mist – Helen Armstrong – writing on the move

I’ve been in Canberra overnight for another rehearsal with Brindabella Chorus, staying with family. A month earlier we’d come down to check out the National Multicultural Festival where Brindabella Chorus were on the program. It was my first performance with Brindabella Chorus that was not part of the competition package.

The Multi Culti, as it’s locally colloquially known, is a gathering from every representative national group (and associated activities) that can be found in Australia’s national capital city. The streets are filled with stalls, many offering food along with information about the people who have prepared it. Performance groups in various national dress wander through the crowds either on their way to a performance, or relaxing after one. Even when the skies opened with a generous thunderstorm right before our performance, it was a colourful and delightful place. As the rain stopped you could see the steam rising from the dark asphalt.
After the Sunday performance we’d driven back home chasing the same storm, purple skies darkening to night many hours before sunset.

Only three days later I drove back again, on my own this time. We’ve learned that for us, a good midway point is the small village of Marulan. It’s a fascinating place, its claim to fame being that it’s the only town in the world on the 150^th meridian. It also means that in this time zone, at the equinox the days are of exactly equal length here, sunset at 6 pm and sunrise at 6 am.

With the highway dotted with brightly-lit food and fuel stops, highly visible as you approach and easily accessible as a quick lane-slip off the highway, places like Marulan can miss out on the passing trade. As a result, the food is better, the fuel is cheaper, and the relaxing break is more therapeutic. I topped up my tank then drove to Meridian Café for a light lunch.

We first discovered Meridian at Marulan a couple of years ago when we took refuge in heavy rain on our way to Canberra. Other travellers mingled with locals gave sage advice on what to expect further along the road. We sat in the warm café watching the deluge becoming even heavier outside and waited for a break in the weather to continue our journey.

Since then we’ve tried other towns as ‘pit stops’ but we’ve always come back to Marulan. Goulburn is lovely, it’s still got a strong historic feel with its wide streets and late 18^th century building facades, the Paragon Café in Goulburn has glorious old-world charm and the food is great. But Marulan feels like a cosy country farmstead, it feels like home to us.

We had a good rehearsal last night. I usually can only attend online, being able to come to Canberra for a rehearsal in person is hard work but full of joy. There’s nothing like being surrounded by the music to really help you learn it well.

Next morning I knew I’d be on the road early. I’m an early riser even when I’ve been late to bed. The sun was barely up but my granddaughter was already dressed and packing her bag.

“Such a glorious view,” I commented at the vista of hills tipped with gold from the sunrise. “Look at the mist still pooled down low in the hollows!”

“That’s what we call ‘failure to load’,” my computer-savvy granddaughter remarked.

I chuckled. It did indeed look like a computer game that had started to load, then stopped with blank areas not filling in.

My stomach takes time to wake up in the mornings. With certain dietary issues (getting older really brings some shocks but it beats the alternative) it was easier for me to plan breakfast on the road. Sometimes it’s a fast-food drive-thru grabbing some bacon and eggs, nourishing but generally unsatisfying. As a result, I’d planned a fast getaway while around me the household got ready for a busy midweek day. Kids heading to school, parents heading to work.

I stayed long enough to be available should one of the kids miss the bus, but I was on the road by 8 am.

The mist had begun to rise quickly, the blue-tinted low, dense clouds warming and stretching in the early morning. By the time I got to Lake George the clouds were just resting on top of the hills on the other side of the lake, as if tethered to the wind turbines. The lake was silver with a thin stripe of pale blue on the far shore. It’s still very full of water, I wonder where the sheep and cattle are grazing now.

The highway was fairly quiet on the weekday morning, I had a good run for the next hour. There was a little excitement — traffic was slowed when we saw flashing lights ahead. A lot of flashing lights. Multiple fire trucks and some police cars, hoses being played on the carbonised wreck of a truck. No sign of a crash, it looked like the truck had simply caught fire. But all being sorted now, nothing to see here…

The Goulburn sign coming up. Advertising for various food stores and for fuel. Over the years we’ve tried them all, I’ve even written about some of them in previous blogs here. But this time I wasn’t tempted. Not today. I was enjoying the wide open spaces.

It was late morning when I finally swung off the highway for the short drive into Marulan. First to fill up. Then a minute or two down the road and I’ve gone back in time to a quieter, calmer place. I parked across the road and my stomach rumbled in anticipation as I headed up the steps.

Inside it was as welcoming as ever. Room for me, but definitely not empty. The woman behind the counter looked up and smiled. “We only saw you yesterday. Same again?”

I ordered my breakfast (brunch by now) and ducked into the loo while I waited.

It was the best bacon and eggs I’ve had anywhere on this drive. They’d slipped some slices of lightly grilled tomato onto the plate as well.

All too soon I was finished, fed, rested and ready to head off. As I left the café it was quiet outside, bees buzzing in nearby lavender bushes clearly audible over the distant hum of traffic from the highway. I debated a visit to the antique shop next door but figured it can wait until next time.

I’ll be back.

Our first trip after a four-month Sydney Covid lockdown was to meet this glorious chronological creation.

My husband Jeff retired in November 2019 and immediately expanded his engineering hobby activities. His ‘gateway habit’ is live steam, notably miniature live steam trains. However, he’s been learning machining from scratch and in the process has made connections with some very deep pockets and deeper obsessions in miniature crafting.

Even before he retired, he had been following information online and via a forum on the Antikythera Mechanism which had been dredged up from an ancient shipwreck off the shore of the Greek island of Antikythera. With my own background in science and interests in ancient Greece, I also became engrossed in the work of Chris Budiselic (better known by his YouTube handle Chris from Clickspring) as he theorised that this mechanism was an ancient chronometer. By studying detailed scans of the original mechanism and trying to physically recreate the device, Chris found his work causing considerable excitement in the world of horology. Jeff and I were both excited when Chris reached the point of professional publication. [https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/fzp8u]

Along the way, Jeff noticed other articles about an amazing astronomical skeleton clock being crafted. It had been commissioned in 2003 by American Mark Frank as a specialised addition to his vast collection of timekeeping devices. After three years of designs the actual work commenced in 2006 and was expected to take three years. Fifteen years later it is, at last, finished. The clock’s functions include: 400-year perpetual calendar; equation of time; sidereal time; sun/moon rise and set; moon’s phase and age; tides; solar/lunar eclipses; planisphere; tellurium; and full-featured orrery to Saturn with functional moons.

It also tells the time.

We were particularly excited when we realised that the clock was being built a couple of hours drive away from our home in the highlands south of Sydney.

We watched the reports of the clock, now finished and needing to be readied for shipping to the US. Jeff had made contact with the clock maker and we had an invitation to go see the clock, which was being monitored in running condition prior to packing it up. Mechanical devices need debugging as much as computer software. However, while Sydney was in lockdown, we were unable to travel.

In early November 2021 we at last had permission to leave our neighbourhood. Jeff rang Master Clockmaker who is a very private person and has asked us to not identify him in this article. He was very happy for us to visit to look at the clock. We chose a weekday to avoid any crowds (we’re still being careful).

The day was overcast at home, but as we drove south a light misty rain grew heavier. Fog clouded the road and we took our time. Everything was soft green, blurring into the distance. It was as if we were driving back into the past, to a time when craftsmanship was prized far more highly. The temperature dropped as we drove into the Southern Highlands area past heritage houses with clipped cypress hedges.

Winding, misty roads as we head to the Southern Highlands.

We finally pulled up in an industrial estate at an engineering warehouse. Master Clockmaker met us at the large Roll-a-Door and ushered us past plastic-wrapped pallets into a small workshop. One more door and there it was, in all its golden glory.

The necessary precision of these skeletonised gears is breathtaking.

The skeleton clock is about the size of a large old-style valve television and even though skeletonising the gears has reduced its weight, it still weighs over 125 kg. It is so much more than just a clock. When we saw it, it was keeping time to about a second a week, which for a mechanical device is very good. It will run for a week on one winding, and the spring system is a little different to what we think of in a standard mainspring. The double-spring system uses a roll of sprung steel under tension which winds itself down from a point of high tension to low tension. If it breaks, it will not turn to shrapnel and destroy the delicate mechanisms. It’s also much more efficient at even transfer of energy, so you don’t get any “winding down” or slowing effect. A clock needs to measure hours at the same rate when freshly wound as when it is almost time to wind it back up again. Winding a clock is putting energy into the system, from the hand of the person doing the winding. Then the clock neatly dispenses its dose of energy to its gears, tick by tick, second by second.

Any detailed mechanical clock requires gears to operate. The teeth on the different gears help define the hours, minutes and seconds, among other functions. The more the clock is required to do, the more gears. For a large, complex clock, solid discs for gears means a very heavy device indeed. More weight not only means more metal, but more importantly means a greater moment of inertia (I’m digging back to my senior high school Physics here, in rotational mechanics). A greater moment of inertia means more rotational torque. The classic example of rotational torque is an ice skater doing a spin — as they pull their arms and legs in close to the axis of revolution, the rotational inertia falls and they spin faster. You can duplicate this on an office chair, by spinning on it with your arms and legs out, then pulling your arms and legs in. Don’t get dizzy! And make sure the boss is nowhere near.

The force needed to drive such a complicated mechanism is therefore greater with solid gears, and to turn all this uses a hand-wound mainspring (in this case, a double-spiral of sprung steel). With a heavier apparatus either a bigger spring is needed, or you’d have to wind it a lot more often. The original design for this clock included four slowly falling weights, 25 Kg each, to provide the driving force.

But if the gear discs are mined out, the weight is reduced. Less mass in a gear and it will turn much more easily. A solid brass disc can be reduced to a thin hoop of little more than gear teeth. The result is beautiful, almost lacy in appearance but still very functional. The workmanship has to be meticulous even by clockmaker standards. The skeletonising when done well is a very fine balance between function and efficient operation. The beauty in this case is also evidence of skill and deserves to be on display. When you’re this good at clock-making, you want to show off, at least to other clockmakers.

I’m told there are lot of ‘complications’. (Yeah, really?)

In horological terms, a ‘complication’ is an advanced feature, such as a striking mechanism in some clocks that show little characters doing fun things. Some articles include software such as you’d find in a smart watch, an added feature which is implemented by software, as a complication. But for most purists, it’s the mechanical marvel of a more traditional timepiece complication that makes them so special. My brother-in-law had a grandfather clock which showed the phases of the moon. A single complication was the most common finding, if there were any at all. Sadly, that clock was damaged beyond repair when a small kitten climbing behind it knocked it over.

The Strasbourg Clock in Alsace, France, has a number of complications which include a parade, at solar noon, of Christ and his apostles. It is worth looking up [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg_astronomical_clock]. As a child I was fascinated with the scale model of the Strasbourg clock in what was then the Sydney Technological Museum (now incorporated into the Sydney Powerhouse Museum). But then the Sydney model stopped working and, as the man who had made this model had died, for many years was unable to be repaired. It takes a special mind indeed, and a dedicated craftsman, to be able to fathom the workings of another’s genius creation.

Zodiac with orrery. Note the ring around Saturn, and even its larger moons which also revolve around the planet.

But let’s go back to Moss Vale in November 2021.

The Astronomical Skeleton Clock has over 52 complications. Among other features, it has a built-in model of the solar system, so not just the phases of the moon can be seen, but the orbits of the planets. With some of the planets, the larger moons can also be seen, tiny seed pearls on fine wire. The planets have been crafted from semi-precious stones and the orbit of each is also controlled by fine gears within the clock.

The scrapheap — gears with broken teeth, pieces not quite right or surplus to requirements.

Master Clockmaker ushered us around the workshop rooms, showing us various mock-up stages of the Astronomical Skeleton Clock. He showed us another of his clocks, literally coal-fired. There was a beautifully-polished brass flue leading from a small enclosed brazier in the base. The fire was to provide thermal compensation to warm the mechanism of the clock and thereby reduce temperature problems in colder climates. It had zinc bimetallic strips to compensate for fluctuations in temperature, and is a replica of one in Buckingham Palace.

The ‘coal-fired clock’. A modern reconstruction. The brass flue is hidden in plain sight.

The drawer for the coal brazier hidden in the base.

The craftsmanship of Master Clockmaker was clear in quiet ways, in his neat storage of tools, in the range of well-used utensils and in his box of scraps. A work of art like this doesn’t get made without tears along the way. A wheel with names of world cities in order (for time zones) had needed to be replaced when an observant fan following the construction online noticed that two cities were listed in reverse order. Master Clockmaker gave this now-useless piece to Jeff, who promised to send it to the sharp-eyed observer.

A delighted selfie — ‘Duncan Luddite’, delighted with his own piece of the Astronomical Skeleton Clock.

Some tiny but detailed fragments had been replaced when there was perhaps a variation in design, or perhaps the item was not quite the right size. I held in the palm of my hand a tiny, metallic sun which had been crafted by the cire-perdue or ‘lost wax’ method, which is sacrificial on the original artwork. To replace it would have needed an entirely new piece to be made.

Detailed rejects. If you look at the clock photos carefully, you will find the pieces that were perfect enough for the clock.

Jeff was losing himself in the technical brilliance, but for me — I couldn’t go beyond the sheer, exquisite beauty of the work.

Although it was spread over about fifteen years (with time off for other side jobs), the project took twelve years to make, the work of a genius craftsman. A once-in-a-lifetime creation, brilliance and perfection. Master Clockmaker has also ensured that each complication was able to be readily separated from the whole timepiece, for servicing and maintenance. It has been thoroughly documented and the knowledge has been passed on. Unlike similar projects in centuries past, this clock will be able to continue and be maintained long after its creator has gone to that glorious workshop in the sky.

Tag: mist

Marulan for Breakfast

Clocking On… Astronomical Skeleton Clock