Pissed on the Range

Just back from four days at Woomera and my liver is suffering from an excess of entertainment ..... but what can I say? Can you imagine anything more magnificent than sipping champagne at the bottom of the massive 6b ELDO launcher on the edge of a vast salt lake? Many thanks to Garry and Sheryn Clarke, and Ellen and Jeff Ingold, for their generous hospitality.

More about this soon if I don't get distracted by other work.

Woomera trip

Next week I'm going to Woomera, hoorah! Nights at the ELDO, days in the desert ..... actually I'm not doing fieldwork this time, just research. During my last visit, which was for a heritage consultancy, I had about half an hour in the new heritage centre. I was delighted with it, but also dismayed as I couldn't find anything about Indigenous people at Woomera. I later learned that anything non-rockety had been squirrelled away in the old Nurrungar room, and no-one mentioned that it was there!

My understanding, from talking to Geoff Speirs in the early day of the new design, was that these aspects of Woomera's history would be incorporated. The fact that they are not illustrates the very point I have been arguing in relation to understanding Woomera's significance as a space site (for example, in Gorman 2005, Journal of Social Archaeology).

I can feel a new paper coming on .....