geographic centre of australia

Thanks Willem

Willem,

Interesting but I have read somewhere that the marker at Lambert Centre is not quite correct. Can't remember how much it's out by but it is a reasonable amount. Hmmm ...... have to start digging around for the reference.

That's a pretty soft looking dune Willem

Al

Maybe this is it:

Johnston Geodetic Station
This trigonometric survey cairn, situated about one kilometre north of Mt Cavenagh Homestead, was built by officers of the Division of National Mapping in December 1965, and was once the central reference point for all Australian surveys. It was named after Fredrick Marshall Johnston, former Commonwealth Surveyor General and the first Director of National Mapping. Today, surveys are based on the Geocentric Datum of Australia (GDA), a new and more accurate Australian coordinate system which has replaced the Australian Geodetic Datum (AGD) of which the Johnston station is a major part. Further information on datum types and their applications is available from the geodesy pages, or from the Inter-governmental Committee on Surveying & Mapping (ICSM).

Location: 25 degrees 56 minutes 49.3 seconds south latitude, 133 degrees 12 minutes 34.7 seconds east longitude; position on SG53-05 Kulgera 1:250,000 and 5546 Kulgera 1:100,000 scale maps.

OR

Whilst drought and extreme heat thwarted Sturt's attempts, little did he envisage that one of his party, John McDowall Stuart would instead, sixteen years later, claim the mantle of reaching the geographic centre…

"Sunday, 22 April 1860, Small Gum Creek, under Mount Stuart, Centre of Australia - today I find from my observations of the sun, 111° 00' 30", that I am now camped in the centre of Australia. I have marked a tree and planted the British flag there."1

1 T. Flannery (ed.), The Explorers, The Text Publishing Company, Melbourne,1998.

Cheers

David

Yes, the sand was powdery, extremely fine, having been blown there over the past 6 months or so.

Using my car rubber floor mats under the rear wheels and dropping the pressure to 9psi in the tyres, I was able to drive out first go in 2nd low.Then there was the next part of the dune to cross but a swift depression of the accellerator(kick in the guts), saw me clear the obstacle without too much fuss....:-)

Cheers

Geez Willem, your list of "stuff" for your Rig is longer than Roachies....

Willem,

I remember 22 April 1860 like it was yesterday :)))) Looks like I was totally confused again (situation normal according to SWMBO). Thanks for taking the trouble to clear that up for me.

Hi Coyote

Hmmm not quite......lol.....but I reckon it comes close. Still you can hardly see anything in my vehicle as I have it packed in such a way that it can still be used as a commuter if necessary.

Cheers

And lots of Flies when I was there :-(((

but it could be the dead centre of oz ...if someone was buried there

ha ha. LOL
very good, I like your thinking

Maybe - but certainly not the Geographic (land surface) Centre as was being discussed.
Cheers
Greg

Geezz you are a bit hard on an old digger!

Since when on this Forum does a response have to directly relate the origional post?? Take a look down the page to see what I mean!!

BTW if you are getting technical and want to define "Australia" as "land surface area" are we talking about MWL, high tide, low tide etc? Maybe out to our ecominc zone, or continential shelf. I am sure that land surface area doesn't have a geaographical definition

Apologies - no offence intended was just pointing out we were talking about the geographic centre. Not sure how subsurface Australia is defined ..but assuming it does somehow extend to the centre of the earth and with further consideration of your comment on what is the "centre" ... wouldnt the center of the earth be the bottom of Australia (or is that Wilcania:)? The actual centre would then be somewhere between the bottom (centre of earth) ,the top (Australian land surface) and the sides (lines extending from official country boundary to centre of earth)?
Yours in fun
Cheers
Greg

Accepted. Lets simplyfy the definition and say the geographic centre is the point which is equidistant between all of your favourite breweries. That way we can all have our own centres and be happy with it and spend hours justifying it!

Sounds like fun - does anyone have waypoints for all brewries/pubs - I think I am currently way off centre
Cheers
Greg

My understanding is the first opinion. Wonder if the Visitor's book is still in place? Interesting spot though!

Madcow

Yep, the visitors book is still there and a brand new Australian flag is flying

We camped there about 2 weeks ago

Gday Cocka
The farthest place from the ocean in any direction in the land of Aus is at a place called ..EROMANGA ...in QLD.....We know this for a fact ...it was under the lid of a Carlton Draught stubby .

Very Parliament House looking isn't it.

I thought so too - just missing the green grass.

Kind regards

Seeing as there's an oversupply of bullsh*t at the real one - perhaps they could spare a bit for fertiliser to green up the centre;-)

Too right mate, a couple of tonnes from there will hardly be noticed. It will need a lake in front to keep it moist though.

Kind regards

With the number of people p*ssing in each others pockets in Cantberra, that shouldn't be a problem either;-)

I think that the problem with this approach is that the drug and alcohol content might be a little high to nourish the lawn.

Kind regards