22/10/2011 London, British Library (Sarah Thomas)

London
22/10/2011, Saturday (British Library).

The British Library is quite spectacular (see earlier post) and my meeting with Sarah Thomas (author of "Encounter 1801") went well. We went through my progress comparing it with Sarah's experience in 2000-2002; it was illuminating. It seems that Sarah and the Encounter project may have generated a lot of on-going interest in Europe (and possibly a bit of "proprietary ownership" of research resources) in the neglected works of Lesueur and Bauer. Also Sarah was working for the SA Museum and had a budget to work with, which I suspect made life a bit easier. Not that I can complain in any way, I got a privileged opportunity and was given access to archives that were truly phenomenal, both historically and in terms of raw artistic talent.

I had to keep reminding myself that these works of art/ scientific illustrations, that I was able to hold and photograph, were over 200 years old from the first of the explorations of Australia (and of Queensland / tropics in particular). I sounded Sarah out about being a possible examiner for my MA thesis, but we will have to see how her PhD goes. The draft is still with her supervisor.

I said my goodbyes, thanked her for her assistance and wished her the best of luck with her Dissertation. It was good to see a friendly Australian face.

My travel both from and to Barking by "Tube" was just short of slightly crazy. They are getting London ready for the Olympics, so are renovating all the transport systems; read road-works and closure of Underground stations and even of whole lines for "maintenance". That is what happened to me; I was forced to get a bus to an open Tube station then a series of trains to get me to my destination. They were cancelling trains on-the-fly, which required patience and very flexible re-routing. Apparently London Transport concentrate the renovations to the weekends to minimise disruption to normal business travel.

Moral of the story is do not travel on the Tube in London on the weekend. This must have been going on while I was here last time but then I concentrated on using Buses to see more of London. From "outer" Barking this is not possible. As it was I spent a very long time on the trains. I also decided that I will have to find a station with a lift to get my luggage from the District to Piccadilly lines. None of the stations I normally use have working lifts (or an escalator, i.e., "no step-free access"). Watching the poor devils trying to get themselves and luggage to Heathrow Airport by Tube through that mayhem was really sad. Not a good way to end a holiday!