Author: Ms. R.

Though indigenous cuisine is increasingly available in Australia, venues serving dishes from the Torres Strait Islands on the mainland are still rare. The collection of nearly 300 islands above northeastern Australia have been home to Torres Strait Islanders for nearly 70,000 years, and chef Nornie Bero is taking that long history  and putting it on a plate. Bero, a member of the Komet tribe of Mer Island, opened a market stall in Melbourne in 2016 serving island specialties and……

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The feast looks so lifelike that more than a few gawkers over the years have tried to partake. Spread across the central table is a generous dinner for 8, complete with an immense ham made of petrified wood. In the bowl of fruit at the center sit prunes made of Apache tears, a round pebble form of obsidian, along with blueberries made from azurite. Hearty bowls of hominy consist of pearl slugs, iridescent wonders produced by mollusks in the……

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We love year-end lists of great reads, even if they occasionally inspire a little dread. Our tsundokus (that is, stacks of unread books) are already pretty precarious. At Atlas Obscura, we like to offer a little taste alongside our book recommendations—excerpts that both offer a great read and invite you to explore further. Here are some of our favorite book excerpts of 2021, covering everything from giant killer clams to bizarrely colorful landscapes to books bound in human skin…….

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Every fall the plains of South Sudan, normally pale yellow and brown, turn a vibrant viridescent shade. This explosion of greenery helps spur on the largest mammal migration in the world. Every October, at least a million antelope thunder across the plains towards the vast lowlands around the White Nile. An estimated 125,000 of the migration’s participants are the spectacularly weird topi. With an estimated 300,000 spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the topi migrating through South Sudan number a little……

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The White River rises on the eastern flank of Mt. Hood and flows easterly, dropping into the canyon of the Deschutes River over an attractive set of stepped waterfalls. From 1910 through 1960, the falls were also the site of a small hydroelectric generating station. Water was diverted above the falls and run to a powerhouse near the base. The operation always had problems with siltation and was finally rendered obsolete by the completion of The Dalles Dam on……

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Situated in the back garden of the birthplace of Sir J.M. Barrie, the celebrated author of Peter Pan and other literary works, visitors may be drawn to the sounds of an amplified ticking clock. Turning the corner, they will come face-to-face with a life-sized replica of a giant crocodile. This lumbering sculpture is the work of James Doran-Webb. Construction of this ginormous reptile consisted of a comprising a vast array of recycled pieces of driftwood. They form the shape of the……

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Waggonways are a peculiar type of rail transport, consisting of wooden wheeled vehicles that are pulled by horses along a rail, most commonly made of metal, but occasionally of wood as well. The predecessor of the waggonway originated in mines of mainland Europe, but the type exemplified in Cockenzie was an English innovation from the 1600s. By the next century, in 1722, the waggonway made its way north to Scotland. Coal mining in the town of Tranent was connected……

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