The third part of the mind set I mentioned in the previous post deals with some of the early exploration.

A young man George Bass joined the Royal Navy at the age of 14. Yes, you might say that happened in those days but for you readers who have a son around the age of 14, you know that he’s only still a boy, so, when I say that he joined the Navy, I want you all to read very closely the position he held as a 14 year old having just joined the Navy. George Bass joined the Royal Navy at the age of 14 as an Apprentice Surgeon. Makes you think eh!
He arrived in New South Wales in 1895, and hooked up with another young Navy guy, Lieutenant Matthew Flinders.

They were pretty adventurous fellows and liked to have a look around. So, the pair of them decide to explore a little. So they got a rowboat, just on eight feet long, and with a hole in the front centre board where a pole could be fitted for a tiny square sail. They called her ‘Tom Thumb’.
George was 24, and Matthew was 21.
They threw in some provisions and some casks of water, and just took off.
In an eight foot rowboat with a tiny sail.

Not for a couple of hours tooling around on the harbour, close to shore.

This is a replica of the original ‘Tom Thumb’ built in 1987 by Ken Garvins and reproduced by courtesy of The Sydney Heritage Fleet.Photograph courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales. Click on the image to see a larger picture in a new window.

No, these guys rowed and sailed out of the Heads into the open Pacific Ocean, turned South and started exploring, not for a day or two, but for up to weeks at a time, in an eight foot boat. They found new places suitable for settling, and reported back to the new Governor, Arthur Phillip having returned to England, and had been replaced by John Hunter. Convicts were then sent to set up new settlements, and the colony slowly expanded. Some convicts were actually being released, given land and setting up farming properties, and among the first was John Ruse, freed after his 7 year term, transported on the First Fleet. He was given land at Rose Hill, now Parramatta one of Sydney’s largest suburbs, with Rose Hill now the site of one of Sydney’s main horse racing tracks.

Something highlighted by this was that some convict’s release date was actually not long after the fleet actually landed, virtually a double sentence if you will, jail, and then exile upon release.

John Hunter, the new Governor was impressed with the young Bass and Flinders, well, who wouldn’t be. So, he gave George a new boat and a new task. A pretty impressive new craft it was too. A whole whaleboat, almost twice the length of the rowboat and with a bigger sail. Off you go now then, see you later. He was given a crew of 6 sailors and provisions for 6 weeks.
This time George explored 500 miles along the Coast, charting and mapping as he went, not as a Naval guy trained in navigation, but as surgeon, his apprenticeship long since served.

When he reported back, the young surgeon had a hunch, so he was given a new boat and with Flinders as master, he was tasked to test his theory. The boat, was the Norfolk, a 17 ton sloop, sounding pretty big and impressive, but in reality just a fair sized yacht. The Norfolk was the first vessel constructed in the new colony, at Norfolk Island, and from the pine trees indigenous to the Island, the famed and huge Norfolk Island Pines.

George’s theory was a pretty big ask in those days. A young guy approaching his boss three levels up the chain of command and proposing that Naval records of the time were wrong, a pretty radical thing indeed. That theory was that there was a sea passage between what was known as Van Diemens Land, (discovered by a Dutch navigator Abel Tasman in 1642, named after his benefactor back in Holland, and later called Tasmania in his honour as discoverer) and what was then New South Wales. The pair took the Norfolk and proved that the body of land was indeed an island and that the expanse of water between the two was quite significant indeed, completely sailing around and mapping the smaller island of Van Diemens Land and also the southern side of the larger body of Land.

This was an important thing. The last leg of the long trip from England started at the Cape Of Good Hope, and was around eight weeks in duration, and the best latitude to sail this trip was in the 40 degree south latitudes, known as the ‘roaring forties’ because there was always a good tail wind behind the boat, aiding with the speed. This latitude brought you into contact with the west coast of Van Diemens Land, where you turned South and followed that land mass all the way around and then North to Port Jackson and the Sydney Cove settlement. If there was an open body of water then that trip would be significantly shorter, as Bass and Flinders proved on this expedition.

George Bass was then given command of his own ship and in 1803 sailed out of Sydney Cove headed for Chile across the Pacific Ocean. He was never seen again. He was 31 years old.

Matthew Flinders went back to England and his reputation followed. He was then tasked with mapping the coastline of this Great Southern Continent. He sailed back to Sydney, and in 1802 set out to circumnavigate Australia, proving once and for all that it was indeed an Island. This took him more than a year, and his maps were so accurate, they have barely changed to this day. Once finally back in England he campaigned that the new Country should be known as Terra Australis or Australia. Terra Australia was the name given to the mythical Great Southern Land centuries before, and Flinders suggestion was that this name should actually be revived and adopted for the new country. This was considered a little too far out into left field, and the status quo saw it remain as New South Wales.
The other settlements grew and they adopted their own names and borders were settled upon, borders that changed significantly over time. However, they remained as separate colonies.

What happened to all these brave young men, those first great Australians?

This statue of James Cook is a copy of the original from Whitby in England, where Cook started his Naval career. This is at Waimea on the island of Kauai.This photograph is a Creative Commons photograph. Click on the image to see a larger one in a new window.

James Cook, the discover of the Great Southern Land. Well, after that, he went on to a distinguished if somewhat shortened Naval career. After discovering Australia, he was made a full Commander, and searched twice in vain for the North West Passage across the top of the American Continent. Promoted to full Captain, he made two more voyages into the Pacific, and was the first navigator to actually enter Antarctic Waters. He was killed in 1779 by indigenous natives on what he named The Sandwich Islands, now know as Hawaii, not living to see his legendary discovery of The Great Southern Continent settled. There are numerous statues of this famed navigator at all points of the Globe, including a statue and a plaque at Waimea on Kauai commemorating his discovery of the Hawaiian Islands.

George Bass. His good friend Matthew Flinders named that body of water between the Mainland and the southern island Bass Strait, an extraordinary navigator who gave up his day job.

Arthur Phillip. His reputation now made for life, was one of the first to actually perceive, along with Lord Sydney, that the colony would have to start life as a penal colony, but right from the start would also have to start working towards normal settlement. He returned to England in 1792, was given increasing levels of command rising to the rank of Vice Admiral, (three stars) retiring at age 67 in 1805. He died in 1814, and continued pursuing the interests of the colony right up till his death.

Matthew Flinders. Following his circumnavigation of Australia he returned to England not knowing they were now at war with the French. His Schooner pulled in for repairs at Mauritius, and not knowing about the war, he was arrested by the French as a spy, and imprisoned for 6 years. On his release he returned to England in poor health and started on a book, the definitive early work on Australia, titled ‘A voyage to Terra Australis’, again using that mythical name that gathered such little support.. The book was published in 1814 and one day after publication, Flinders died, aged only 40. The fifth Governor of Australia, Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, (later Major General, 2 stars) supported Flinders name of Australia, and also fruitlessly campaigned for its acceptance.

Finally, in 1899, the six colonies gathered in the run up to Federation on January 1st 1901, and decided to federate as one Country and name the Country as Australia, one hundred and four years after those two young men, George Bass and Matthew Flinders set off in a tiny rowboat, exploring.

Legends, every one of them. How times change.

This is the first known painting of the settlement at Sydney Cove. It was painted by Thomas Watling. He was sentenced in 1792 to 14 years in Australia for forging a bank note. This was painted in 1794 and is titled ‘A Direct North General View Of Sydney Cove.’

The painting was presented by Sir William Dixson in 1929, and hangs in the State Library Of New South Wales.

Click on the image to open a larger image.

We find it stressful moving house and for some of us, those moves might be a considerable distance. However, it’s not like we just up and move, and when we do get someplace, we just say that this will do, and then move into a new house. No, we plan the move in detail, making sure there is a place to move into, that the power is turned on, there is a job to go, and everything is carefully laid out.

Captain Phillip first raised the flag at Sydney Cove and then started to build a whole settlement from nothing. He called the new country being settled New South Wales.
The two Naval ships Sirius and Supply stayed with the settlers, and the transports just set sail back for England.
That’s it then. It just had to be made to work. Find good water, food if possible, land that might support crops for food. Then clear the land and set up.
Phillip sent a small group on to Norfolk Island, charted by Cook and considered a good place to mount a further settlement. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Norfolk Island is one thousand miles away, almost two weeks away by boat in those days, and they had to commute back and forth.
The settlement was raised there as well, also as a convict outpost, and the two ran in conjunction. In fact the Norfolk Island settlement thrived while back at Sydney Cove, it was slow work.
After 18 months or so, there was even some consideration as to abandoning the Sydney Cove settlement and moving to the one at Norfolk Island, but with patience and a lot of hard work things started to stabilise.
It wasn’t like they could call home and say that this was not working. You just did it or perished in the task.

As things started to very gradually turn around, in 1790, after two years on their own, the Second Fleet arrived.
This was an absolute horror story.
The First Fleet was under the command of the Royal Navy with Phillip in control, while all further convict fleets were under private contract, you know, the lowest bidder sort of thing. The Company with that lowest tender was practised in the slave trade, so things did not augur well, something that should have been picked up on at the time, but things were different in those days. After all, we’re only talking about convicts here, hardened stealers of handkerchiefs and loaves of bread, sentenced to 7 years, 14 years or life, and then exiled, forgotten as the boat sailed off over the horizon.

This second fleet set sail with a total of 1017 convicts, 78 of whom were women. 258 died during the voyage, and when they arrived at Sydney Cove, 500 of those who remained were sick and dying, all this adding more stress to a settlement just managing to get by themselves. The main cause of death was starvation, and those not sick and dying were emaciated, putting further strain on the food supply at the struggling colony. Tents were set up on the foreshore as a hospital, but conditions were basic at best. The ships dumped their human cargo and sailed back to England with sealed orders for the Admiralty, regarding this and further trips. Charges were laid over the terrible conditions experienced during that second journey, and lessons were learned. Even at this time when life was cheap, this was still a horrifying thing, and sensibilities were rightly offended at such callously poor treatment, even if they were convicts.

On the return journey of this second fleet, the third was on its way. This arrived in 1791, and even though the death rate was nowhere near the 25% of that second fleet, the conditions were still draconian at best and the death rate was 10%. Phillips loss of his convicts at just under 3% was incredible by comparison, and was only approached towards the end of convict transportation in 1850.
Whole fleets full of convicts sailed regularly from England to all points of the colonies for the next sixty years. When this finally ceased in 1850, more than 162,000 convicts had been transported to the colony into virtually every State of Australia.

This highlights the first of three mind sets I want to bring to your attention. As is patently obvious, early Australia was based solely around the convicts. Nearly all of them stayed and settled upon release. Conceivably, a great proportion of Australians can trace heritage back to convicts sent out from England. Having this in your family background might seem like something that has to be hidden. In Australia, however, it is a badge of honour.
Great store is set if you can trace your family tree back and find that your forebears came here on a convict ship.
If your lineage can be traced back to that first fleet, that is considered of immense stature here in Australia.
It’s not looked upon as related to the criminal dregs of English society, but as the people who made Australia what it is today.
Those lists of convicts from the first three fleets are pored over for linking names these days, and the immense pride in being descended from a ‘First Fleeter’ is a badge of honour.

This photograph is of the ruins of part of the prison at Port Arthur, the site now on the National Trust of Buildings.

Photograph Ken Hawkey.

Click on the image to open a larger image

The second mind set is this.
As the colony slowly got onto its feet, those in control kept sending out expeditions of exploration, naturally, you might say, but those voyages up and down the Coast were to find more places to settle.
Each time a new place was found a settlement was raised, and here’s the mind set part of it. They were raised not as settlements, but as sites for prisons to house convicts. Newcastle, 100 or so miles to the North of Sydney Cove was the second settlement. Port Macquarie came next, and then others came into being as more convicts arrived. Eventually, Norfolk Island was closed down, in 1814, never having become fully self sufficient, and considered too far distant to support from the base of Sydney, ironic in that early on it was actually considered to move all the colony to the Island. Norfolk was reopened in 1824 to house the worst of the convicts in, numbering 1500 to 2000, providing, and I quote, “the harshest possible conditions short of death”. This became an infamous chapter in Australia’s history. Transportation of convicts to Norfolk Island ceased in 1852, the last being transferred from Port Arthur in Van Diemens Land for the last two years after the cessation of the ships from England, and the Island was then given over to survivors of the Bounty mutiny. Today, it is a highly popular tourist destination, and the remains of the prison are on the National Trust of protected historical buildings.

Prison colonies stretched the length and breadth of the now slowly expanding Country. To the South was the settlement at Port Phillip Bay, the site of Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city and the Capital of the State of Victoria. Further south was the colony at Port Arthur in Van Diemens land, now Tasmania, close to what is their State capital Hobart. To the north, the settlement was close to Brisbane, the capital of the State where I reside, Queensland.
There were further settlements in South Australia, near their State Capital Adelaide, and one away across in the west, close to Perth the capital of Western Australia.
So, every point on the compass here in Australia was built on the backs of those original convicts.

SOLAR POWER (Part 2)

This photograph shows part of the photovoltaic solar array at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the largest solar array in the US. It occupies 140 acres and has 70,000 panels. It was constructed by the SunPower Corporation, and produces a maximum rated 14 MW which is approximately 25 % of the power requirements for Nellis AFB.

Click on the photo for a larger image in a new window.

This photograph was taken by Senior Airman Larry E Reid Jr. as part of his official duties and is in the public domain.

Before we actually start with this I would like to point out that the cost of producing electricity using Solar energy is four to five times that of conventional coal. There are people who still scoff at this even after it has been explained to them because the perception is that sunlight is free, and because of that so should any power generated by using the light and heat of the Sun.
To offer a point of comparison, I’d like again to explain the cost of a large 2000MW baseload nuclear power plant. After planning and approvals, the day one cost as the first sod is turned might be around four and a half billion dollars, but the plant does not produce power for at least seven years, so at the going interest rate for the loan, the cost escalates by a further 225 million a year, hence by the time it comes on line feeding power into the grid and actually earning money, that original cost has blown out to almost six and a half billion dollars, so the expense is not due to the plant itself but because of the cost of money.
The same applies for solar power. There is a huge up front cost, again exacerbated by the cost of money.

So, the complexity and vagaries of each method of producing electrical power differ in ways not actually related to the process itself.

So even though you can lay on the beach, and be warmed (and even burned) by the Sun for no cost, it is entirely different when it comes to producing power from that same warming Sun.

Photovoltaic Solar Power.

I mentioned in the previous post about the solar panels on the roof of a house. This is the photovoltaic method of power production.
The light of the Sun shines on small cells. The cells are made typically of Silicon because of the number of free electrons in that atoms outer shell. The light makes those electrons move around faster thus generating electricity, and believe me, this is the simplified version for ease of understanding. Selenium is also used, as is Boron and Phosphorous. The atoms of each of these elements share electrons thus generating the electrical power. Small plates made from each of the elements are sandwiched together, with minute electrical wiring connections joining the plates. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of these cells are then connected together to form solar panels. The panels are encased to hold them together and covered with toughened glass on the front. When you look at the photograph of the house with the panels on the roof, you’ll see there are thirty of those panels typically sized approximately six feet by four feet.

Now you have some idea of the cost, taken up completely in the intricacy of their construction, and the time it takes to complete that construction and the materials involved and their conversion into the cells and then the panels.
That large household version in the photograph costs around $45,000 or so. It might supply your household power, but when the Sun goes down, the house needs to draw its electricity from the grid, as there is no way to store the Solar power generated in this manner.
The advantage of a large system like this is that during the day while the family is away at work and school and the Sun is shining, the generated power is being fed back into the grid, and as incentive, Governments offer attractive rebates for this, sometimes three times the cost BACK TO you as a consumer.
So, you use power during the day, some is fed to the grid, and you use power from the grid at night. Typical savings might amount to half your power bill, and with the rebate, that again takes some off the total. Assuming that you’re saving half, and getting the rebate, then the return might be as high as 80% of your yearly power bill. A typical household bill here in Australia might be $2500 per annum, averaged. I know that you in the US have typically higher charges for your power. The savings for that Australian family might be in the vicinity of $2000 per year. So, to recover the cost of the System $45,000, you’ll need to live at that house for 20 or so years, because you can’t take it with you if you move house.
Selling the house might attract a higher price because it has the system, but there is conjecture on that point, even though the system might make up as much as 10% of the cost of the house and land for the seller, but if he actually achieves the return for the system, it is again a matter unrelated to environmental concerns.

On the larger scale, you see the huge initial outlay for the panels, the infrastructure just to connect all those panels, together, to have them articulated so they track with the Sun for best effect. By their nature, they are exposed to the elements, hence rain and dust. If it rains then dust adheres to the glass. The glass covered panels have to be perfectly clean to operate at their optimum, so someone has to constantly clean the panels, sometimes up to 70,000 for a large array, adding to the ongoing cost for the manhours element. The power generated is DC so it all has to converted to AC for feeding into the grid, hence large inverters are needed with step up transformers as well.
Now you can see the cost mounting.
The huge initial outlay, and the resultant cost of money, the cost of the vast infrastructure, the ongoing costs now all add up, making solar power one of the most expensive forms of production.

However the big thing that scares owners of these power stations is that as soon as a cloud just scuds across the face of the Sun, production goes down by as much as 25 % immediately, and then takes time to build back up, so on cloudy days, power is minimal, and now you can see why this form of photovoltaic power cannot be used as constant, reliable set level baseload power.

This photograph is of part of the array at the Serpa Power Station in Portugal. It totals 52,000panel modules, and covers a hillside over an area of 150 acres. The panels were constructed by SunPower, Sanyo and Sharp, and track to follow the Sun. It produces a maximum of 11MW.

Click on the photo for a larger image in a new window.

This photograph was taken by Aurelio A Heckert and is a commons photograph in the public domain.

Having taken all those factors into account, there are still large power stations using this photovoltaic principle.
The US is the third largest user of this type of power on the Planet, so it’s not like the US is addicted to coal. There really are engineers out there doing this sort of work.
Germany and Japan lead the World in use of this form of power, and Spain is also a large user.

There are advances in this form of power production concentrating the voltage to heat oil which boils water to steam to drive a turbine.
In Australia, construction is underway to bring on line the largest photovoltaic power plant on Earth. It will produce a maximum of 154 MW and will supply up to 50,000 homes. It combines the solar panels in arrays, but uses heliostats also, tracking mirrors that follow the path of the Sun, and designed so that they concentrate light onto the panels vastly increasing power production from each panel. The cost is close to $450 million for a relatively small 154 MW maximum. (degraded because of the nature of its variability)

As more solar panels are constructed and then be used for arrays, the cost will become cheaper, but because of the variability of the light, then this form of power generation can really only make up a minor fraction of the overall pie chart, and if renewables can only make up 20% at best, then the Solar part of that shrinks somewhat.

If you follow some of the links, you’ll see from the maps that solar power might only be economically viable in that Sun belt, and in Southern States of the US and most probably those in the South West.

The problem however will always be the high cost of the manufacture of the panels, the infrastructure needed to connect them all, and the fact that the Sun sets every night for almost half the time that power is needed..
So, when environmentalists point to this as the way of the future, it will only ever be a small part of the solution.

The next post will detail the third part of the solar equation, that of Solar Thermal, which might be the most promising aspect of the whole Solar story.