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The starry sisters

Historically, women have always had a hard time breaking into science but two women, both sisters of astronomers but separated in time by 150 years, did manage it.

France’s lost opportunity

When Rose de Freycinet visited Sydney, and despite having been robbed almost as soon as she set foot in the town, she saw advantages in the British method of founding a colony.

Magnetic memories

In 2020 the Geological Survey of Australia’s Northern Territory had published a full-colour magnetic map of the whole of their area, with accompanying grids. For me, a trip into the days of my youth, because in mid-1964 I was party chief of a team flying part of a feature centred on Tennant Creek that had come to be known as the ‘Aeromagnetic Ridge’.

A colony of thieves

In the published French editions of Rose de Freycinet’s journal there is a gap between the arrival of the Uranie off the coast of New South Wales and the 27th of November, more than a week after she anchored in Neutral Bay. Was that week devoid of incident? Absolutely not.

Ayn and Meghan

In what is still known, with unintentional irony, as the United Kingdom, we are currently enjoying the spectacle of our royal family indulging in one of its recurrent orgies of self-destruction. What would Ayn Rand have thought?