...and now for a good news story

[Simon <simon@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Hi all,

I spent three days at Injune, Western Queensland last week helping the local
community initiate and develop their sculpture park

Injune is a town on the Great Inland Way http://www.greatinlandway.org.au/ 7
hours' drive from where I live in Brisbane.

The project has been a wonderful focus for a small but vibrant rural community
in the process of reinvigorating itself. In fact tonight I've just returned from
a Brisbane exhibition featuring works by six artists from the area:
http://www.ourbrisbane.com/whatson/events/html/events/1/80996.html

Some gallery photos here (free registration required):
http://www.maranoa.org.au/xoops/

The sculpture park at Injune is named Henricks Park after the land donors. The
sandstone was donated by an earthmoving company that clears a 1-acre site every
11 days for a gas exploration company. The stone is called Precipice Sandstone
after the local Precipice Formation from which it is claimed (the term
'Precipice' refers to many cliffs that form features such as in the Carnarvon
Gorge National Park http://www.carnarvon-gorge.com/walks.htm )

The stone is mostly white, and is very easy to work and carve. I first tried
drilling so I could split it with plugs & feathers (as I would normally use on
Helidon Freestone) but the very fine clay and silica content clagged up the
drilling operation. I found that spring steel wedges placed in a saw cut worked
best. The wedges are made from 50mm x 8mm x 150mm steel, with one face milled
 from 8mm down to 3mm. The stone splits reasonably easily across the grain if one
end of the rock is elevated, and if the saw cuts are continued down the sides of
the rock. It splits beautifully along the grain, with every bed displaying
distinct ripple marks from when it was laid down by an ancient creek.

It was an inspiration to work with Outback men & women who had little or no
experience with sandstone. They learned quickly and completed an amazing amount
of work in the six days spent there so far.

to be continued...

Simon