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Subject: A new contributor.
From: George Huxtable (george@XXX.XXX)
Date: Tue Mar 25 2003 - 04:20:33 EST
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.
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contact George Huxtable by email at george@XXX.XXX by phone at
01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy
Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.
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