Acidus wrote:
-Giant solar panel field?
-Irrigation?
-Eschalon listening post?

I think its a cranberry bog.

The one I linked here is in Jersey. They look similar.

Google Maps: Cranberry bog, Jersey

Mark Kurlansky, the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World, here turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. Populated by colorful characters and filled with an unending series of fascinating details, Kurlansky's kaleidoscopic history is a supremely entertaining, multi-layered masterpiece.

You can read an excerpt:

Once I stood on the bank of a rice paddy in rural Sichuan Province, and a lean and aging Chinese peasant, wearing a faded forty-year-old blue jacket issued by the Mao government in the early years of the Revolution, stood knee deep in water and apropos of absolutely nothing shouted defiantly at me, "We Chinese invented many things!"

Amazon will show you instances of the statistically improbable phrase "solar evaporation" in the book.

Salt: A World History, by Mark Kurlansky

Acidus wrote:
Google just added satellite view for most of the world. This link is something I found in the north east part of Austrailia. Its an insanely huge structure, and Google doesn't have any more zoomed in data.

-Giant solar panel field?
-Irrigation?
-Eschalon [sic] listening post?

These are Evaporative salt pans at Port Alma. (They are also sometimes called solar salt pans.) This aerial view (which is not of Port Alma, but of a different site) offers a different angle and more natural color than the Google overhead shots of the fields at Port Alma.

Two companies working in this area are Cheetham Salt Limited and Olsson's Pacific Salt. Cheetham seems to own the mines. Apparently Olsson's is more involved in the production end of things. This map shows where Cheetham's facilities are located.

Olsson’s Pacific Salt is a salt producer from seawater near Rockhampton (Port Alma) in Queensland. Cheetham Salt currently operates 10 solar salt fields throughout Australia (Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia) with total production over 600,000 tonnes annually. Five refineries produce a variety of salt grades ranging in grade from kitchen salt to industrial salt.

The Cheetham web site has an excellent description of "the pond system." Navigate their menu: "about salt" and then "salt from the sea."

Olsson's Pacific Salt is a salt producer from seawater near Rockhampton (Port Alma) in Queensland. Pacific Salt produces a range of processed salt which includes water softener salt, pool salt, table salt, cooking salt, flossy salt, dairy salt, iodised salt (fine, coarse and medium size), refined salt, rock salt, and sea salt.

Here's an interesting tidbit:

A salt company from central Queensland that employs former drug addicts, alcoholics, convicts and the long-termed unemployed has received a Salvation Army employer of the year award.

Robert Logan from Olsson's Pacific Salt at Port Alma, south of Rockhampton, accepted the award in Melbourne.

He says at least 75 percent of the company's current workforce has some sort of disadvantage.

Andrew Brown once worked there:

Andrew commenced with Cheetham Salt in January 1998 and is current... [ Read More (0.8k in body) ]

noteworthy wrote:
...[snip]

Damn! Thanks!