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Chairman's Letter
Cynthia and I are enjoying our travels in Australia. We were in Western Australia for about six weeks. It is our favorite part of Australia as it has an area about one third of the United States and has a population of about twenty million people.
We did some mineral collecting. Collecting in WA reminds me of collecting in Arizona 30 years ago. Most of the mines and mineral localities were abandoned and you could camp at them and collect minerals (Unlike Arizona today when most of the localities have been bulldozed over, have a locked gate, a guard, or a no trespassing sign). We camped and collected for five nights in the Gascoyne Region and did not see one other person.
The rest of the time we were looking for and photographing native orchids (There are hundreds of species of native orchids in Australia.) We did a field trip with an orchid group and it turns out that orchid people are like mineral collectors, very passionate about their hobby. They have secret
locations where rare orchids are found and even though you can't collect them, they still are tight lipped. Cynthia already has approaching 8,000
photographs so be sure to have some free time if you ask her about them.
Next we made the trip across the continent to a mineral tailgate show in Broken Hill, New South Wales. We did not find much to buy there as Broken Hill minerals cost the most in Broken Hill, just
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as Bisbee minerals cost the most in Bisbee. We are looking for more orchids here in the east and plan to do a little more collecting in the future.
We have already packed up three fifty-five gallon drums of specimens to ship to the US. It includes our material and things collected by the Eastmans, Harvey Jong,
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