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The Peasant BODO

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 ' The Peasant BODO' is found in historian Eileen Power's popular Medieval People , an early social history text that went through ten editions from 1924 to 1963. The frontispiece of my copy (1999, The Folio Society, London) appropriately includes a quote from the Venerable Bede, the first truly English historian, who finished writing his epic five volume Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum  in 731 AD. In this extract, the monk notes the essential unfairness of making a record of past people and events : "Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us ...  There be of them that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.  And some there be which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them."                                  ...
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Mining Licences for Mineral Sands

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Controversy has surrounded the investigation and eventual approval of three new mining projects in north-western Victoria. The prospect of significant disruption to cereal and oilseed cropping programs in fertile regions of the state has alarmed local farmers. Much of this protest is the prompted by self-interest, but it does no harm to the rest of us to take a closer look at the facts on the ground. This gives a broad impression of the deposits of rare earths and critical minerals that have been identified by exploratory drilling and survey. Only a portion of these areas have actually been selected under Retention Licence, which allows further specific and protected examination of sites by a mining company. And only a small fraction of these RLs have been granted an actual Mining Licence, committing each mining company to develop a mine and extract resource. GOSCHEN This map reveals the decreasing areas of land involved in the process of identifying, investigating and, finally, develo...
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Gold Rush Impressions: Ararat, Ballarat, Castlemaine, Bendigo

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R. Brough Smyth, Secretary of the Colony of Victoria's Mines Department, first 'recommended that a competent officer be employed to construct a sketch map of the Cape Patterson coalfield' in South Gippsland ... 'Ferdinand Krause (1841-1918), Mining Surveyor, Ararat Division, was appointed to this task in December 1871 and in the next year continued with the Otway region and then commenced mapping the Ararat goldfield. Reginald Murray, now a mining surveyor, was instructed to survey the Sandhurst goldfield and followed on with Ballarat ... these officers were engaged fulltime in geological surveying, and late in 1873 Smyth was able to appoint Norman Taylor as a third geological surveyor.' (i) ARARAT GOLD FIELD (ii)  BALLARAT GOLD FIELD (ii)  CASTLEMAINE GOLD FIELD (iv)  BENDIGO GOLD FIELD
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THE DESTROYER

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In considering the cause of particular wars (or causes of war in general) the available options can probably be distilled down to three ― Man, Machine, Moment. The decision to go to war (or stumble into it) usually involves a madman with grandiose ideas, or the arrival of a military weapon that changes the odds of winning, or the emergence of an obvious power imbalance between populations, (and most likely, elements of all three). As the historian Geoffrey Blainey has noted, the actual ignition of conflict requires someone, somewhere, to think they hold the advantage in one of these areas, sufficient to get away with aggression and be victorious, and BIFFO! its on. Such was the case in 1453 with the Sultan Mehmet II, Conqueror of Constantinople, and his super cannon Basilik . 1.  The Madman Alexander Christie-Millar, 2024, To the City: Life and Death Along the Ancient Walls of Istanbul , William Collins, London, p. 43, 49-50       "On that winter's day in Edirne, the...
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