Gday...

1841  -     Eyre's sole surviving companion, Wylie the Aborigine, gorges himself on a penguin and most of a kangaroo. 

Edward John Eyre was the first white man to cross southern Australia from Adelaide to the west, travelling across the Nullarbor Plain to King George's Sound, now called Albany. Eyre originally intended to cross the continent from south to north, taking with him his overseer, John Baxter, and three Aborigines. He was forced to revise his plans when his way became blocked by the numerous saltpans of South Australia, leading him to believe that a gigantic inland sea in the shape of a horseshoe prevented access to the north.

Following this fruitless attempt, Eyre regrouped at Streaky Bay on the west coast of the Eyre Peninsula. He then continued west, which had never before been attempted, in a gruelling journey across the Nullarbor, during which his party faced starvation and thirst. Eyre's overseer, Baxter, was killed on the night of 29 April 1841, as he tried to stop two of the expedition's Aborigines from raiding the meagre supplies. After Baxter died, Eyre was left with just one loyal companion, the Aborigine Wylie. The two continued on, trying to outrun the Aborigines whilst susbsisting on very few rations.

On 18 May 1841, Eyre and Wylie found that the hard, porous limestone gave way to land that was more promising by the beach, with grass for the horses and an abundance of food for the men. Eyre wrote in his journal that Wylie ate:

"... the entrails, paunch, liver, lights, tail and two hind legs of [a] young kangaroo, next followed a penguin that he found dead upon the beach, upon this he forced down the whole of the hide of the kangaroo after singeing the hair off, and wound up this meal by swallowing the tough skin of the penguin ..." Eyre and Wylie rested at this place, Point Malcolm, for another week before continuing their journey westwards.

1854  -     Australia's first horse-drawn railway line commences operations in South Australia.

Victoria is generally accepted as the first place in Australia to have had a completed railway line. The first steam train in Australia made its maiden voyage on 12 September 1854, running between Flinders Street and Sandridge, now Port Melbourne. However, the first railway ever to run in Australia was actually in South Australia.

South Australia was one of only two Australian states to have been founded by free settlers (the other being Western Australia), and the only state that remained entirely free of convicts during its early history. Its capital city, Adelaide, was designed by Colonel William Light, who arrived in South Australia in 1836.

The southern colony quickly grew, fed by immigrants and free settlers in search of a better life or escaping religious persecution. South Australia was known for a number of "firsts". It was the site where Australia's first paddlesteamer was launched. It was the site from which both the first east to west crossing and successful south to north crossing of the continent was undertaken. It was also the first colony to implement a railway.

South Australia began operations of horse-drawn trains on 18 May 1854. The line ran from Goolwa, on the Murray River, to the harbour at Port Elliot, and was used to move supplies between craft navigating the Murray River, and coastal and ocean-going vessels. After numerous vessels were shipwrecked at the entrance to the bay, the terminus was moved from Port Elliot and the line extended to Victor Harbor, in 1864.

1910  -     Halley's comet passes in front of the sun in a spectacular light show. 

Halley's Comet, officially designated 1P/Halley, is from the Kuiper belt and visits the inner solar system in a 76-year orbit. Its nucleus is potato-shaped, with dimensions around 8 by 8 by 16 kilometres. Its surface is composed largely of carbon, and other elements include water, carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, other hydrocarbons, iron, and sodium.

When Halley's Comet returned in May 1910, its appearance was notable for several reasons: it was the first approach of which photographs exist, and the comet made a relatively close approach, making it a spectacular sight. On 18 May 1910, the comet transited, or appeared to move across the face of the Sun's disc, and the Earth actually passed through its tail. At the time, the comet's tail was known to contain poisonous cyanogen gas. The media picked up this fact and, despite the pleas of astronomers, wove sensational tales of mass cyanide poisoning engulfing the planet. In reality, the gas is so diffuse that the world suffered no ill-effects from the passage through the tail.

The May 1910 appearance of Halley's Comet is not to be confused with the Great Daylight Comet of 1910, which surpassed Halley in brilliance and was actually visible in broad daylight for a short time, about four months before Halley returned.

1980  -     Mount St Helens, Washington state, USA, erupts in spectacular fashion.

Mount St Helens is an active volcano in Skamania County, Washington, located 154 km south of Seattle and 85 km northeast of Portland, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. After having been dormant for 123 years, Mt St Helens erupted on 18 May 1980 with an blast estimated to have been 500 times as powerful as that caused by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in WWII. 57 people were killed, and 65,000 hectares (or 160,000 acres) of forest obliterated. The lateral blast stripped trees from mountain slopes within ten kilometres of the volcano and levelled nearly all vegetation for as far as 18 km away. 250 homes, 47 bridges, 24 km of railways and 300 km of highway were destroyed. The northern face of the volcano was engulfed in a massive rockslide and its summit reduced from 2,950 m to 2,550m, completely altering the landscape of the mountain.

Since 1980, Mount St Helens has continued to exhibit regular activity, with a new lava dome forming in the crater. Included in the new dome is a fascinating geological feature nicknamed 'whaleback', due to its close resemblance to the back of a whale. This rock, which continues to grow, is a long shaft of solidified magma being exuded by pressure of magma underneath it.

Cheers - John