Caching Event
Come and join us at the Sundial near the Torrens Parade Ground to celebrate the March Equinox was officially noted as being at 7.31pm ACDT. You can stay for a minute or the whole time. You are welcome to post a picture of yourself with the Sundial.
Location
The Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden near King William Road in Park 12 of Adelaide city’s parklands were proposed by Phebe Watson and Adelaide Miethke in 1938. Miethke (chair) and Watson were members of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Trust that was formed to create a befitting memorial to the spirit of the pioneering women of the South Australia as part of the state in 1936 celebrating a centenary of European settlement. The trust raised a staggering £6,250 and ultimately decided to donate £5,000 to build the Royal Flying Doctor base at Alice Springs. The remainder of the money was used to create the memorial garden, possibly based on one in Melbourne. Miethke and Watson put their concept for a formal garden, behind a government house, “with a sundial and figure as its central unit to denote the passing of time. Melbourne sculptor Ola Cohn was also engaged to carve the sculpture of the timeless woman from a three-ton pillar of Waikerie limestone. Cohn had to defend her work as representing “the spirit of womanhood capable of giving birth to a nation” against public criticism for her “coarse and unladylike” sculpted woman figure. Set into the base of the sculpture was a sundial designed by George Dodwell, the South Australian government astronomers need to accurately reflect central standard time. The Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden was officially opened in April 1941 simultaneously, via radio link, with the opening ceremony of the Royal Flying Doctor Service base at Alice Springs. Muriel Barclay Harvey, wife of the governor of South Australia, unveiled the statue.
Equinox
An equinox is an event in which a planet’s subsolar point passes through its Equator. The equinoxes are the only time when both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres experience roughly equal amounts of daytime and nighttime. As its name suggests, an equinox indicates equally lluminated hemispheres, with the solar terminator equally dividing Earth from north to South. (The solar terminator is the shadowed line indicating daylight and sunlight on a globe.) A true equinox would indicate 12 hours of both day and night. Although the equinoxes are as close to this phenomenon as happens on Earth, even during the equinoxes day and night aren’t exactly equal. This is largely due to atmospheric refraction. Atmospheric refraction describes the way light seems to bend or deviate from a straight line as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. Atmospheric refraction is a result of increasing air density, which decreases the velocity of light through the air. Due to atmospheric refraction, we are able to see the sun minutes before it actually rises and sets.
