The Australian War Memorial Collection. Test site
The sun sears, the winds scorch; there is a sharp geometric pattern in a landscape of iron buildings, a mammoth water tank, the long legs of a haulage shaft, a great smoke stack and a road sliced out of a rock face. But it's logical arrangement and the burning colour of the west gives it purpose and beauty.
Hard spinifex-tufted ridges were rich in minerals essential for war. First zinc, and lead - then copper for wartime usages, had transformed an isolated belt of western Queensland into a modern hive of