Those who get to Australia first may notice certain lack of creativity in how Australians give names to streets, roads and other geographical objects. Similar names happen quite often, but, from the other side, this is not uncommon at all - I can remember Finland with their Kirkkokatu or Linnankatu in every small town, but Australia seems especially passionate about a few historical names. That is, Macquarie street is found in almost all Sydney’s suburbs, not mentioning famous Mrs Macquarie chair (remember spectacular Sydney’s NY fireworks photos?) and Macquarie Uni. And this is understandable - he happened to be the first Grosvenor of the colony and with no doubts should be threated with all possible respect. Names of other political persons as Banks, Hume, and, of course, Her Majesty are not less popular. Surprisingly, name of capt. La Perouse whose main achievement was arriving a few weeks after capt Cook is remembered more often than a Cook’s name itself. But I wanted to tell about other person from Australia’s history who’s now even got a whole national park named after him.
Even judging in Australia’s distances, Ben Boyd national park is situated quite far, on very south of New South Wales, near Eden. Ben Boyd was businessman and, arrived among first settlers, did not lose a minute and started investing in Australia straight away. Old Ben has chosen that place for headquarter of his financial empire and some time later a town named “Boydtown” appeared there. Imagine if modern Redmond was called Gatesville, that’s exactly what happened.
Anyway, I was not going to impress readers with expatiations about what if grandma was grandpa. As you can see from picture above, there might be something quite impressive without my speculations. Ben Boyd decided to build that tower (of course, it is now called “Ben Boyd tower”) and use it as a lighthouse, but officials did not allow them to operate private lighthouse, which did not seem to frustrate him - he quickly converted it into whale watching station. Unfortunately, it was far less environmentally friendly activity these days which had nothing to do with modern whale watching tours - Eden and surroundings were a whaling center then and even now, after total ban of whaling, Eden still bears a stamp of whaling economy and anyone interested can visit Museum of whaling there.
Regardless what we thing about that kind of business now, it was pretty profitable venture. The tower brought a huge handicap to Boyds’ whalers - in trade of that kind fist to spot a whale was likely one who wins the prize and there could not be better place to observe the sea than that tower so conveniently located at the edge of high cliff
Construction of the tower itself is not less interesting. Old Ben obviously decided to build monument for himself, otherwise it would be hard to explain why he spent so much money on it. The tower is built from sandstone blocks that were delivered from Sydney - if Boyd was building it today, he probably would have to hire (better buy) a couple of cargo jets and use them to ship natural stone from Italy, not mentioned that the tower project should be modified to achieve total height of something around six hundred meters to make it not less impressive than existing tower looked these days
But we can only guess what Ben Boyd was really up to when he was building this piece of middle-age Europe here, in the middle of nowhere. I think he might have wanted to build his own financial empire, retire young and rich and spend his evenings on the top of the tower with a cup of tea accomplished with a million dollar view.
And this is awesome. I know that it is very hard to understand what it really is from the picture but you must trast me that it was not easier there
This rock exposes a its internal structure which was screwed, crashed, pressed and then folded millions years ago resulting in this spectacular snail-like figure./p>
The park itself is quite large. So its residents
Despite its nearly-dinosaur size, this lizard is quite shy and tried to hide in the bush as we tried to approach.
Green Cape walk, anyone?
To be continued…
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