1 – Jussarö ship trap’, www submariner-net.eu).
When the mining activity ended, Jussarö was taken over by the Finnish Defence Forces and used for military training and urban war simulation. After the army left in 2005 the island came under the administration of Metsähallitus, a state-owned authority in charge of national parks, wildlife and forestry. The main activity today is tourism with day-trippers regularly commuting from the mainland.
Postscript: The island’s 13th century footnote in history
Jussarö first gets a mention in medieval Danish documents, appearing in King Valdemar II’s Survey (or “Court Rolls”), a document compared to William the Conqueror’s Doomsday Book record. The ‘Survey’ of Valdemar II of Denmark (reigned 1202–1241) was a land register of Danish settlements and their populations, c. 1231 (Nils Hybel, The Nature of Kingship c.800–c.1300: The Danish Incident , (2017)). Jussarö is included in the royal survey apparently because it was on the Danish route map (www.en.jussaro.net).
(Source: nationalparks.fi)
𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨𓆨
⧆ the largest deposits of iron ore in Finland
⌖ Jussarö itself lies within the Ekenäs Archipelago
☯ the second time iron ore mining operations had been abandoned on Jussarö, previous it was mined, sometimes using Russian prisoners, from the 1830s to 1861
Rusting and decaying dinosaurs of the sea moored permanently off Sydney Olympic Park
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Walkers and cyclists doing the path section of Sydney Olympic Park that stretches from Bennelong Speedway (oops! I mean Parkway) to the Badu Mangroves that guard the northern edge of Bicentennial Park would be familiar with the sight of half-a-dozen or so shipwrecks sitting calmly in the waters of Homebush Bay.
🔺 HMAS Karangi: once an important contributor in the defence of Darwin against the Japanese attack, now decomposing incrementallyin the bay
🔺 the “interpretative and scenic lookout”
ჱჲს A metal plaque on the ground alongside the trail directs the curious passerby to an old wooden viewing platform where you can observe these maritime relics redolent of rotting timber and rusting metal. This spot contains the ship-breaking ramp (or what remains of it) that was used to dismember these ex-naval vessels. Missing is the wooden crane (presumably submerged) and the telescope.
🔺 The ship-breaking dock
ჱჲს The story of how these ships ended up here begins in 1966 when the Maritime Services Board approved the use of land here as a ship-breaking yard for the Port of Sydney. From 1970 till to the early Nineties private companies leased the yard to demolish hulks which had surpassed their use-by-date.
ჱჲს With the passage of time, left to nature and the elements, a number of these ex-ships have experienced an almost complete organic makeover. The dense mangroves of the bay have invaded the vessels, turning them into what one observer described as “a floating mangrove forest” (May Ly) and another, “a floating rusty relic forest” (Ruth Spitzer). The stricken and abandoned vessels are now a haven for local coastal birdlife (at dusk the hovering and nesting white gulls are easy to spot aboard the arboreal hulls).
ჱჲს The most striking example of this process of afforestation of wrecks is the SS Ayrfield. The UK-built steam collier, which ended up in Homebush Bay in 1972 after World War 2 service, is spectacularly overgrown with mangroves, a dense armada of trees literally bursting out of the ship’s disappearing hull and threatening to swallow it whole! High-rise residents in the Wentworth Point estate and people strolling along the waterfront of the Point are afforded the best views of the organically-refashioned Ayrfield.
ჱჲს Also warranting special mention for a similar makeover courtesy of its biotic vibrancy–albeit much more obscurely located around the bend close to the Waterbird Sanctuary–is the 1924-built SS Heroic. The Heroic, a steam tug boat, saw service in both world wars before being consigned to the Homebush Bay cast-iron graveyard. Hidden behind a cloak of thick mangroves, you need to position yourself right on the muddy edge of the water and crane your neck to get a decent sighter of the nature-engulfed old tug boat. Its predicament, mirrors the Ayrfield’s but in a less advanced stage of arboreal encroachment.
ነሃጣፈነ A curious footnote to the 50 year-presence of the scuttled and abandoned ships in Homebush Bay is that the vessels, despite the egregiously bad state they are in, are ‘protected’ by legislation (under the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976).
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Materials referenced:
‘Shipwrecks of Homebush Bay’, (May Ly), 30-Jul-2013, www.weekendnotes.com
‘Graveyards of a different kind at Homebush Bay’, (Ruth Spitzer), 2015, www.ruthspitzer.com
Our last day at Mérida was more or less entirely given over to exploring a local geological feature in the region that Yucatán is world-famous for – the cénote✳ (Pron: say-NO-tay). Cénotes are natural pits, large sinkholes in the ground formed when limestone bedrock on the surface collapses exposing groundwater underneath. The ones we visited on that day were subterranean, deep down below ground level in cave formations in sites sheltered by overhanging cliff-faces. The cénotes in Southern Mexico are very popular with divers and snorkellers and the more accessible ones usually require the payment of an entry fee (from about 50 to 100 Pesos each). To get into the water at many cénotes you need to make a steep descent on rickety old ladders, although not all cenotes are sunk deep into the earth’s surface…some other cénotes like the one we saw in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba are located just below the ground and just look like natural pools surrounded by worryingly jagged rocky ledges.
Guía José conducts a cartography class in the field!
It was a decent old drive to reach our first Yucatán cénote, it was located in a place called Tecoh, quite remote, dry-parched and harsh land, real sagebrush territory! Our sociable guide for the day, José, laid down a map of the Peninsula on the ground and explained a bit of the cénote story. The ancient Maya people apparently used the cénotes for both practical and religious purposes. In a landscape (Yucatán) with hardly any rivers to speak of and quite few lakes, the cénotes provided a much-needed source of fresh water. The Maya also used them, it is believed, for sacrificial offerings sometimes. José’s finger traced a circuitous line around much of the map, pointing out the location of cénotes which seemed to be dotted all over the place. After we had swam in the first cénote I asked José who clearly relished the whole cénote experience if he had swam in every cenote in the state. José chuckled and indicated that there was over 2,000 cénotes all over the Peninsula, and he might need another 20-30 years to reach that target!◊
The roof of something deep, dark & delightful…
Cénote Dive-and-Snorkle
The ladder going down to the water-level was a concentric spiralling contraption of wooden steps which were in far from mint condition (words like flimsy and haphazard come to mind), necessitating that we made sure we trod fairly cautiously on each rung. At the bottom was a pretty primitively constructed wooden platform with only a small recess in the wall of the cave where we crammed our clothes and bags into every possible crevice.
Being a hesitant auto-immerser in any deposit of water greater in scope than a domestic bathtub, an aquatic prevaricator who can hold his own and delay with the best of them, I coaxed and eased myself with glacial speed into the seemingly bottomless, blue-turquoise chasm. The water was a little cool at first but I soon accustomed to it. The water quality looked pristine despite it being in constant by visitors, I was attracted by the appearance of a myriad of tiny colourful fish visibly close to the surface. The pool looked very deep…José speculated at least forty metres deep. Above us small birds flitted around the cave, dipping and diving in and out of several holes in the roof that have formed over the millenniums. The light emanating from the holes through tufts of vegetation provided a kind of natural spotlight projecting on to the water, giving the entire cavern a magical glow.
The beautiful azure water!
After a half-hour or so’s frolicking in the cénote Jose coaxed us out with the promise of a visit to an even more spectacular cénote that was only a short distance away at Carretera tecoh-telchaquillo. To get to the second cénote site we had to travel on more bumpy dirt roads, passing through several gates taking us onto different land-holdings. As we approached each closed gate, two small chicos (boys) that José had brought on the trip, would alight on a signal from the driver and scamper up and open the gate for the mini-bus◘.
Aquanauts of an ancient cénote!
An idyllic natural swimming hole full of picturesque delights
Cénote número dos managed to meet the high expectations of Jose’s extravagant rhetoric, and then some! It was a wider, deeper cave and the pool had a considerably more expansive mass of water. When we got to the cliff overlooking the cénote there was already a quartet of scuba-divers equipped with underwater cameras foraging around below the surface (“Japanese tourists”, they looked like to me). The drop from the top to the base platform was longer than the first cénote but glad to say the ladder was in better state with one long, straight descent to a three-quarter way platform and then a shorter ladder to a lower platform where you enter the water. José as usual wasted no time in shedding his T-shirt and thongs and diving into the sparkling abyss, following swiftly by the two boys. With everyone else quickly into the water, I paused briefly to take a few shots of the vast cavern and its water-treading occupants, before doing likewise. The pool was many metres deep (hence the presence of the scuba-divers), so once in I treaded water for a bit before swimming out to the middle of the water where someone had helpfully anchored a red buoy to the bedrock floor.
With one arm securely clasping the floatation device I took a breather, and while I was there I was able to have a good look around the cavern roof above. Bright beams of light from the limestone roof illuminated the water surface like a spotlight and made it possible to make out the presence of a few hibernating Mexican bats suspended from various nooks and niches of the craggy rock. Our guide pointed out that the walls of the cave accommodated a host of other small creatures like iguanas and spiders. I liked how there were lots of long, long vines growing over the edge of the cliff and cascading down almost to the water✥…the vines looked sturdy but I wondered if they were strong enough for any daredevil adventurer brave (or stupid) enough to swing off them from the roof into the water?
A gate-opening chico & the word of Señor Jesuchristo
Community lunch with the family
The fee for the cénotes excursion included lunch in the casa of a local family that José took us to in nearby Pixyá. When we got there the niños were still hanging round so I wondered if this was José’s lugar. A number of the humble dwellings on that street had the identical message in Spanish painted on the front walls – a quote from Señor Jesuchristo (Ro. 6:23), something about paying fish when you die in order to ensure eternal life (my idiomatic interpretation anyway!).
A typical Yucatán Sunday spread!
As small livestock wandered around the yard inquisitively, we were guided to our seats at a long, outdoor table under a covered awning. José and the dama of the house brought out the food, in no time we were tucking into a delicious meal of meats (mainly pollo) and a smorgasbord of vegetable dishes. José produced jugs of a home-made lemon or limonáda drink to compliment the midday meal. The authentic, community “Sunday lunch” with the family capped off the day of subterranean cénote adventures to a tee!
Setting out again from Pixyá in José’s mini-bus, we bounced along the dusty dirt road towards Mérida, the further we went the better, and therefore the smoother, the road surface got. Back in town, having developed a craving for hot choc drinks after some early disappointing coffee experiences on the tour, I sought out a late afternoon caliente chocolate at the Italian Coffee Company (this seems to be a sizeable franchise business chain in different parts of Mexico, noticed they had several shops around where we stayed in Puebla).
Being our last night in Mérida, Hector took us to one of the liveliest and most crowded nightspots he knew in Mérida City Centre, Le Negrita Cantina (corner of Calles 49 and 62). We got a sensory dose of typically pulsating Mérida night-life here…wall-to-wall people seated cramped close together munching burritos (my non-appearing cerveza seemed to have been redirected back to the brewery – in a nearby town!) in an enclosed firetrap, wait-staff constantly circling round the tables with trays of margaritas, sangritas and micheladas looking for homes. Couldn’t really hear ourselves speak with the din going on, but the exciting buzz of the non-stop musical band and the dancing was great to experience!
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✳ the word derives from ts’onot, used by the low-land Yucatec Maya to refer to any location with accessible groundwater
◊ possibly José was being conservative with even that formidable number – other estimates (eg, www.aquaworld.com.mx) place the number of cénotes in the Yucatán Penn at in excess of 5,000
◘ the two small children doing the leg-work, I presumed, were José’s own niños
✥ some of the hanging vines in cénotes resemble the icicle-like stalactites often seen in caves
Bêifāng Hâitān Cháng-chéng 長城 Collaroy-Narrabeen’s Great Wall of Sand!
Collaroy-Narrabeen’s 長城Sth Narrabeen Surf Club peering over the Wall of Sand!
The photos (L + R) taken five days ago show the cumulative effects of successive series of storms on the one kilometre plus stretch of coast where Collaroy Beach merges seamlessly with South Narrabeen Beach. The foredune in the pictures (the high ridge of sand) was created from countless poundings by severe storms over the last 100 years, but the gouging out of a phenomenally large quantity of sand to create the current steepness of the ridge owes itself to the most recent destructive event, a massive storm action which relentlessly blitzed the narrow beachfront at Collaroy and Narrabeen in June 2016. For three days huge waves and king tides pummelled the beach, the cost in landform terms was the lost of an estimated 50 metres of beach on what was already a precariously thin strip of coast [M Levy, A Benny-Morrison, D Dumas, ‘Sydney storm: erosion swallows 50 metres of Collaroy, Narabeen beaches’, Sydney Morning Herald, 07-Jun-2016, www.smh.com.au].
Just one sample of the damage to Collaroy Beach & property in 2016
The damage to coastal infrastructure last year was extensive – back fences, balconies, sunrooms, whole backyards and most spectacularly in-ground swimming pools were uprooted – but came as no surprise to locals, coastal geologists or environmentalists. The beach here has had numerous precedents over the years (such as 1913-14, 1920, 1944, 1945, 1967, 1974, 1978, 1986, 1995, 2007), and has been witness to the undermining of foundations, damage to clubhouses, the washing away of houses and the demolition of some homes. The storm havoc in 1967 undermined the foundations of the (then) recently built, high-rise Flight Deck apartment block [J Morcombe, ‘Collaroy beachfront has been an erosion hotspot for a hundred years’, Manly Daily, 07-Jun-2016].
Urban development and sand bank vulnerability The present predicament of waves swallowing up beachfront properties had its genesis in the early 1900s when people, attracted by the sea and the views, started constructing their houses on Pittwater Road on the edges of the beach. Solutions to the ongoing onslaught from nature of storms was from the start consistently ad hoc. In the 1920 “Great Storm” locals desperately tried to shore up their beachfront cottages with sandbags✧. Warringah Council’s response to each new threat was largely reactive rather than proactive. The frequency of recurrence clearly called for preventative measures…one of the few early attempts by Council to pre-empt the threat was its purchase and demolition of storm-damaged houses between Arlington Amusement Hall and Jenkins Street, to be replaced by a public reserve.
Flight Deck too close to ground turbulence!
By the early 1960s Council’s planning scheme had polarised the community. The Collaroy-South Narrabeen Progress Association lobbied Council to halt its policy of building flats and resume as many houses as possible along the beachfront, demolishing them to create open space. This prompted an opposition group to spring up, demanding that more flats be constructed on the beach edge. This division was mirrored within Warringah Council itself, Councillors were split, some were in favour of increasing the number of flats, some were opposed to the development. A compromise was reached in 1964 which still permitted construction of flats and houses on the fragile edge of the sand bank [J Morcombe, ‘Milestone for Collaroy’s landmark Flight Deck’, Manly Daily, 12-Feb-2016]. Beach erosion and reinforcement measures More storms in the eighties and nineties prompted Council to try to come up with better thought-out strategies to cope with the burgeoning threat. Earlier construction of rock walls had been haphazard. In 2002 it opted to construct a 1.1km long sea wall along the most pregnable part of the Collaroy-South Narrabeen beach❖. The plan was shelved after several thousand people staged a beach protest against the proposed sea wall.
Again public opinion has been divided – many different views have been voiced on the issue…from those whose properties would not be protected by the wall or by individual walls covering single properties (eg, water can be pushed on to other neighbouring properties which don’t have a sea wall – sometimes because they were denied approval by Council to build one!). Who bears the cost is another issue – coastal engineer Angus Gordon has raised the thorny prospect of “councils building walls using public money to protect private property” (current Northern Beaches Council policy dictates that individual homeowners must pay for the construction of an approved wall for their properties). Beach-goers too, tend to have a differing perspective to those of beachfront homeowners, many surfers point to the way changes to the nature of the beach can affect the wave patterns and thus the quality of surfing (altering the breaks, etc) [C Chang, ‘Bitter battle over Collaroy beachfront has raged for years’, (News) 07-Jun-2016, www.news.com.au
‘Flight Deck’
Given the alarming extent of beach erosion gorged out of Collaroy and South Narrabeen beaches, supplementing the lost sand is vital. Northern Beaches Council tackles what it calls “Sand Replenishment and Beach Nourishment” by sourcing sand from local building sites, and it is also “dredged periodically from the entrance of Narrabeen Lagoon … to replenish Collaroy-Narrabeen Beach” [‘Coastal erosion’, (Northern Beaches Council), www.northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au/.] One of the concerns about using building site materials is the issue of ensuring clean fill…rubbish, waste matter or other, undesirable pollutants may inadvertently end up in the bolstering mix on the beach (risk of litter and impurities, aesthetic considerations).
Collaroy-South Narrabeen beach is considered to be Australia’s third most at-risk area¤ when it comes to the deleterious effects of coastal processes. Thus maintenance of sand bank stability remains a crucial civic objective against a backdrop of rising seas and unpredictable and extreme weather patterns. This is also an extremely costly matter for both Council and the state Liberal government. In 2013 Waringah Council forked out almost $3M to acquire a (potentially endangered?) luxury beachfront property to demolish it and use the land for a public park, and the troubled beach will figure significantly in the allocation of the $69M the state government announced for councils to address beach erosion, coastal inundation and cliff instability [Chang, op.cit.]
Collaroy Beach dune reinforcement
Endnote: Longshore drift, an agent of beach erosion A beach is inherently dynamic, motion and change are constant factors in its composition. Lateral movement of sediment (sand, clay, silt and shingle) along the shoreline is known as Longshore drift (or sometimes called Littoral drift). The geological process occurs thus – the prevailing wind powers the waves, directing them towards the coast. When they hit the surf zone they break at an angle to the shoreline (oblique wave action). Sand and other sediments are propelled along the surf zone in a zig-zagging motion, the swash (onshore-rushing water moves the beach materials along), followed by a corresponding backwash (the water returns offshore – if the wave is constructive, it will do so with reduced energy)[‘Longshore Drift’, (Revision World), www.revisionworld.com]
See related post King Canute Battling the Relentless Tide*: The Dilemma of Rampant Beach Erosion – Gold Coast and Adelaide (Nov. 2017)(Cartoon: Clive Goddard)
﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋﹋ * The title is of course a symbolic nod to King Canute (Cnut the Great) 11th century Anglo-Saxon ruler of the North Sea Empire, and the apocryphal anecdote of his futile but persistent efforts to turn back the tide on the seashore ✧ sand-bagging’s value is as an immediate response to flooding and is considered ineffective in countering sand erosion ❖ Council had earlier erected groynes (low walls or sturdy timber barrier) on the beach which had become largely ineffective over time ¤ after the Gold Coast and Adelaide’s north-western suburban beaches
🌋 Charles Blomfield’s painting of the volcanic occurrence 
Blomfield’s painting of Te Tarata
Aquanauts of an ancient cénote!
