Where is this Pic taken ?

Jeez !
Thought it would take longer than that
Yep, that's correct
Have a great weekend

Seen a few around the country, but not this one
Got Me stumped

Rowdy - I couldn't tell you exactly, but the countryside says Northern Goldfields of W.A.

That is a stunning example of an intact 20 head stamp battery, and I'm amazed it hasn't been burnt down - as nearly all the abandoned batteries have, by gold thieves, who treat the ashes for gold (very profitably, usually).

A 20 head battery was rare when new, they were expensive to set up, and 5 and 10 head batteries were much more common.

That is truly a great example of early gold crushing processes that needs to be protected and preserved.

I've served my time in those old stamp batteries, overseeing crushings, and cleaning up the plates!
The brother and I delivered 13,000 tonnes of gold ore from the Fairplay Mine at Higginsville, to the 10 head Norseman State Battery between 1972 and 1981.

The noise was loud and constant, and the machinery drives were primitive and often dangerous.
We played with enough mercury to make any OH&S representative blanch today! And we did it with little protective equipment.

We used a mechanical scrubber to speed up the plate scrubbing when "cleaning up" - and one day, the SIL got her long hair caught in it, whilst using it!
She only avoided losing her entire scalp, by the brothers super-quick action, in switching the scrubber off instantly!

Dick Della was the manager of the Norseman battery, and he truly was the most honest battery manager I've ever encountered.

The usual feed method for the battery was dumping the ore on a flat plate in front of the boxes, and then shovelling the ore into the boxes!
We spoilt Dick and his employees by leaving a front end loader with him, to feed the battery from the big stockpile we built!
We would leave them enough ore for 6 to 8 weeks crushing, and then come back and cart some more, when the stockpile got low.

I guess it would be hard to find anyone alive today, who can actually run a stamp battery.

Cheers, Ron.

Agnew W.A ?

Spot on Flighty. Didn't take long.

Thanks for that info Ron. Very interesting.

Rowdy

Used to venture into the little pub there quite often on the journey home from Leinster.
Great little spot and often camped there, but never with a fire as it used to attract scorpions at night.
And they were quite big and prolific throughout that area back then.

Scorpions AND big centipedes roam everywhere at night in the semi-desert country.
One of the reasons why I won't ever camp on the ground. Some snakes are known to move around at night, too.

Got bitten by a scorpion on the instep in 'Nam, it hurt like hell, and I hobbled around for days afterwards.
We had camp stretchers in our tents in the Night Defensive Position in the jungle, and we always rolled our socks up, and plugged our boots with them - because the scorpions would roam around the tents at night.

But someone in the troop decided to adopt a little Noggie pup - and like all pups, he loved to play with boots.
So, during the night, he played with MY boots and pulled the socks out of them.

Getting up the morning, I was pissed off about having to find my stray boots and socks, and didn't even think about scorpions.
So I pulled my socks and boots on, and you guessed it, there was scorpion hiding in the instep of my boot! A hard lesson learnt.

Cheers, Ron.

"camp stretchers in our tents in the Night Defensive Position in the Jungle" ?
Pure Luxury :)
Dave.

Dave - Yep, the big advantage of being with the Engineers! Although it was our best NDP - some of the others weren't so flash!
We got sandbagged Armco culverts to sleep in then, if we were lucky! [:-)
Used to watch the poor old grunts go past our NDP, with their hootchies on their packs, and thank the Good Lord I didn't get allocated to Infantry!
They did bloody effective patrolling though, I got to hand it to them.
It also helped, having a couple of Centurions, and a handful of APC's gathered around us, on a regular basis! [:-)

Cheers, Ron.

"Used to watch the poor old grunts go past"
Thumb in bum,mind in neutral. Had a 25 set on my back.
Think I remember seeing you. :)
Dave.

Dave, it was NDP Helen, September to Christmas Eve 1970, we carved it out of the Jungle as we started Land Clearing ops, and it later became FSB Helen.
107 Field were there with us, and then they used it again, for a period throughout early '71.

After Christmas, we moved to NDP Garth (later, that became FSB Garth), right up on the Long Khanh border.

This old grunt (below) has a good website - for an old grunt, he writes pretty well! [;-)
He used to have a free blog called veteransmissout.blogspot.com, but he's since locked it up, and made it in to an Ebook called "Fun Fear and Frivolity", that you have to email him, to get permission to access it. It's worth it.

Cav's Blog

Cheers, Ron.

Nup -Pick this Place is good but Friday Funnies are almost a sacred institution. Where else are we going to get the wisdom of Bill J, Tony H, Bushie, Billbuzz and the others who I can't remember.
b1b

Maybe we can have both. Do Pick This Place on a Monday, That way it can run through the week. If it takes that long for someone to get it.
& save Friday Funnies for Friday.
Paul

There is room for both

I agree, it's a great idea and there's room for both.

looks a bit like the top of Mt Wellington in Tasmania that over looks Hobart

Sorry Garry. Not a winner

Is it Porongurup Nat Park WA ?

Maybe Top of Mt Buffalo Vic ?

It's in southern NSW between Albury and Wagga...........

just looked at the map for your pic as you stated between Wagga and Albury.
The only feature I can find that could be a reference to your pic is at the The Rock Nature Reserve just outside the town of The Rock, sth west of Wagga. I shall be up that way next February and will stop on my way past and have a look. Is this the right reference Micheal O. A quick return trip up to Bathurst and back at the end of Jan /Feb

Not The Rock either Garry...

It's an old bushranger haunt west of the town of Culcairn.

.
We need an answer before "February" Garry. lol

So ..... Morgans Lookout eh !!

Well done with the eagle eye view.

Cheers
Jim

Take a prize Jim.

Wish I knew how to set it as a "place" so Michelle doesn't chase me with a big stick...

Your wish is my command Michael - here are the two screen shots showing how it's done. Firstly, when you post a photo into the Forum (or Blogs or Places) you will see a very faint icon above it - with a pen - this is the EDIT button. Click this from your photo shown in your Forum post and this is what comes up:-



As you can see, this is a simple pop-up box - click the blue ADVANCED tab and this show the TAG section. To tag a photo to a Place just do as I've done in the example and start typing the name of the Place - I started to write "Morgan's" and up comes a list of known Places with that name - if you get too specific you might miss the auto-match, so just type one letter at a time and check the list until you see it.

To tag to an existing Place you must select one that appears. If you select one and its wrong you can also just delete the tag and the pic will remove from that Place (delete using the red x in the tag that will appear).

As you can see, further down in the Advanced section there is also an option to Tag to coordinates (lat/long). HOpe this helps.

Hi Michelle
If we tag them correctly when uploading for Pick This Place it would give the answer away.
Is there a way around this ?
Paul

Hi Paul, no. Tagging a photo in the Forum to a Place will only copy that image into that Place. If you look above at Michael's photo I have now tagged it to Morgan's Lookout.

It’s in Western Australia.

Eastern Goldfields?

Almost, Peter.

Half way there between Nungarin and Westonia.

It used to be a town called Chandler.

Chandler WA

Some fascinating places out in WA’s wheatbelt.

G.B. - Well done! I never even knew of the existence of this Alunite mine, even though I thought I knew of just about every old mine in W.A..

This was Chandler in its heyday.

Chandler Alunite Mine

Cheers, Ron.

Those photos in your linked article are fantastic.

Thanks Ron.

Some more pictures & info in my Blog:
My Wheatbelt Trip part 3

There's a good 1946 article about the Chandler potash mining operation, from the "West Australian", in the link below.

The concrete supports in Gone Bush's photo were the supports for a very large and long rotary kiln, that dried the alunite clay.

Interestingly, another company is currently talking about reviving the Chandler potash mining, such is the world demand for potash, still.

Chandler Potash mining

Cheers, Ron.

From two of the replies above:

'This was Chandler in its heyday.'
'It used to be a town called Chandler.'

They are Chandler photos, but from the wrong State. The Oodnadatta Track is a long way from Merredin.

Good competition though.

Banjo - I don't know who did the Chandler place links to photos, but it wasn't me.

One has to be exceptionally careful with place name/locations - there are often multiple places in Australia with the exact same name.

Then there's the place name similarity problems on top of that, too!

Used to have enormous problems ordering parts over the phone, and then having them delivered to some place with a similar name, a couple of thousand kms away!

Cheers, Ron.

I see the link you are referring to and the EO “system” put it there automatically.

Ron, I understand what you're saying.

Had trouble once finding an address, when I rang and checked the correct place was in Sth Australia, a long way from WA.

Paul

Banjo, I live in a Perth inner-city older suburb, with a name that is also repeated in numerous other States (and California and the U.K. as well!) - and I sell a few items on Gumtree, occasionally.

You would not believe, the number of people I get contacting me from other States, wanting to pop over and look at the item, thinking it's just down the road from them!

They look at the suburb name on Gumtree, and fail to check which State it's in!

Cheers, Ron.

O.K., after a quick email chat with Michelle, it appears the programme coding just picks up the place name that you type in, and links to the first place name in the places database.

So it's not something we, as forum users, can fix or change, it's in the coding of the website programme, so it would appear it would need some major recoding work to enlarge the programme to differentiate between different places.

There are 10 locations in the database, with Chandler in the name - Chandler Valley, Chandler Range, Chandler Peak, Chandler Creek, etc, etc - but even if you type in any of these places, the programming only picks up "Chandler", and then links to Chandler, S.A.

Cheers, Ron.

To add to the confusion, type Chandler into Google maps and you only get the Brisbane suburb. I had to ad the WA to get it go to Chandler WA.

The Gazetteer of Australia Place Name Search only acknowledges the Brisbane suburb, a homestead and a parish in NSW and a locality and parish in WA. It does however list Chandler Siding in SA. Maybe Michelle could correct that.

Damn!

I couldn't win an argument if I was the only one talking and you've just taken my edge on winning these contests...

Thanks!

Cheer

Anthony