equipment

MOTHER DEFEATS DAUGHTER MRS. GARDINER'S FIFTH CLUB TITLE Chipping and Putting Prove Wining Factor Mrs W.F. Gardiner won the Royal Queensland golf club's championship for the fifth time yesterday. She defeated her daughter Miss Janet Gardiner (title holder), 2 and 1, in a closely contested 36 holes match. With six one pott greens in the second round, Mrs. Gardiner demonstrated the value of proficiency in the short game supporting accuracy from tees and airways. The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld); Tuesday, 28 July 1938 Source: trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/41014106

Before the beginning of the 20th century, the only means of obtaining pearls was by manually gathering very large numbers of pearl oysters or mussels from the ocean floor or lake or river bottom. The bivalves were then brought to the surface, opened, and the tissues searched. More than a ton were searched in order to find at least 3-4 quality beads.[citation needed] In order to find enough pearl oysters, free-divers were often forced to descend to depths of over 100 feet on a single breath, exposing them to the dangers of hostile creatures, waves, eye damage, and drowning, often as a result of shallow water blackout on resurfacing.[2] Because of the difficulty of diving and the unpredictable nature of natural pearl growth in pearl oysters, pearls of the time were extremely rare and of varying quality. Although harvesting of shells had long been practiced by Aboriginal Australians, pearl diving only began in the 1850s off the coast of Western Australia and the pearling industry remained strong until the advent of World War I, when the price of mother-of-pearl plummeted with the invention and expanded use of plastics for buttons and other articles previously been made of shell. In the 1870s pearling began in the Torres Strait, off Far North Queensland. By the 1890s, pearling was the largest industry in the region, and had a huge impact on coastal Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Because of the dangers of diving, almost no white people participated, and Asian, Pacific, and Indigenous Australians were used as cheap labor for the industry. Shells were the main aim for collection, and the whole industry was essentially a colonial one geared to procuring mother-of-pearl for sale to overseas markets for the making of buttons. As time went on and sources were depleted, divers were encouraged to dive deeper, making the enterprise even more dangerous. Divers experimented with the heavy diving suit, discarding the full diving suit and using the helmet and corselet only, which became standard practice until 1960. "Hookah" gear, tested to 48 fathoms (87 meters) in 1922, was considered unsuitable for the strong tides in these waters, and the later Scuba equipment did not supply enough air to spend the time required underwater and for decompression, while surfacing [10] Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_hunting

Basic equipment (brooms) is always useful, but more can be done when heavy machinery is engaged.