[meteorite-list] from the frontier

From: chris sharp <casper_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:13 2004
Message-ID: <007d01c24380$9dd93d50$a7012bca_at_ringtail>

>From The Frontier
Outback Letters to Baldwin Spencer.
Mulvaney, Petch and Morphy.
P 236-248

These are extracts from letters sent by Patrick Byrne (1856 - 1932)
who worked on the Telegraph Line between Darwin and Adelaide from 1875
and spent 50 years at Charlotte Waters. He was a perceptive and
compassionate man who lost his right arm working the bore equipment at
CW. The government of the day, his employer, offered him 100 pounds
compensation which paid the doctor's bill. He died in Oodnadatta on a
day so hot (53 degrees) all the town retired to the dam.

"mound like elevations capped with large masses of Scoriaceous
rock...are distributed all over the higher tablelands, altho' not in
such large masses as on the isolated mounds rising out of the
valleys."

"hills near Charlotte Waters capped with large masses (up to 10 tons)
of a vesicular Silicious rock, overlying brecciated felspathicrocks,
and unaltered argillaceous Sandstone and ironstone"

"The scoriaceous Chalcedony and allied vesicular masses found on the
surface..."

"The courser felspathic breccias sometimes present a very scoriaceous
appearance through the felspars being decomposed and only a network of
the cementing silica left. A hill near here is capped with masses of
this scoriaceous rock underlaid by Desert Sandstone and silicified
Cretaceous ironstone and Kaoline. It is noteworthy that where
limestone occurs the capping is always Chalcedony."

"On the lower spurs (of the Anderson Range) were a few isolated masses
of conglomerate, felspathic breccia, and a white vesicular rock which
formed the capping -all blended together into a compact mass...One
boulder of this rock 6 x 6 x 9, weighing say 20 tons, was in an
inverted Position, (sic) the base presenting a Glazed appearance and
the vesicular capping..."

"With reference to the distribution of the bombs. I know that they are
found from Farina to Horseshoe Bend (over 500 miles) and in this
vicinity they are found on the tablelands twenty miles East and thirty
or forty miles West. Perhaps they are more plentiful in the vicinity
of the Peake and here than elsewhere, but I think they come from the
West."

Appears he was right. I wonder if that 20 ton "glazed" rock is still
there?

chris sharp
Received on Wed 14 Aug 2002 06:51:59 AM PDT