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.