Good afternoon,
List members may be interested in this account of how some boundary-riders
in Queensland kept time in the early 1900s:
"Many boundary-riders do not even possess a watch, their only timekeepers
being the sun and the stars. Some judge by the shadows. I saw one who had
pegs stuck in the ground, at a radius of 10ft, all round a tree. There were
ten of them standing exactly one hour apart, so that the shade, lying across
the first at 8 a.m., would be on the last at 5 p.m. A swagman with a watch
had camped with him one Sunday, and between then they had constructed this
crude sun-dial. Once when passing a camp, I asked the boundary-ride the
time, and was amused at the manner in which he obtained it. Taking a small
twig, he broke it into two pieces about 3in long, and, holding his left hand
palm upwards, he stood one piece between the second and third fingers, and
the other between the third and fourth. Then, facing due north, he held his
hand straight out before him and I noticed that the shadows of the twigs
were just a trifle east of a direct north and south line '"Bout, 'alf-parst
twelve," he said. "
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71523046
A boundary rider was a station employee who lived far from the homestead,
and whose job it was to ride along fences to check for breaks in the wire,
etc.
Of course, telling the time with the 10-foot radius circle using the shadow
of a tree would be "as rough as guts" (in the Australian vernacular), but it
probably made little difference to the boundary rider. However, at least
some early outback Australians understood the geometry of sundials. See my
description of a dial made out of galvanised iron:
Pickard, J. (1998). A 19th century vernacular horizontal sundial from
outback Australia. British Sundial Society Bulletin 98(1): 26-29.
Personally, I prefer using CIA-time via my GPSs. Not as much fun, but way
more accurate.
Cheers, John
John Pickard
john.pick...@bigpond.com
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