The outdoors

slow_math · March 29, 2024, 11:18pm

Had a moment yesterday where a rainbow sat right in front of me

You can see the ends of it are in front of the trees right in front of me.

its_ameise · March 29, 2024, 11:23pm

and yet still no leprechaun

what’s the big cog it looks cool
i like the tree types aswell

slow_math · March 30, 2024, 12:26am

I’m not 100% sure, but I think its a crusher from when this was an industrial site. Some 80-90 years ago when the local limestone mine was depleted the local cement factory found out the could used crushed coral as a substitute for it. It was cheaper to acquire and it made stronger cement. They dredged up coral in the bay and barged it up the river to here. The river and what remains of the docks are right behind the trees I’m looking at. It’s hard to tell from my photo but a large spiked cylinder is behind the cog and is half buried in the ground now. After being unloaded from the barges a conveyor belt fed the coral straight into a crusher, which is that thing I’m pretty sure. 60 years ago a 3.5km conveyer belt was built to connect the docks and the factory directly so the crushed coral didn’t have to be trucked over from the docks. Dredging stopped in the 90s for environmental reasons and the docks closed not too long after. The remains of the conveyor is heritage listed now and most of the path it used to follow is parkland. It’s also very cool to look at.

Long answer to a simple question, but I do find this little bit of local history fascinating so I hope you do too

listennui · March 30, 2024, 12:50am

Good thing coral is so plentiful and grows quickly and easily, otherwise that would have been ecologically devastating.

Also, I don’t have pictures to demonstrate, but seeing farmland from high up makes me think about metallic crystal domains like you see in galvanized steel. Farms are like magnets if you abstract enough

slow_math · March 30, 2024, 12:55am

Here are some more pictures I took of the place in a previous visit:

I am a sucker for heavy industry machinery.
Heres some shots of the conveyor remnants

Fun fact: these photos are in backwards chronological order of when I took them. I stumbled upon this whole thing on a ride and had no idea what the heck it was until I reached the docks park and it had some info there, the rest I researched afterwards.

ameise_fan · March 30, 2024, 1:03am

Yay trees!

PetTurtle · March 30, 2024, 1:31am

Yea, I didn’t want to be the cynical one. Hearing about that operation makes me really sad.

The operation does sound like an impressive engineering feat for back in the day.

The area probably has really good soil. The crushed up coral that got picked up by wind and probably blown around is good for plants.

slow_math · March 30, 2024, 2:44am

Yeah such is the case of all resource extraction machinery, amazing and cool to look at in a vacuum, pretty depressing to think about big picture wise.
I live in the state which contains the Great Barrier Reef, so naturally coral preservation is a big topic here. Laws protecting the reef are definitely getting better, just frustratingly slowly, pretty much the state of environmentalism worldwide.
At least take heart there are a lot of very smart and skilled people who have and are working to better understand and protect our waters. Actually I nearly became one of those people, I was gonna do a masters project in mathematically optimising marine protection zones to maximise the biodiversity they contain. But sadly I didn’t manage to get a scholarship, and I was thoroughly sick of being a broke student so I got my current job instead.

Raistlin1357 · April 7, 2024, 8:28pm

This picture reminds me of a hike I did in Alaska though a very foggy forest. It was an amazing experience. I wish I could have spent more time there

a_lilian · April 7, 2024, 8:46pm

Oh these are delightful. Misty green is absolutely my favorite flavor of outside, and Alaska is so good for that! I also love the remoteness of Alaska, like I once visited a tiny tiny place (<1000 residents, I think?) that was only accessible by boat. In general, connecting all those small places by boats and seaplanes feels very special.

Ophidia · April 7, 2024, 9:00pm

Around the end of last year, there was a lot of snow when I was staying with a friend, so we decided to climb a mountain to get a nice view. It was tough to get up because everything was so slippery, but we made it! It was gorgeous. I am not a fan of cold weather, but it was worth it.