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The Goyder Line
Posted by
Joe Bloe
,
22 June 2012
·
377 views
For more than 20 years the fundamentalists have been using Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) to teach their children stuff like this:
As I contemplated the utter stupidity of such pig-headed ignorance, I recalled something that happened in my home State of South Australia about 150 years ago. It was 1865 and the colony had been founded only 30 years earlier so the residents were still feeling their way (so to speak). All of the arable land in the south had been put under cultivation and farmers started looking northwards, but they had to be careful because the further north they went, the less reliable was the rainfall - and the land eventually turned into desert.
So the Government sent the surveyor-general (George Goyder) to Ceduna in the far west and instructed him to travel eastwards across the State, taking note of the "cut-off" point where the annual rainfall was too low to support crop growing farms. It seemed like an impossible task, but Goyder noticed a distinct change in the type of natural vegetation. In the south the land was covered with small trees known as mallee scrub, but to the north it was covered with saltbush. Goyder realised that this was the "cut-off" point and within two months he had drawn a line across the map of South Australia - The Goyder Line.
This enabled the Government to advise farmers that they could plant crops south of the Goyder Line, but all land north of the line was suitable only for grazing - and very light grazing at that. In England the farmers would measure their farm's capacity by the number of sheep per acre. In South Australia the measurement was the number of acres per sheep!
But then what happened?
The rains came. The best rains ever in the 30 year history of the State - and farmers immediately decided that Goyder's Line was complete and utter bullshit. They headed north and planted their crops. Within a few years the land north of the Goyder Line was one of the biggest wheat growing areas in the country and new towns were springing up everywhere. Towns with hotels, banks, ballrooms, and racetracks. Plans were made to have railway lines extended into this hugely profitable area and land was set aside for the permanent way and streets were given names like Railway Terrace as the locals anticipated the arrival of the trains.
And then the rains stopped!
The boom times had lasted for less than ten years and the farmers were forced to walk off their land and head back south. Nature had won out. Entire towns and farms were abandoned when longer-term average rainfall returned. The Goyder Line had proved remarkably accurate.
In the 150 years since the boom times, the wooden buildings have decayed to dust, but you can still see the abandoned remains of some of the more substantial buildings - hotels and banks with marble facades, majestically lined up along Railway Terrace, and hundreds of miles from the nearest railway line!
The lesson is clear: Don't argue with the experts - they really DO know what they are talking about.
Unfortunately the 21st century fundamentalists haven't learned the lesson and I can only wonder what will happen to those poor deluded ACE students who will soon be looking for work in a world where they truly believe that "If a scientific theory contradicts the Bible, then the theory is wrong and must be discarded."
This is Goyder's Line as he drew it on the map in 1865:
And this is a satellite photo of South Australia which shows just how accurately Goyder had drawn his line.
(greenish vegatation below the line and reddish-brown desert above it)
- Man should never trust his own reasoning – his reasoning may be incorrect because man’s reasoning is not God’s reasoning.
- If a scientific theory contradicts the Bible, then the theory is wrong and must be discarded.
Source: Accelerated Christian Education Science PACE 1109, Physical Science 1, (1996) pp. 5, 7, 9
- In your study of science, you should always remember that what you read is the work of a scientist who had certain presuppositions before he began his experimentation. All scientific ‘facts’ must be interpreted on the basis of God’s Word, the infallible source of knowledge.
As I contemplated the utter stupidity of such pig-headed ignorance, I recalled something that happened in my home State of South Australia about 150 years ago. It was 1865 and the colony had been founded only 30 years earlier so the residents were still feeling their way (so to speak). All of the arable land in the south had been put under cultivation and farmers started looking northwards, but they had to be careful because the further north they went, the less reliable was the rainfall - and the land eventually turned into desert.
So the Government sent the surveyor-general (George Goyder) to Ceduna in the far west and instructed him to travel eastwards across the State, taking note of the "cut-off" point where the annual rainfall was too low to support crop growing farms. It seemed like an impossible task, but Goyder noticed a distinct change in the type of natural vegetation. In the south the land was covered with small trees known as mallee scrub, but to the north it was covered with saltbush. Goyder realised that this was the "cut-off" point and within two months he had drawn a line across the map of South Australia - The Goyder Line.
This enabled the Government to advise farmers that they could plant crops south of the Goyder Line, but all land north of the line was suitable only for grazing - and very light grazing at that. In England the farmers would measure their farm's capacity by the number of sheep per acre. In South Australia the measurement was the number of acres per sheep!
But then what happened?
The rains came. The best rains ever in the 30 year history of the State - and farmers immediately decided that Goyder's Line was complete and utter bullshit. They headed north and planted their crops. Within a few years the land north of the Goyder Line was one of the biggest wheat growing areas in the country and new towns were springing up everywhere. Towns with hotels, banks, ballrooms, and racetracks. Plans were made to have railway lines extended into this hugely profitable area and land was set aside for the permanent way and streets were given names like Railway Terrace as the locals anticipated the arrival of the trains.
And then the rains stopped!
The boom times had lasted for less than ten years and the farmers were forced to walk off their land and head back south. Nature had won out. Entire towns and farms were abandoned when longer-term average rainfall returned. The Goyder Line had proved remarkably accurate.
In the 150 years since the boom times, the wooden buildings have decayed to dust, but you can still see the abandoned remains of some of the more substantial buildings - hotels and banks with marble facades, majestically lined up along Railway Terrace, and hundreds of miles from the nearest railway line!
The lesson is clear: Don't argue with the experts - they really DO know what they are talking about.
Unfortunately the 21st century fundamentalists haven't learned the lesson and I can only wonder what will happen to those poor deluded ACE students who will soon be looking for work in a world where they truly believe that "If a scientific theory contradicts the Bible, then the theory is wrong and must be discarded."
This is Goyder's Line as he drew it on the map in 1865:
And this is a satellite photo of South Australia which shows just how accurately Goyder had drawn his line.
(greenish vegatation below the line and reddish-brown desert above it)
