This is the second in an occasional series where we’ll be travelling to some of the world’s most interesting abandoned places.

Fuelled by the ancient myth of the lost continent of Atlantis, underwater cities have always been the subject of much fascination.

Of course in real life small towns and villages are sometimes subsumed beneath changing bodies of water, but somewhat surprisingly, Google’s imagery has managed to capture at least three underwater towns which were all handily above water at the time.¹

St. Thomas, Nevada

Back in 1871, the small town of St. Thomas, Nevada (Wikipedia) was first abandoned by the Mormons, after a shift in the state line severely altered their tax liability.

The people who claimed the empty properties would eventually be forced to leave themselves, thanks to the construction of the Hoover Dam and the creation of Lake Mead, which even today is the largest man-made lake and reservoir in the United States.

The Hoover Dam was completed in 1935, and just three years later the last resident of St. Thomas was forced to leave by the rising waters of Lake Mead. Here we can still see the outline of the town’s school, which like several other properties becomes visible when the reservoir is low.

Adaminaby, Australia

Adaminaby (Wikipedia) is a town near Australia’s Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, which has the distinction of being one of the highest towns in Australia², and a very popular place from which to take fishing trips to nearby Lake Eucumbene.

On Street View we can see The Big Trout that graces the town centre in recognition of fishing’s importance here.

This is strange though, as it was the creation of Lake Eucumbene that forced all of the residents to have to abandon the original town…

In April 2007 the ongoing drought³ in this region brought the water level so low that Old Adaminaby began to re-appear, 50 years after it had been flooded as part of the Snowy Mountains Scheme hydro-electricity project.

Unfortunately the structures themselves are only faintly visible from up here, but elsewhere on the shores are other more prominent ruins that are also becoming exposed.

(Try turning on the photos option on Google Maps to see lots of great ground-level photos from the Panaramio Google Earth layer.)

Epecuén, Argentina

In contrast to these tales of towns being submerged in the name of progress, sometimes nature just takes its course. From about 1920 the water level of Argentina’s lake Epecuén rose steadily, and in 1978 the locals put earth and stone defences in place to try and protect their village.

These defences held back the water until November 10th 1985, when it finally broke through and flooded the village four metres deep. Here we can see the various buildings jutting from the surface of the lake.

Judging by the number of photographs available online, it seems that Epecuén is a popular destination for photographers, so there’s loads of ground-level photo sets to see – including this rather nice one on Flickr.

Thanks to Claude Warren and kjfitz.

The Futuro House is a round, prefabricated house that was designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in 1968. About 100 of the kits were erected around the world, and you’d know if you saw one – because they look exactly like perfect little flying saucers from some 50s B-movie.

Royse City Fututo, one of three surviving in Texas

Built from fibreglass-reinforced polyester-plastic, Futuros are around 4 metres high by 8 metres across, and have super-cool airplane-style hatch entrances.

Waterside Futuro in Berlin, Germany

Suuronen’s aim was actually to design a ski-cabin¹, one that would be “quick to heat and easy to construct in rough terrain”, and in this respect he succeeded – a Futuro House can be placed on virtually any terrain, requiring only four concrete supports, and thanks to the integrated polyurethane insulation and electric heating system, even in the most extreme conditions it only takes around thirty minutes to achieve a comfortable temperature inside.

Futuro as part of the Canberra Space Dome & Observatory, Australia

Despite the obvious awesomeness of these UFO-shaped homes, by the mid 70s they had been withdrawn from sale – although this was mainly due to the 1973 oil crisis, which had sent the price of plastic skyrocketing.

Front and back of the Pensacola Beach Futuro House, Florida²

Around sixty of the original Futuros have been accounted for over the years, but there are still many that remain undiscovered. The most complete archive is at futuro-house.net (there’s another with an embedded map at archinform.net), but it seems to have been left to stagnate for a number of years – perhaps Google Earth will provide the means for all of the missing Futuros to be rediscovered?

Double Futuro House, Franklin, Ohio

It should also be pointed out that the moulds for making Futuros apparently still exist… about time for a revival don’t you think?

Futuro in Covington, Kentucky

Here’s an article that includes a floor plan, some images of a Futuro being helicoptered into position, as well as some great shots of people inside.

Many people have tried to get their personal messages captured on Google Earth, but for whatever reason, most have failed – even when they knew the images were being taken.

On this basketball court in Australia however, someone has finally succeeded in having their message deliberately captured, and this time the message is a rather anti-Google one…

The message, which covers the entire court (you can see the shadows of the nets at either end), reads “Google stole my Adsense” – implying that whoever created these words is in some sort of dispute with Google over payments from their “contextual advertising solution”, Google Adsense.

What isn’t clear however, is who the person responsible is or, more importantly, whether or not Google will allow this image to remain visible.

We’ve seen many times that El Goog are happy to remove Street View images at the request of members of the public, but will they remove satellite or aerial images that are critical of their practices?

Thanks to Ella.

Yesterday¹ was Australia Day, when each January 26th, Australians crack open some beers and toss another shrimp on the barbie to celebrate their arrival on the world’s smallest continent all the way back in 1788.

Australia has many wonderful things to celebrate, not least in being the location for the claimed best job in the world, which is a post that requires the successful applicant to take up residence on the tropical Hamilton Island, off the Queensland coast.

The job was offered a couple of weeks ago and the story quickly spread round the entire web², as it promises the winning applicant the role of “caretaker” – which basically amounts to a bit of blogging, feeding some fish, and collecting the island’s mail. No formal qualifications are required, but candidates must be willing to swim, snorkel, dive and sail.

For completing these duties, (which amount to 12 hours a month of actual “work”), the successful applicant will receive a salary of A$150,000 ($103,000, £70,000) for six months, and get to live rent-free in a three-bedroom villa, complete with pool.

It turns out that Hamilton Island is a lot more densely populated³ than the promotional materials would have you believe – meaning that we weren’t able to determine which is the actual villa where the successful applicant will reside – but there’s loads of nice ones to choose from. Infinity pool anyone?

Hamilton Island is the second largest inhabited island of the Whitsunday Islands, and is in fact dedicated almost exclusively to tourism. Anybody fancy some go-karting?

There’s lots of other islands to explore here, including Dent Island where they’re building a golf course, or Whitsunday Island, where on Whitehaven beach we find a couple of seaplanes, a beach party and… is that a helicopter?

Also worth mentioning is Hayman Island, which is home to a resort built by Reg Ansett, which features its own harbor and several helipads. Of course, there are at least 3 swimming pools and even a recursive pool-in-a-pool (on an island).

If you’re thinking that the Whitsunday Islands might be a good place to spend a few months, then you’ve got until the 22nd of February to apply.

Thanks to our Austrian (no, I’ve not misspelled that) correspondent, Al Cohole.

While driving along Telephone Road in Waikato, New Zealand, you may notice that someone appears to have tried to park their car on top of a large tree stump.

This doesn’t seem to be an officially sanctioned public artwork, but rather the work of either a kindly local patron of the arts (or possibly just the result of incredibly bad driving).

This mysterious artwork reminded me of Spindle in Illinois, a sculpture consisting of 8 actual cars impaled on a 15m spike, which we looked at from above way back in 2006, but which has since received an inspection by the Street View camera.

Back in 2006, locals informed us that this work of utter genius was under threat from those who, incredibly, felt it was an “eyesore”! The debate raged on until May 2008, when Spindle was sadly dismantled and scrapped.

All may not be lost however, as the top two cars (a 1967 Beetle and a BMW donated by the man who commissioned the artwork) were actually saved from being scrapped – in the hope they might one day be re-used as part of “Spindle 2″!

Is there a petition we can sign somewhere?

Thanks to John Burns