Category: Americas and Eurasia and Africa

If it was otherwise unchanged, but lost its biggest, highest mountain, Sicily would still be a mountainous island.

Etna, however, is very much higher and larger than all other Sicilian mountains.

It is also singularly recognisable, singularly influential/consequential, and hugely more dynamic than any other Sicilian peak or range.

Across a surprisingly large area – weather permitting, and provided one is not in some other mountains’ valleys –  one can be looking over Sicilian countryside and not thinking of Etna at all, only to realise, suddenly, “there it is!”

This post’s location is the same as yesterday’s, except that it is looking at a different section of the same winery cellar’s largely “lava rock” wall.

I think that the only human activity which could have given rise to the pictured “splash of colour” is the excavation that created or reshaped the cellar’s walls. (the cellar may or may not be a reshaping of a pre-existing cave)

Thus, newly-exposed to air, iron-rich sections of long-buried lava (from one of Mt Etna’s many eruptions) would begin to oxidise.

Guess why the long-exposed surface of Western Australia’s iron-rich Pilbara region is so very red?

Looking, as I took the photo at 1.18 pm on 02 October 2023, I thought I had probably worked out what was going on.

Now, I am not convinced that my assumption was correct.

After a very enjoyable morning in Randazzo – engaging with its artisan gelato and granita aspects, as well as its most notable “lava rock” church – we headed to lunch at a nearby winery, in very attractive countryside.

Its cellar was, essentially, a lava rock cave

I do not know whether the cellar was a modified, pre-existing cave, or a cavity largely or entirely made by humans.

In either event, its walls offered more than one surprise…

Doubtless, this post’s subtitle could serve well as the latest addition to “metal” music’s ever-burgeoning array of named sub-genres.

However, this  post’s “lava rock” has no connection to any musical “rock”.

This lava rock was deployed, with “sacred” intent, as a building material.

You are looking at part of a notable Sicilian church’s exterior.

The featured image looks across the stage of Taormina’s ancient amphitheatre, through to Mount Etna.

Unsurprisingly, this venue is often described as the most beautiful of all “ancient Greek” theatres.

There is a (Roman) reason for my inverted commas…

Deploying a longer lens enables one to convey just how dramatically Etna towers over and dominates its vicinity.

This post’s photo involved a 200mm lens; the previous post’s was taken with a 30mm.

(it is generally reckoned that a “regular” 50mm lens delivers the closest approximation to a naked-eyed human’s field of view and sense of scale)

The building common to both images is Taormina’s San Domenico Palace, which is now a hotel.

Even from some distance – and via a wide-angle, short lens – Mt Etna is very obviously big.

South of the Alps, Europe-proper has no higher mountain.

Etna is circa 1.5 times higher than Australia-proper’s highest mountain.

Unlike Kosciusko’s, from some vantage points, Etna’s full height is easily viewed, from sea to summit.