This post has been several months in the making. I blame this on the changing of the seasons and the rotation of the earth.
Back in 2021, Julian O'Shea published a video on YouTube about Melbourne Henge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eENuq2v28rY
Melbourne Henge is the idea that when the sun sets, on some days of the year, that the sunlight lines up perfectly with the cross streets of the central grid of Melbourne. The fun thing about the alignment of the grid of streets in the Melbourne CBD, is that although they are not cardinally north/south and east/west, they are according to Melbourne CBD North which exists only in the central grid of Melbourne. It is about 20° out of alignment.
When it comes to the original 'henges' in Britain, the problem in understanding what they were for, is that not only are we cut off in terms of any kind of written record but we also have the problem that they serve no obvious function. British Henges are kind of rubbish at being defensive structures and if they are religious sites, then their lack of any kind of inscription gives us no indication as to what kind of religion is going on.
For the purposes of this post, since we have no real idea of what a henge is for, then Julian O'Shea's definition is as good as any. We shall take a 'henge' to mean a thing which by design or accident, has various architectural objects which line up with the sun. Just like Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures Through The Looking Glass And What She Found There", how we shall use the word is how we shall choose to use the word; nothing more and nothing less.
I live in Marayong and work in an office in Mosman. Marayong is so far inland that hills cast shadows all over the place. Marayong is a desert for henges. However, Mosman is close enough to the sea to be considered a seaside suburb of Sydney. As there is nothing to the east within the sightlines to the horizon, then Mosman is one of those suburbs in Sydney where it is possible to stand on the beach and watch the sunrise out of the ocean. This probably accounts for why this suburb has property values which would make an o on cry as well as why the average age of the people who live in Mosman, is very much older than the rest of Sydney. The ironic thing about the average age of the people who live in Mosman is that they are so old that they are highly unlikely to ever be awake that early in the morning to ever see a sunrise; which undermines the very point of buying exorbitant housing by the sea. Mosman is God's Waiting Room, where people are waiting for the hearse to come - man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe.
Mosman has lots of buildings which also cast shadows, which means that the eastern side of the building gets direct sunlight, but usually only after the sun has risen considerably. For the building to get direct sunlight, exactly at the correct angle where light streams in through the window, is one of those crazy architectural accidents which gives rise to a very small henge.
On exactly two days a year and for a total of no more than four minutes, the sun happens to be at a perfect angle, such that it peeks through the windows and between a very big cupboard and a wall, so the light can be seen at the front door. Now that's either some mad coincidence which is madder than Mad Jack McMad, the winner of last year's Mr Madman competition for Mad Mad People, or that coincidence has a scientific reason behind it, to do with the angle of the Earth.
It is so much of a mad coincidence that as we are an accounting office, whose stock and trade is purely in the wrangling of numbers and arithmetic, and because you need to be a very specific kind of person to even think about doing accounting as a job (the kind who actively takes joy in finding patterns and doing arithmetic), that this day was flagged in the diary months ago.
The last time that Officehenge made itself known was on 8th April; which was 75 days before the Winter Solstice. Using simple maths, we worked out that the next occurrence of Officehenge should happen on 6th September (today); which is 75 days after the Winter Solstice. Without knowing any of the exact science behind this, we reasoned that as the last time that Officehenge happened between 08:27am and 08:31am on Friday 8th Apr, that the next very very specific Officehenge should happen would be about the same time on 6th September.
Lo and Behold!
Officehenge happened for four minutes between 08:39am and 08:43am this morning; as calculated.
Isn't it pretty?
Owing to the fact that the Earth is changing speeds (albeit very slowly), then this means that the usefulness of a henge has a limited time frame. Even if we assume that the British Henges were massive timekeeping devices of some sort, they might not be as accurate now as they were when they were installed. That probably doesn't really matter if you are a neolithic people group on a cold wet island, in the days before there was even BBC Radio 4 but even so, ancient Britons were still likely to be interested in farming dramas like "The Archers".
Officehenge serves no religious purpose, no defensive purpose, and no timekeeping purpose as far as I can tell, but the future historians who look upon this troubled world of twenty-first century Mosman, just might be as daft as we are in assuming that it does. But then again, no. Officehenge and the building will rot over that scale of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment