Willy-willy weather

 

Willy-willy weather is here!

For those not familiar with the Australian vernacular, a willy-willy is a dust devil or small whirlwind. The word itself is an adoption from the Yindjibarndi/ Wemba-Wemba language/s. I've used it ever since I read the Silver Brumby books as a child and like most common words, my understanding of its history and original usage is sadly lacking.

A willy-willy can be small, they're often seen in urban environments where two opposing breezes meet on a street corner. They can also be quite large though I've never encountered the term being used for a Category Anything Tornado.  In Australia they can be responsible for a significant amount of sediment transport and do contribute to topsoil erosion. Areas with limited vegetation coverage, such as this recently bulldozed track, can be especially vulnerable. Sand dunes, with their well sorted and graded particles are also quite susceptible to erosion by willy-willy. The seasonable nature of these natural features should be considered when planning any earth moving activities such as rehabilitation.

Rig cookery - the humble hole plug

This blog was called Rocks and Rocksalt because my partner in crime is supposed to provide foodie reviews while I manage the rock reviews when we travel. One half of this partnership isn't pulling their weight, blog-wise. :)

Instead I present a new topic - FIFO cookery.

If you've ever worked FIFO (fly-in-fly-out) you'll understand how big an impact food can have on your life. If you are lucky, you're in a small camp with a chef who cares enough to create a varied diet on a regular basis. It seems that the larger the camp gets, the less flexibility there is. This is the case with my camp. The same provider runs all of the camps in the Pilbara and offers the same meals to everyone. The menu for dinner is highly varied (i.e. they rotate between 6 ways of serving potatoes and do try to offer at least one green vegetable each night).

The menu for lunch however, is dismal. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of selection in the bain-marie's however it's the same, unchanging options day in day out. The cooks do try to vary the 'salads' however they always boil down to the same four selections - the Chef's special (which can be assembled from the ingredients in the other bain-maries quite easily), the oil salad, the mayonnaise salad and the inappropriate meat salad (i.e. tuna or bacon added where it isn't required). Recently we've been offered a 'special' option every second day which was often a DIY noodlebox sort of thing. Unfortunately, after about a month, this morphed into pre-packaged ham and cheese sandwiches. Not very inspiring, especially on week two of your swing.

To combat this, many people bring up their own food or have come up with a variety of ways to combine the ingredients offered to create an array of taste sensations. I'll be posting recipes and instructions at least once a month. They will assume you have access the basic ingredients and will highlight any additional item you may need to bring in from the city. Additional items will be limited because the Authors don't believe in (read: are poor at) planning ahead. I'll also break down the recipes into two categories - indoor and outdoor. Indoor will assume you have access to hotwater, ice and a sandwich press.

Outdoor cooking may require some inventiveness on your behalf. I believe people used to heat pies on the elements of lighting plants but this is a safety risk and I do not suggest this method at all. Instead, I highly recommend the use of the humble hole plug. This black container is typically wedged in the top of a drill hole upon completion and should be readily available from your drilling laydown. When sealed and left on the dash of your car in full Pilbara sun, this black-plastic wonder can reach temperatures in excess of 50 degrees (I'll science that up for you in a later post). Better yet, the hole-plug used for 140mm RC holes, can hold a standard round plastic lunch container quite easily. I highly recommend it for all your warming, baking and braising needs.

Set and forget cooking with RC hole-plugs.

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Dusty dendrites

Pseudo-dendrites formed in iron rich dust.

This pseudo-dendrite has formed from a combination of water precipitation and very fine dust. During an outback drive, the morning mist has precipitated and dripped on the slightly rounded black plastic surface. The continued movement of the car has shaken another few drips loose and kicked up sufficient fine dust to stick to the water trails. Lighter trails indicate areas which were wet longer and able to trap a thicker dust layer.
Interestingly, the water trails only diverge and never appear to merge. My current hypothesis is that the water trails were pushing tiny iron rich dust particles in front and to the sides of them. When being transported, these would rotate to align with the earths magnetic field but as they dried, this ability would be reduced. A cross section of a dried trail would look a lot like a brontosaurus, thin and pointy at both ends and much thicker in the middle. Not only would this present too sharp an incline compared to the black plastic surface, the dust would have a very minor magnetic field which would contribute to guiding the actively moving droplet away.

Mafic dykes cross cut a granite

Mafic (basalt) dykes cross cut thegranite of the Burnside Batholith at Lowlands Beach.

I was very taken with the two planes of weakness highlighted here by right angled jogs in the intruding dyke. The locations where the dykes, which are around 25cm wide, pinch out and step across suggest to me a more sheared or rotational strain field.