Hamilton’s grave – visualising places by geo-location

William Hamilton’s grave on BuckabieOriginally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

I recently travelled to the Adavale district of south-west Queensland to place a grave marker at the resting place of a pioneer. Boundary rider William Hamilton was buried where he died in the bush in 1910, and the location of his lonely, unmarked grave was known to just a few people.

Hamilton's grave on Buckabie

William Hamilton lies at rest on what was Milo Station near its boundary with Nickavilla Station, between Goombie Creek and Buckabie Creek.
My grandfather John and his business partner Ralph selected Buckabie Station by ballot when it was cut from Milo after the Great War in 1919, and my father Malcolm grew up on Buckabie after this time. Marking Hamilton’s grave fulfilled a long-term wish for my father.

Simon's Quilpie set on Flickr

A Flickr map of photos taken in southern Queensland, Australia

Flickr hosts my Quilpie photo album, displaying images from successive visits. I usually choose to display the place where each photo was captured, using Flickr’s ‘map’ tool, but the map does not have fine-grained control in regional areas. I wanted to display the locations in greater detail.

A screenshot of Hamilton's grave location in Google Earth

Lacking a GPS navigator, I located Quilpie in Google Earth and ‘followed’ the track 70km to Hamilton’s grave. Adding a placemark bookmarked the location for future reference, and also gave me the latitude and longitude reference – located in the ‘properties’ field of the placemark. However, not everyone can access Google Earth. This requires free software download and a reliable Internet connection – I needed a URL for this spot.

Hamilton's grave located in Google Maps

Google Maps let me link Hamilton’s grave location to a URL. Copying and pasting the Google Earth co-ordinates, I then added the URL to each Flickr photo in this place.

The Canaway Downs Rd turnoff on the Old Adavale Rd

The Canaway Downs Rd turnoff on the Old Adavale Rd

One disadvantage is that the photos do not show up in the Flickr map, but must be added separately as an approximate location. Google Earth and Google Maps, however, show signposts I’ve photographed that are visible in detail right down to their shadow along the ground.

Editing Hamilton's grave photos in Picasa

I thought that my students might like to see photos of how I built Hamilton’s cairn, so I edited and uploaded them to Youtube using the Picasa movie maker.

A video clip of Hamilton's grave pictures on Youtube

I added a caption to each photo which displays as the video clip plays, and selected an audio track to accompany the images after uploading.

Hamilton's grave video in the stonemasonry ning

Youtube allowed embedding the video in the stonemasonry Ning community website, however, as Youtube is blocked in the student network, I instead uploaded the movie file to Ning from my computer hard drive.

In turn, this also allows embedding to other websites. I guess that all this would have been easier using a SatNav? It was fun doing it, though.

Seven Things…

Skip Zalneratis tagged me for a meme that’s going around.

Here are seven things about me that would help my Personal Learning Network friends know me better: 

1. Simon is 186 cm long and 102kg wide.
2. Simon’s paternal grandfather was a woolclasser, operating a shearing contracting and woolclassing business (Brown & Brown) from South Australia to the Gulf, and later, a sheep and cattle grazier in south west Queensland. Simon was determined to leave school at age 15 to become a woolclasser like him, but instead carried on to finish high school and then learn stonemasonry.
3. Simon’s brother is also a TAFE teacher, who possibly inherited his passion for horticulture from their paternal great-grandfather Ambrose Neate 
4. Simon’s maternal great-grandfather was an engineer or “iron turner” from Scotland who emigrated to Maryborough with his parents in the 1860s. When he was picking up supplies at the wharf for his parents’ hotel, he met his future wife who has just arrived from Ireland. She was waiting for her brother who had instead gone to the goldfields. Simon’s mother encouraged him to join the local pipe band and carry on the Scottish tradition.
5. As pets, Simon prefers cats to dogs.
6. Janet and Simon were married in Wynnum by his uncle, a Uniting Church minister.
7. Simon’s parents passed to their children their loves of working hard, and reading books. His dad is a self-published author of two family history books, one of which is titled “A Strange and Distant Land : The Story of the Brown, Herdsman, Neate, Edwards, Giblett and Moss Families.”

 To continue the meme, I’m tagging:

1 @cdltoz

2 @siralmo

3 @loonyhiker

4 @timholt

5 @catspyjamasnz

6 @twocrowsdown

7 @marragem

To participate, each person that is tagged should list seven things about themselves that would help their Personal Learning Network get to know them a little better.

They should then link back to this post by leaving a comment here, which links forward to their own update.

(near to) Where I live

surf report from burleigh heads

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

This update is in response to Michelle Martin’s Bamboo Project Web2.0 Wednesday

I couldn’t resist walking on the beach when I visited Burleigh Heads after carrying out a skill assessment today. Although I had my swimming togs and a towel with me, I didn’t want to take time to get my work gear off and on again, so instead of swimming I just spent a few minutes watching the surfers ride the small but well-formed swell around the rocky point.

Burleigh Heads is at the Gold Coast (close to the New South Wales-Queensland border) about an hour’s pleasant drive south from where I live. Looking north, you can see the high-rise apartments of Surfers Paradise.