It’s commonly quoted as fact that in nature, no food or vegetable is naturally blue.

This information was again disputed recently by the re-introduction of blue Smarties¹, this time using 100% natural seaweed extract to create the blue colour.

Additional support for the “blue-in-nature” brigade comes in the form of blue trees spotted on Google Earth. Firstly, in Australia’s Mount Annan Botanic Garden there’s a strikingly-blue tree.

The Garden’s website explains that the tree has been dead for many years, but is home to various types of termites and slaters.

So, it’s the termites that make the tree blue? Well, no. Further investigation reveals that the tree was in actual fact painted blue. For no particular reason.

Perhaps we’ll have better luck with this blurry shot of a blue tree in Northern California.

Unfortunately, this isn’t natural either. It’s the work of artist Claude Cormier, who decorated a perfectly normal tree with 70,000 blue Christmas baubles. Again, for no particular reason it would seem.

So perhaps natural blue is restricted to seaweed after all!

See a ground level pictures of the Australian tree and the American one on Flickr.

Thanks to Felippo, Logan and James.

Here in New South Wales, one of the most popular sights are the famous Three Sisters - three spectacular rock pinnacles which tower over the Jamison Valley in the Blue Mountains.

The rock spires are named Meehni (922 m), Wimlah (918 m), and Gunnedoo (906 m) and the view of them from the nearby observation platform at Echo Point is pretty dramatic. Apparently there’s a metal staircase here that leads down to the valley which is made up of 1,000 individual steps.¹

The Blue Mountains aren’t actually a range of mountains, but rather a vast plateau - with cliffs up to 760 metres high. There is truth in the “blue” part though - when viewed from a distance, the valley seems filled with an eerie blue haze that can also be seen in photos.

It’s widely believed that the blue colour has something-or-other to do with evaporating oil from the Eucalyptus trees that swamp the valleys, but in fact the hue is down to a process known as Mie Scattering which occurs when UV radiation is scattered by atmospheric particles.²

Read more about The Three Sisters, Jamison Valley, the Blue Mountains and Katoomba Scenic Railway at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Mr. Stokes and Glenn Baker.

The town of Holbrook, Australia, is notable as home to the only set of traffic lights between Sydney and Melbourne. Slightly more interesting though is that here, 160 miles inland we can plainly see a full-size submarine.

Originally this place was known as Germantown (a name that didn’t sit too well during WWI), so they chose the new name to honour Lieutenant Norman Douglas Holbrook, a British submarine captain who had been awarded the highest military decoration, the Victoria Cross.

80 years later the town was gifted the stern section of the HMAS Otway, an ex-Royal Australian Navy submarine. Despite Lt. Holbrook not having had anything to do with this particular submarine, the residents had by now fallen in love with all things submarine, and subsequently tried to raise funds to purchase the rest of the decommissioned vessel.

Unfortunately, even with a large donation from Holbrook’s widow, they only raised enough cash to purchase the top half, which is what we see protruding from the ground here.

Read more on the sub over at Wikipedia and see ground level pictures on Flickr.

Thanks to Simon Burgess.

A geologist with the Geological Survey of Western Australia, Dr. Arthur Hickman, was using Google Earth to look for iron ore when he noticed an unusually circular structure within the landscape. After a visit by a colleague this huge dent was confirmed to be a previously undiscovered meteorite crater!

This particularly well preserved crater is some 270 metres across, and despite Mr Hickman’s employers having mapped the area around 20 years ago, until this point had been completely overlooked. Not surprising then that it was named “The Hickman Crater“.

Which all goes to show that there really are still things to be discovered out there, and all you have to do is start exploring in Google Earth! Just make sure you pay close attention to any unusual landforms…

Read the whole story at theage.com.au.

Thanks to Peter.

On 17th January, 2007, a freight train from Brisbane to Melbourne derailed in Sydney, Australia. Four days later, the crane that was being used to recover the train also toppled over! The crane fell onto one of the workers who, despite having to be hospitalised, thankfully only received minor injuries.

The 34m crane can be seen lying behind some houses which seem to have had quite a lucky escape! The train was put back onto the tracks and moved away, and eventually the crane was also removed for repair, presumably by another crane…

Exhaustive ground level pictures of the train and crane are available at railstore.net - and they’re definitely for real, as opposed to the infamous ‘toppling crane’ sequence that frequently circles the web!

Thanks to POD.

Despite being widely touted as the longest trains in the world, the up-to 2.5 kilometre-long freight trains which bring iron ore to Nouadhibou, Mauritania may not be particularly unique in their length.

On the day these images were captured, the longest train we can see at Nouadhibou (as measured with Google Earth’s measuring tool) is approximately 1.97km long.

In the past we’ve seen some other extremely long trains, like these 2.2 kilometre-plus coal trains in Wyoming, and over in Pennsylvania there’s a freight train which measures 2.98km from one end to the other - a whole kilometre longer than those in Mauritania.

However, all these trains could have been put to shame by the locomotives of Port Hedland, Western Australia - if only there had been any really long ones around when these images were taken.

Sadly, the longest I could find here was a distinctly average 2.2km, which falls far short of their longest ever, which purportedly consisted of 8 engines, 682 cars and totalled a staggering 7.3km - which quite probably would have made it the longest train of all time.

So, has anyone got a longer one to show us?

For more like this, see our posts on Incredibly Long Trains and Bailey Yard. Thanks to Helge Fahrnberger, Romke Soldaat and the Keyhole users.

This is Hamelin Pool in Shark Bay, Western Australia, and in our thumbnail you can see the kite-shaped observation jetty where visitors can observe some of the world’s oldest creatures - Stromatolites.

Looking for all the world like rocks which have grown into bizarre shapes, Stromatolites are believed to have been formed by the “trapping, binding, and cementation of sedimentary grains by microorganisms, especially Cyanobacteria“, and have existed on Earth for 3.4 billion years.

Don’t be mistaken though - these aren’t fossils. This is one of only a few places in the world where living marine Stromatolites can be found, which themselves are over 3000 years old.

Which makes these the world’s oldest living creatures too.

Thanks to Stephen Jackson. Read more about Hamelin Pool and Stromatolites at Wikipedia.

Welcome to day two of Google Sightseeing Reader Takeover Week! Every day this week, one of you has been chosen to have their very own sight posted here on GSS, while Alex and James take a well deserved holiday. Today’s sight is from Keir Clarke from the Virtual Tourism Blog!

Just off the beach in North Sydney, Australia, two unsuspecting surfers happily ride the waves, blithely unaware that just metres away, and heading straight towards them, is a deadly shark.

At least that is what The Daily Telegraph would have you believe. They are reporting that the shape towards the top right of this Google Map photo, part of the high definition addition from Google’s Austalia Day flyover, is a shark basking in the sunlight.

Unfortunately for The Telegraph, but luckily for the surfers, this is no shark but our old friend the ghost image. Look closely and you’ll see the shark is in fact quite clearly just a ghost of the bottom surfer rotated through 200 degrees.