Location: Australia

This is me, looking a little haggered for some reason. Behind me is the Jameison valley of the Blue Mountains area. The blue for which the area was named is clearly visible in the distance. It's an effect called Rayleigh scatter, which you may recall from high school physics. The sunlight is actually bent by droplets of oil suspended in the air. Since short blue light waves bend best, you see more blue than anything else. The oil droplets come from the eucalyptus and other native trees. As I'm sure you can imagine, this makes for an excellent fuel, and forest fires taken on an incindiary effect around the area. The mountains are not really mountains, just a rugged upland that was thrust upward over the last geologic age. As the land came up, the rivers continued to cut into it, resulting in a series of gorges from which there was no way up for the early settlers. It took thirty years of constant attempts by the white settlers before a path through the region was discovered. The need was great; there was no fertile land to the east of the 'mountains', but that's where they'd dumped the colony! Now you've learned everything I know about the area. Please send comments to m.werneburg@NOSPAMetherlabs.net if you spot errors!

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