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About Earth Science Australia...
Like to be a sponsor? - Fame without Fortune!
Creative Commons Terms and Conditions
Copyright Conditions
Contact Earth Science Australia
Earth science related entities are a major source of export income, provide many jobs and will continue to do so into the future.
This website aims to inform people with and interest in earth science through imagery and with a minimum of specialist jargon.
About Earth Science Australia...
- originated in 1993 on floppy disks ("The Earth Science Party Pack") distributed by hand to schools in north Queensland..
- at that time no commercial ISP would service rural and remote Queensland
- Pioneer volunteer ISP Bushnet was formed and connected some 12 schools via a 28k modems
- ESA became a website through the Bushnet in 1996
- our design was based around the concept of providing maximum resource using minimum bandwidth and equity of access to educational resources.
- we frequently became "road kill" on the information highway
- a lightning strike took out Bushnet's only server and along with it ESA which was recovered from floppy disks
- funding cut to Bushnet with five weeks notice with no redirects
- the next two fledgling / competitive / commercial / local / rural and remote ISP's inexplicably frequently shut down by their telecommunications monopoly supplier (and competitor)
- Earth Science Australia lived as a "virtual gypsy" for a couple of years, surviving on removable media, various computers belonging to others and online as an alias on surplus corporate server space
- in April 2002 the Geological Society of Australia kindly offered ESA (operating as an alias) space on its server
- The National Library of Australia declared ESA a website of national significance in 2004 - periodically saves a copy as part of the Pandora Project (opens in new window)
- created the first senior science on-line course in Queensland "Cyber Earth Science" -which as rejected without a glance Education Queensland
- Far North Queensland Fossil Heritage Expeditions supported the first secondary school group to find, excavate, conserve and donate an Ichthyosaur to the Queensland Museum.
- Ngadjonji People of the Rainforest became part of the site following the death of its originator (the site is another Bushnet pioneer)
- Local rural bandwidth declined 2010-2016 to speeds / levels of service - repair - maintenance, probably only found elsewhere in Burkina Faso (source: www.computerworld.com.au/.../australia and www.speedtest.net)
- The NBN arrived in 2016 and ESA was able to get was via Sky Muster satellite service - a great improvement so ESA is finally able to re-design and update again (but at 1.2Mb/s down and 0.25Mb/s up not at levels of a developed democracy)
- We say goodbye to our unique internal and external CSS. This latest version incorporates HTML5, flexbox CSS and external CSS in order to remove formatting clutter and make the site responsive to various screen sizes while loading quickly and continuing our tradition of minimal bandwidth.
- 2019 we adopt w3schools.com formating using the w3.css cascading style sheet with minor modifications
- 2021 we move to a Linux- based system
- 2024 after 22 years on the Geological Society of Australia a more reliable satellite link facilitated our transition to an independent server for the first time in 31 years
Earth Science Australia - Sponsorship
Your logo, message or link on our main page?- Australia's most visited earth science web site is run out of
pocket, after tax and out of hours
- Twenty years on the web, the site receives about 1 million visitors per year
- The site greatly appreciates the server space provided by the Geological Society of Australia
- Providing equity of access to educational materials for rural and remote Australia since 1996
- The site has no assets and exists on borrowed / donated equipment
wholly in cyberspace.
- The site would really appreciate sponsorship donations of computer equipment and bandwidth to remain a viable reliable teaching and learning resource
- our current computer circa 2006, repaired in 2010, 2015, 2016, computer dies 2020 and is replaced by an Intel NUC
- about $100/month in total would keep the site viable, independent and healthy
- sorry no tax benefits in helping us out
first logo circa 1998 Creative Commons Terms and Conditions
Earth Science Australia - Creative Commons Licence
Earth Science Australia by Paul Michna where no other author is indicated is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at earthsci.org.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://earthsci.org/copyright.html#copyright
Copyright Conditions at Earth Science Australia
Copyright Notice:
Permission is granted for the free use and copying of any material, freeware and educational resources from the web site if the three following conditions are met:
- they are being used for educational purposes (including self-education) and
- they are being presented or provided on a not-for profit basis and
- Earth Science Australia or the cited authors are acknowledged as the
source
Earth Science Australia or the authors cited and may not be used without the permission of
Earth Science Australia or the cited authors.
Contact Earth Science Australia
You may contact Earth Science Australia at:
(Due to robots no live link - hand copy into
your email program) Earth Science Australia has some materials on-line which were generously provided by visitors to the site or collected by students from as early as 1992.
Please contact us if we have mistakenly but in good faith used material without acknowledging the correct source.