Review and Photos by Tony Taft.
Today we had an attendance of 19 with 5 apologies, we had no guests and no new members.
Our talk today was titled “Sahara. Life on the edge” and was presented by Roger Hamilton This is a return visit by Roger and it was with much pleasure that we welcomed Roger back to our club.
Roger talked about various parts of the world that get so little rainfall they are classified as deserts.It was very surprising when he said that there is a part of East Anglia, that because if has little rain, it can also be classified as a desert. I don’t think Torbay will ever fall under that category.
We were shown lots of photos from the air of the Sahara desert and although there is very little water there now it was easy to see where rivers once covered the land. These rivers show up as white streaks and do still look like water from the air but in reality they are just white sand.
Roger’s talk covered subjects such as plant life, any wild life that still live there, and about the Geology and history of the place. He covered many topics in one hour which was quite an undertaking, his knowledge is quite incredible.
We were shown petroglyphs of Giraffes and Crocodiles carved on the rocks by the people that once called the desert their home which indicated how lush this part of the world used to be in ancient times.
It is possible to drive across the Sahara and one of the highways is paved with tarmac all the way across, mostly used by oil companies and companies looking for precious and rare metals.
Roger showed us photographs of the wild life of the Sahara. It is still possible to find Crocodiles and Giraffes, plenty of monkeys, he particularly spoke about the Patas monkeys and Lizards and lots of Camels (we mustn’t forget the Camels), just to mention a few of the creatures that live there.
He showed us the only photograph of the Sahara Lion sadly now extinct.
We were told about the Olive trees grown nearer to water on the coast and a particular tree called The Tree of Tenere, this tree was standing on its own with no other tree for hundreds of miles
Although wood was an incredibly rare thing the local people worshipped this tree and left it alone.
It’s roots were found to go a hundred feet into the sand where it found a source of water to survive and would still be there had it not been for a truck driver crashing into it.
The tree did not survive and today there is a metal monument standing in its place. How could a truck driver crash into the only tree with thousands of miles of empty sand all around it? He must have had a liquid lunch!
We all found Roger’s presentation very interesting and all of us look forward to a return visit by him in the future. Roger is a member of the Torquay Probus Club.
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Paignton Probus Club 