Finding this lighthouse happened because I saw a picture of the coast, and I didn't know where it was, so I did some searching and found out where it was, and it turned out this stretch of coastline in New South Wales, Australia, also had a lighthouse.
And a blowhole.
The lighthouse is the Kiama Light, and here is an entire Web page about it from the Lighthouses of Australia Web site. It has a map, in case you don't know where halfway between Wollongong and Jervis Bay is.
The light was established in 1887, 10 years after the creation of the Robertson Basin, a manmade harbour to service Kiama's supply of crushed blue metal and paving blocks for the streets of Sydney.
The tower, built on Blowhole Point, is constructed of brick and rendered outside with concrete.
The foundation is concrete, 14 feet in depth and 12 feet in diameter; from the bottom of the foundation to the top of the entrance is 16 feet. The height of the building from the floor to the coping is 36 feet, to the light is 40 feet, and to the top of the weather vane is 50 feet.
The Web site has interior pictures; below are exterior pictures, including the blowhole.
You might possibly remember, if you read this blog assiduously (nobody does) that I had an article or two about the rare hatching of olms in Slovenia - olms being pink blind cave salamanders that are called "baby dragons" and which are quite rare, and therefore quite endangered, in this world of human dominance over nature.
Inspired by something that I now have forgotten -- it happens -- I suddenly found myself wondering what had happened to the baby olms, considering that the articles stated and repeated that baby olms are vulnerable. So I searched, found a couple of update articles a few months after the hatching, but finally found this:
“We now have 21 baby olms flourishing in our trays,” said Primoz Gnezda, a biologist working in Postojna Cave. “For the first time we have witnessed the hatching of proteus larvae – and, after one year, they are all healthy. And that gives us hope we can save our olms for the future.”
Yay!
The article goes into more detail, so I will leave it for you, dear reader, to find out more if you wish to do so. But it's good to know that the olms are doing well.
The Daily Mail (of course) had an article about a remarkable wedding dress that took 244 hours to make and which required more than 200 Swarovski crystals.
After all that effort, you'd think it would like something like a dress.
Actually, it looks like a bunch of white flowers glued to the body of the bride-to-be.
Now here's the strange part (as if the dress itself isn't strange enough). The model wearing it had it custom-made for herself -- but not to get married. She already is. She had it made to wear on New Year's Eve. She's pretty lucky she's Spanish and didn't wear it for a NYE wedding in NY, NY this year (like Maria Menounos did).
Certainly you want to know more about the model. Her name is Cristina Pedroche (Wikipedia), she got married in 2015, and apparently this is not the first time she's worn something like this on New Year's Eve. She's a TV presenter and model and does comedy, gleaned from a quick reading of her Wikipedia entry.
Now if you want to see more of the "dress", go the article. If you want to see more of Cristina, go below.
Khloë Terae (@khloe), a glamour model who's been in or on Playboy, Maxim, sixty6, and likely many other places; she was also Playboy's Cybergirl of the Year a couple of years back -- recently posed for a series of pictures in fancy dresses using Icelandic scenery as the backdrop.
My favorite of them is below, by the columnar basalt-flanked waterfall Svartifoss.
I am so happy that the Daily Mail provided an update on the reunion, however brief, of stunning fantastically gorgeous British actress Michelle Keegan, and her unfortunately remarkably good-looking husband Mark Wright, who has been doing a stint in the States on the reporting-on-entertainment show Extra!
Why did I say "unfortunately remarkably good-looking" husband? Because it shows that mere mortals can rarely aspire to participating in mating rituals with a goddess-level woman like Michelle. That appears to be reserved for rock stars, mega-athletes, and genetically blessed males like Mark.
Getting back to the story, basically, they partied on New Year's Eve, went to the gym the next day, and Michelle's butt still looks divine.
Just a few posts ago, I noted Dana Milbank's Washington Post column in which he indicated it would be a good thing if Mitt Romney ran for the Senate in Utah, provided Orrin Hatch decided not to see another term.
Hatch decided not to seek another term.
For which all of us on the progressive liberal Democratic side of the political spectrum -- the sane, rational, public-serving side of the political spectrum -- give thanks.
And Senator Hatch, I would like to thank you for your 40 years of public service in the Senate, despite the wide gulf between our political positions.
Having said that, the sooner you're the f*ck out of the Senate, the better off the country will be. As some pundits have noted, you actually were a decent public servant, until Donald Trump got elected. Then you've been ridiculous and pathetic stooge.
Good-bye, bon voyage, and the best view of you is your skinny backside headed back to Utah,
I was very surprised to find out, when I reviewed my lighthouse postings, that I had only featured two lighthouses from Sweden. Sweden has a lot of coastline, and thus it also has a lot of lighthouses. After taking a look at samples, I settled on Vinga -- which like the Donkin Reserve lighthouse in South Africa has a pyramidal structure next to it, and which like both the Robben Island and Galloo Island lighthouses, is on an island. (Those were the last three Lighthouses of the Week.)
What's that pyramidal structure? More on that later.
Vinga happens to be one of Sweden's more ancient and venerable lighthouses, as the excerpts below will attest. It's near Gothenburg (which the Swedes call Göteborg, but they prefer that English-speakers use the English name for the city).
"1890 (station established 1841). Active; focal plane 46 m (151 ft); two white flashes, separated by 7.5 s, every 30 s. 29 m (95 ft) square granite tower with lantern and gallery; original drum-style Fresnel lens in use. The lighthouse is unpainted stone; lantern dome is gray metallic."
And, importantly:
"Vinga is the traditional landfall light, not just for Gothenburg but for all of Sweden. Along with Skagen Fyr on the Danish side it marks the entrance to the Kattegat and the Baltic for ships arriving from the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean."
It also happens that the 95-foot stone tower is the third lighthouse on the island; the second one is a circular structure that is still there, with a radar antenna on top, but the lighthouse is inoperative. The first one is no longer there, but its foundations are.
This still does not explain the red pyramid with the sphere on top, I know. Well, it's simple, really; the pyramid with the sphere on top is a day beacon -- which is basically something you can see from the water during the day.
Because Vinga is special, below I have four pictures and a video with musical accompaniment. I accidentally organized the pictures with increasingly distant views.
