Tag Archives for Esperance Stonehenge

Stonehenge For Sale! In Australia!

 

Stonehenge Esperance, from the Real Estate listing

Stonehenge Esperance, from the Real Estate listing

We don’t usually list real estate on Clonehenge, but we’ve learned that in the realm of Stonehenge replicas, nothing is out of the question. Today there is a full-sized Stonehenge for sale, in conjunction with a cattle farm and luxury home, in Western Australia! And although we are posting this on April 1, this is not a joke. The real estate video (enjoy the music!):

We followed the building of this henge from when its stones were commissioned by Ross Smith, through the awkward stages of when he didn’t have the money to build it to when the Beales bravely decided to erect the abandoned stones on their property, watching that process as it progressed until it was built, and, as some said, better than the original, and now the “pink Stonehenge” is up for sale! Who will buy it? What will they do with it? Stay tuned for the news at 11:00!

Stonehenge Esperance, from the real estate site

Stonehenge Esperance, from the real estate site

So if you have $5 million Australian—and who doesn’t these days?—the dream is yours. You might miss the sheep, but on the other hand, you get an ocean view! And, as one site reminds us, “Unlike the English Stonehenge … this one is not broken.”

Good luck in the bidding, and we don’t think we need to remind you, we have a very important birthday coming up. Hint hint!

Sountil next time, generous friends, happy henging!

Esperance Update

Latest news on the Esperance, Australia Stonehenge replica including a video with the Beales discussing it can be seen here.

In the video, Jillian Beale, one of the builder/proprietors,  says that some visitors had recently been to Stonehenge in England and “said it was a pile of old rocks. They’d paid seventeen pounds and it was rubbish. And in my book he’s written ‘It’s brilliant. Better than the original!’ ” Worth a watch.

Meanwhile we’re still fretting over whether lintels will ever appear on the outer circle.

The “Better Than Stonehenge” Henge: Esperance’s Replica Rises at Last!

photo from The Esperance Express, showing Kim and Jillian Beale at the henge

Was ever an erection so eagerly awaited? Well, yes, probably, but still we have been watching these stones since almost before they were cut, so it is delightful to see them standing at last! This is the Stonehenge replica in Esperance Australia, made from the stones cut for the much ballyhooed Ross Smith replica that died, so to speak, in utero with the stones still in the quarry because of money problems.

Then we got news that some enterprising individuals in Esperance, a town in southwestern Australia famous for beautiful beaches and for things like birds and bits of Skylab falling out of the sky, were going to buy the stones from the nearby quarry and build their very own tourist mecca/modern monument. They got a discount–there isn’t a huge market for unused life-sized Stonehenge pieces. The names Kim and Jillan Beale started to float into view. (Yes, the Jillian Beale in that racy Rotary calendar, but that’s another story.)

Our last update came in February, assuring all that plans were going forward. Then apparently we missed an article in March, in which, well, here is a quotation from it: “Mrs Beale was confident StoneHengeEsperance would be more visually striking than the mysterious English prehistoric monument. “It will beat it hands down,” she said. “We hope it will become a major attraction for Esperance and WA. It will be absolutely fantastic.” ”

We could do a whole post just on that, discussing the merits of the spelling of StoneHengeEsperance, whether this is in fact “the world’s first full-size stone replica of Stonehenge” and just how likely it is that the new structure is more beautiful than and will beat the real Stonehenge “hands down”, but time and news have moved on and so must we. We trust that our readers are of the sort who can make up their own witty remarks in a pinch.

Today we are celebrating the long awaited construction of the monument and discussing instead the more recent article which begins promisingly with this sentence, “JILLIAN and Kim Beale’s construction of what is thought to be the world’s only life-size replica of the ancient Stonehenge Druid ruins on their 1,066 acre Merivale Road property has taken another step forward with the addition of a new outer circle.”

Let’s start with a discussion of whether this is the world’s only life-sized replica. No*. Then we go on to the phrase “ancient Stonehenge Druid ruins”. And when we are done LOLing we ask where did they do their research–on a forum for people who always dress in Renaissance Faire clothing? Someone needs to send a strikeforce into that sentence to take out the word Druid. Regular readers know, but we repeat: druids could not have built Stonehenge. They didn’t even arrive (or develop)  in England until 1000 years after it was completed. And, for the conspiracy theorists, is there any hidden meaning in that 1066 number??

We have tried to read the rest of the article but can only conclude that the reporter misinterpreted her own notes when she wrote it. There is talk of “horseshoe stones” and “an outer circle of 19 trilithon stones, surrounded by a circle of 30 sarsen stones”.  The right words are there but it doesn’t sound as if they are in the correct order.

All in all, what we see in the top picture looks very good, although the lack of lintels on what we can see of the outside circle naturally concerns us. Despite the strange reporting it is getting, we think the replica (we can’t bring ourselves to call it StoneHengeEsperance) will be awarded quite a few druids (our tongue-in-cheek scoring units) once we get a complete account and view of it. We’ll try to keep you posted, but if you see something about it before we do, please let us know. Meanwhile it is time we add it to the list of large permanent replicas.

Our thanks for alerting us again go to the lovely and talented @salisbury_matt , aka Matt Penny, who is still slogging away at SalisburyandStonehenge.net. Poor lad. And thanks to you if you have read all this way, or even just skipped down here from the beginning. Until next time, happy henging!

* Life-sized replicas other than the Montana replica linked above include the cement replica in Washington State, the Circle of Life in Connecticut (of  granite as this one is), and the BBC’s Foamhenge, which, alas, no longer stands.

Stonehenge Recycled, Australia Tries Again

photo from the Esperance Express *

It was in the news recently–the town of Esperance in southwest Australia plans to build a Stonehenge replica in order to attract tourists. Sounds mad, of course, but it isn’t the first town to make such an announcement. A Canadian town said much the same thing last year, and right there in Australia two years ago March a determined gentleman named Ross Smith announced his intention to have one built by the winter solstice (21 June down there).

And that is where this gets interesting. It turns out that a quarry quite near to Esperance was where the stones for the Ross Smith henge were being cut, and when that effort ran into financial trouble it was stuck with most of an unassembled Stonehenge that no one wanted. The stones were then offered to the town of Esperance at a discount and after some controversy the town has said yes. (The picture above indicates they intend to build the monument as it is thought to have looked at its height.)

This is a Stonehenge replica first! No other full-sized stone replica, in fact no other replica at all as far as we know has been bought at discount after being cut for someone else. This is Clonehenge history AND recycling history taking place before our very eyes! This world is a place of infinite novelty.

The stone is being called pink, but it is actually a kind of rosy brown. The website of the granite company shows the colour at the left for the Esperance granite. This has not stopped the pink jokes, of course, and one prominent megalith expert in a quip suggested the name “Gayhenge.” Tsk tsk! Shocking! 😉 Anyone knows that in Australia that would be Poofhenge!

It is unfortunate that some people and articles are calling this the “only full-sized stone replica in the world.” Ahem . . . it’s called Google, people. Use it! Certainly the Montana Stonehenge, which was carefully built to scale and made of limestone, qualifies. It’s possible that one of the Japanese Stonehenges is also of stone. And what about Connecticut’s granite Circle of Life? Well, there is still room for it to be the most accurate if they pay attention to detail. Only time will tell!

We of course enjoyed this quotation from one article: “I understand there are two or three replicas of it around the world but they are all made from things other than granite rock,” he said.

Two or three–at least! We hope people are bombarding them with links to Clonehenge. Let them find their place in the litany of replicas. They have a chance to do something terrific here. And Esperance means Hope!

*[Is that George W. Bush with a fake moustache??]

Note: Here is an update on this replica.