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Trip to Australia, 2004
To go to the list of pictures: click
Here
As expected we woke up early,
so we had an early taxi ride to
pick up the camper.
Kea Campers had everything
well organised and after insisting
that we did not want an insurance
and so took the full liability for
5000$, we left for the west,
direction Blue Mountains.
This is one of the nicest
parts of Australia, but as we
visited that 2 years before, we
just crossed the Great Dividing
Range. The pass was at 1000m high.
When descending down again we got a
nice view over the Blue Mountains.
It was hot and only with the
air-conditioning at maximum you
could survive. We passed along a
power station and visited it. It
was fired by coal, mined directly
near the power station. The coal
seams are 300m deep, thick and high
quality, with a low sulphur
content. The coal is blown as fine
powder is the heater. Two
generators of each 660 Mw supply
the power. It is a high technology
power station, but the management
is well aware of the environmental
impacts and try to cope with that.
The company has 4 power stations
and supplies 20% of the liberalised
Australian power market. An
exhibition showed that alternative
power sources like wind, sun and
biomass, how sympathetic they may
be, only can fulfil a minimal role
in the power generation based on
the present demand.
Australia is by far the
largest exporter of coal in the
world. There are still huge
unexploited coal basins, some just
under the surface.
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