Pat's Walkabout

Bali

2012-01-22T09:25:00.003+10:00

Over the Christmas holidays Mary and I spent 3.5 weeks in Indonesia, mostly in Bali but also on the Gili Islands just to the east. Good times were had. I've got a load of pictures with only the most cursory organization, so here we go.

Whenever we travel Mary and I always go to museums, and this trip was no different. This museum, the converted house/studio of Spanish turned Balinese Antonio Blanco, was one of the nicest galleries I've ever seen. Unfortunately no photos were allowed inside, but this is the front.

Outside were a bunch of different tame birds.

And some friends.

On one of the many bridges in Ubud.

We were here for Christmas dinner at the Jiwa Damai retreat in Mambal, just southwest of Ubud.

On Christmas day we were walking around and I took this photo of a family at their store.

I got the first photo printed out and returned with a few stuffies for the little girls. They were pretty excited.

Just a caterpillar on a bowl of flowers.

He's coming right for us!

One of many big spiders. One of the Balinese guys saw me taking this picture and afterwards came up saying "No poison," as he petted it with his finger. Yikes.

Gunung Kawi was an old Balinese royal court maybe 7 or 9 centuries ago. The way the whole structure was carved out of the rock combined with the surrounding jungle and torrential rain made the whole thing very Indiana Jones.

Goa Gajah, the oddly named elephant temple. Odd because elephants are not native to Bali. Apparently the temple is named for the large river nearby, Elephant River (named because it's a really big river).

This is on the edge of Lake Batur, at the scenic Pura Ulu Danu Batur temple.

Looking the other way from Pura Ulu Danu Batur, you can see another temple with a mosque in the background. You can tell both of these temples are serious business because they have 11 levels. I don't really understand the significance, but temples have 3, 5, 7, 9, or 11 levels, roughly corresponding to the castes of Balinese society.

I wish I understood enough to write a whole post about caste in Bali because it seemed very interesting and quite different from the caste system of India. I believe in Bali it is more of religious and spiritual significance than social or financial, but the main thing I picked up is that it's a complex and multifaceted subject.

Garuda, the bird demigod mount that Vishnu rides to and from the heavens, is featured in the roof of many temples.

Mary and Ibu Wasu (mother of Wasu) in the temple in Apuan we were able to visit with our host family. This family was amazing, really nice people. They really went out of their way to make us feel like part of the family, not just visitors. Their page is here, Apuan Village Homestay.

Some of the many offerings in the aforementioned temple. This was part of a several day long blessing/purification/reopening of the temple after renovations and maintenance.

One of many little shrines overlooking the paddies.

The family altar/meditation room at the home of our host family.

Mary with some children of our host family - from left to right, baby Dia, Dede, Sam, and Nara. I taught Sam and Nara a bit of english by reading the english descriptions on the back of their Pokemon cards.

Us ready to visit the family temple in Apuan.

Mary at Munduk water fall.

I was walking around one of the villages and saw these kids sitting outside a house. The shyest looking little girl walked after me as I walked away, so I asked her if I could take a picture. As I got my camera out, the other 4 came running up too. You can see the 4th girl still running in the back right of this photo.

All of them together, all thanks to learning how to say good afternoon in Indonesian (selamat siang!).

In Petulu, a small village that's part of Ubud, every evening about 15,000 white herons show up to roost. We showed up just as they started arriving and had a beer with one of the locals while we watched from across his rice field. Every one of the white dots in the trees is a heron.

With a couple chicks.

The sunrise from our place in Ubud, Rumah Roda. This was another great homestay with a local family.

Us in front of Mount Batur. The lava flow in the background is from the eruption in 1965.

We had lunch at a restaurant (Indus, in Ubud) overlooking the Wos River Valley, in one of the fancier parts of Ubud. It was raining though, so unfortunately we didn't get to see anyone using their private walled gardens below. Fantastic spot though - $30 for lunch with drinks, mains, coffee, and a wonderful view.

Outside a wood carving gallery in Mas, near Ubud, was this finishing area. People were doing things like final sanding, polishing, and the odd inscription. Unfortunately I couldn't take any pictures of the inside of the gallery, but it was like an art museum. There are some very talented wood workers over there.

After a couple weeks in Bali we went over to the Gili Islands, a set of 3 tiny desert island type places that are considerd part of Lombok, the next major island to the east in Indonesia's archipelago. We spent our first few days on Gili Trawangan, the busiest of the three doing a SCUBA course, then the next few on the much more laid back Gili Meno, the middle of the 3.

Mary at the library.

We spent the better part of three days like this - a nice change from the busier pace earlier in the holiday.

One of several turtle sanctuaries in the Gilis, where locals have set up a series of tanks for raising turtles from hatchlings until they're big enough to a better shot at surviving.

On the Gili islands they've outlawed dogs entirely, so you don't see any stray dogs whatsoever (unlike Bali, where they're everywhere). Instead, you see stray cats. They're just as dirty, but they're not rabid, and the ones that live around the tourist spots know how to cozy up to you so you'll share a meal. We dubbed this one Footpet, because she was so grubby you should just pet her with your feet. Of course, after a week in tropical heat without a fresh water shower, we weren't much better.

This was the once bustling Bounty Hotel, now abandoned. This was a weird and creepy place, with many roofs collapsing and decks caved in. It even extended into the water, where about 10 years ago the locals decided to sink the Bounty dive platform to make an artificial reef. The platform wasn't being used enough to warrant the cost, so now the remnants of a jetty and a few piles point out off shore where a big platform rests about 15 meters underwater. We got to see the wreck up close during our SCUBA course.

The last sunset of 2011.

Meet the Littlejohns

2011-10-17T18:27:00.002+10:00

So we got married a little while ago. It went pretty well.

Family

2011-05-03T20:48:00.003+10:00

For a little while in April, we were practically running a hotel in our 1 bedroom apartment. Katie was down in Brisbane for almost a week before she headed to Darwin, and part of that time overlapped with Jim and Aidan, who were on a world tour.

Through an incredible coincidence, the 5 of us met up on the beach at Surfer's Paradise.

On our second day together, we all went over to North Stradbroke island to check out some quieter beaches. This is Mary on the Big Red Cat (the car ferry across).

Aidan blowing off some steam after listening to a boring scientist in the Moreton Bay Research Station.

This picture took a few tries.

Katie and I on the top of Mt Cootha.

Katie and I hit up the modern art gallery. I never thought I'd get so much culture out of a bit room full of balloons.

Also in the museum was this massive table full of white lego and the things people had built.

Katie on one of the bridges over the Brisbane River. It was nice to see the City Cat ferries running again - they'd been offline for the past 3 months because of the floods.

Katie and I in the natural history museum. I love these cutout photos.

Seoul

2011-04-16T20:38:00.003+10:00

On our way back from Europe we spent a couple days in Seoul as we came through Korea.

We spent our first night having dinner at a very cool buddhist temple where they brought us a whole galaxy of vegetarian dishes, followed by traditional song and dance from several Korea women.

The neon downtown.

I got corn juice out of one of the vending machines in the airport. So exciting to finally find a beverage that tastes like popped corn.

A fence on the top of the hill in the center of the city is home to a similar tradition as that of the Rhine bridge I posted pictures of earlier. We didn't have a lock on hand to give out this time.

This character is some sort of Seoul icon; we saw him all over the city in various forms. This was on top of the mountain, which we were able to drive right up because Francis, the friend of mine stationed there with the US Army, had diplomatic plates.

After the mountain, Francis and I hit up some live professional Starcraft. We saw two of my favourite players duke it out in an epic battle royale. Seeing the studio where these guys play was like visiting my Mecca.

From there, we headed to Gyeongbok Palace, one of the palaces right in the heart of the city.

The koreans thought this was just hilarious.

And so concludes our round the world adventure.

Aye Lass

2011-04-16T18:02:00.002+10:00

After a few days in Amsterdam we flew across the way to Edinburgh, where a lot of Mary's family is. It was nice to be staying in someone's house with family instead of in relatively anonymous hotels.

We spent a lot of time walking around the city with Auntie Mary. This was taken at the top of Edinburgh castle.

Me on one of the hillside streets. There is a lot of elevation change in this city. The central area just below the castle is very steep, with terraces of old stone buildings on the way up.

Mary withe the memorial for Greyfriar's Bobby, the little dog who went to his masters grave for years on end.

This is one of the gravestones in the valley below the castle.

These photos were from inside St Giles cathedral in the city. Even though there was scaffolding up so that workmen could clean the interior, it was still a beautiful church.

Three of the churches in the city, with St Giles cathedral being the hollow spire on the right.

We went out to the Firth of Forth to see the Forth Rail Bridge. Pretty epic stuff, but the weather was miserable and rainy.

From the Princess Street gardens below the castle.

We went to a number of museums in the downtown area, one of which had some dressup clothes.

The whole gang.

The morning we left it was wondeful weather. It's too bad we couldn't have spent a few more days.

A'dam West

2011-04-14T07:47:00.002+10:00

Been a few days. It's been a circus around here.

Amsterdam was very fun. It was nice to be finished my actual work, and better still, we met up with Kerrie.

Amsterdam is a beautiful city, full of canals and rickety, crooked buildings.

This place was built for nighttime.

Swans and other waterfowl cruise around in the canals.

Amsterdam has a zillion cats in it. They have a real problem with mice and rats. In the spirit of all our time with VOKRA, we went to De Poezenboot. It's a canal boat that has been converted into a cat shelter.

This one reminded us of Malcs and Jas back home.

In addition to cats, Amsterdam is full of one of my other favourite things - cheese.

And my favourite actor who played Batman.

We stayed in a bizarre hotel in the bottom of the WTC called Qbic. It had more style than execution, but this lamp was still pretty cool.

Outside of the main city center with all the centuries old buildings are modern steel and glass towers, like these two that look like something out of Halflife 2.

Random graffiti. I've no idea what this says.

The start of the red light district by the grasshopper, which is a combination coffee shop, bar, restaurant. It's a modern day gomorra.

Shoes in the flower market.

One of the many narrow streets. This was actually an exception - most narrow streets had pedestrians crammed on the sidewalks while aggressive cyclists went buzzing by.

Hurray!

Edinburgh & Seoul to come.

More Cologne

2011-03-26T18:53:00.002+10:00

Just a few others from Cologne. Two during Carnival parades:

There were fields of crocuses blooming while we were there.

Mary enjoying one of her many meals of pommes frites. It's not easy being vegan in Germany.

But getting hit on by living statues makes it worth it.

Dusseldorf

2011-03-26T09:09:00.003+10:00

On our last day in Germany, my primary contact at Lanxess took us out on the town in Dusseldorf with his wife. Dusseldorf is the capital city of North-Rhine Westphalia, and as a government city it has a very different character than Bonn and Cologne. In Cologne and Bonn you can instantly feel the connection to centuries ago with narrow lanes and cobbled streets. In Dusseldorf there is an old part of the city, but the next neighbourhood over is ultramodern glass and steel. It makes for a stunning skyline.

Several buildings by Frank Gehry.

We were walking through a strip of bars and came across some German cops. Being drunk, my colleague insisted we have a picture taken. It's a good thing we're so charming.

Chocolate and Rome

2011-03-26T09:03:00.002+10:00

One afternoon in Cologne we went to both the Roman-Germanic history museum as well as the chocolate museum. The former was full of stonework, pottery and glassware, and jewelry from centuries ago, and the latter was full of chocolate. I can't decide which I liked more.

One of the many busts in the Roman museum.

Mary out front of the chocolate museum under the massive inflatable bunny.

Inside the museum on the factory floor. They've got a small setup where they make, shape and wrap chocolate candies here. Assembly lines and chocolate are two of my favourite things.

Obligatory racially insensitive chocolate advertisement.

Right across the way from the chocolate museum was the mustard museum. We didn't go in, but only because it was closed.

Dom Cathedral

2011-03-25T22:14:00.006+10:00

The Dom cathedral towers over Cologne like a mountain.

Demons beware.

During carnival the Dom broods over a bizarre scene.

Here it is with 5 segments of a Japanese caterpillar.

Inside, it is shockingly big.

This organ is the size of a bus.

One of the many beautiful stained glass windows.

One of the windows was of a more modern style.

From the outside.

There were a number of crypts and sarcophagi. There has been a church or cathedral on this site for around 900 years, so there are no shortage of important figures buried here.

We also climbed the 522 steps to get to the top of one of the bell towers. It was a long climb, but worth it for the view. On the right hand of the bridge in this photo is where we put our lock.

Bonn

2011-03-25T22:09:00.003+10:00

One day we headed down to Bonn, birthplace of Beethoven. It was pretty koo.

On the promenade looking east across the Rhine.

A museum filled with stuffed animals. Not teddy bears.

Beethoven would've used Limewire.

I would enjoy going to school in a building that looks like this.

Vater Rhine

2011-03-24T18:52:00.002+10:00

The big bridge over the Rhine that we crossed every time we went to Cologne is home to a curious tradition. For decades, couples have written their names on locks and attached them to the fence and tossed the key in the river. We did our part one evening.

If you're ever crossing the Rhine on the big rail bridge, you can find our lock in the middle nearby some lovely anti fascism graffiti.

From the east side of the Rhine looking towards the Dom cathedral.

Carnival!

2011-03-24T18:32:00.004+10:00

This past few weeks we've been trotting around the globe. I won a scholarship to do some research in Germany with one of the industrial supporters of my research, and Mary tagged along. We spent the first two weeks of our trip in Germany along the Rhine in Leverkusen, a smallish industrial town nearby Cologne, Bonn, and Dusseldorf. We didn't know it when we booked our trip, but we were going to be in Cologne over Carnival, the heart of the pre-lent celebrations in the more Catholic part of Germany. In Cologne this takes the form of massive street parades and public shenanigans. It's like 6 full days of Halloween, except more exciting because EVERYONE takes part. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Our costumes, picked up at the last minute.

Cologne has the reputation of being Germany's San Francisco.

Aging hippies on a float.

The police on their horses were standing here for a little while waiting to clear a path for the parade. This horse and cow played out a little drama while the horse tried to get into the cow's feed bag.

The museum with all the Warhol art had a section of the School Parade on Sunday.

Nike and her husband Timo came down from Hamburg to party with us for a night. Hurray for public drunkenness!

Many of the parade floats were politically themed. Who says the Germans don't have a sense of humour?

There were several with an anti-nuclear bent, but this was my favourite.

It was great seeing all this ridiculous hooliganism right out front of the massive cathedral that dominates the city. I'm sure that the church authorities here have a long history of being just thrilled about the situation.

During the parades the guys throw out tons of candy when children yell "CARMELA!!" This guy behind Mary was right next to the kids yelling CARMELA with all his might. He was literally stealing candy from children. It was great.

This is our haul.

Country Living in Nanango

2011-02-20T21:19:00.003+10:00

This weekend Mary and I headed up to Nanango with our friends Jimmy and Liz to Liz's parents' place for the weekend. It was pretty great - horseback riding, barbecue, and lots of quality animal time.

Mary on Rocket, Liz's dumb but good hearted horse.

Liz and I. Liz is on Bill, her much smarter and more talented horse. This was the first time Mary and I had ever actually ridden horses except for pony rides when we were little. I couldn't help but think of all the knight video games I've played, except I was not spearing peasants.

Lily, the very good natured cat.

Mary and Milly, the very good natured little pup.

On Sunday we took a drive out to the Bunya Mountains National Park.

The lookout over the Bunya Gorge.

Festoon Falls.

Us right above Festoon Falls.

Pano from one of the Bunya mountains.

This is a very weird statue.

The Austral-Canada Branch of the United Nations

2011-01-16T19:17:00.002+10:00

This weekend Mary, Brett, Meredith and I had a food factory going, taking stuff down into the Fairfield flood zones. By my reckoning we passed out 250 sandwiches, 80 cookies, 60 apples, 75 cans of lemonade, and 30 beer over the course of 4 or 5 trips into the swamp. A few people asked Brett and I who we were with. We eventually decided we were a branch of the United Nations, but I don't think people believed us. We saw a bunch of the same people as yesterday, and lots of people remembered the sandwiches. We got a lot of compliments.

Today we went further along than yesterday and made it up to the Brisbane Corso. This is a decidedly higher class area than the surrounding blocks. We gave out some food and drink to some people working in one of the riverside joints, and the woman apologized because she "didn't have any money to pay us." She then corrected herself, explaining that they had money, just that they didn't have any on them. Some people aren't used to accepting charity. To paraphrase Matthew 5:45, this flood has fucked pretty much everyone, rich and poor alike.

There has been some pretty superhuman efforts down there in the cleanup. On one little street we saw about 100 people lining the sides of a road hucking trash and muck into big dump trucks. The trucks were huge, but they got filled in minutes, before another would take its place. A few houses are scrubbed down pretty well, at least from the outside. Everyone's lawns are just ruined, but it is impressive how far things have come in just a day or two.

Towards the end of our run a couple older women asked us to help move some stuff around for them inside the house. They had been cleaning all day and so they didn't want us to track our filthy boots around the house, so they asked us to take them off. Both Brett and I complied without any fuss. I didn't think there was a force on this earth that could convince me to lose my footwear in the middle of a 30 block sewer. Grandmothers have strange powers.

A typical street.

Army reserve guy guarding shit mountain. We met the girl who lived at 73 Victoria Street. Her place was totally trashed, but somehow the toilet survived intact, so she opened it up to anyone who needed it.

Terrible. This wasn't the only ruined piano we saw.

The View from Ground Level

2011-01-15T20:55:00.006+10:00

No pictures today, instead an email I sent back to friends and family back home about the situation in the flooded suburb nearest our house.

It's a nightmare in the flood zones. Today we spent all day making food & taking it down to people in Fairfield. Mary worked the bakery and made a whole bunch of cookies & treats, while Brett and Meredith and I had a sandwich factory line going. I think we made about 80 sandwiches. Whatever 6 big loaves of bread works out to. Brett brought over a cooler and we filled it up with food twice, then hauled it around and gave them out. We also passed out a whole pile of apples, and later on we did the same with a carton of beer. The beer was cheap swill - 4x - but to say it went over well would be an understatement. The running joke is that it's no big deal if the 4X warehouses get flooded because a bit of flood water would improve the taste. Still, not as low on the totem pole as Fosters. Everybody was really appreciative. There were a number of other people passing out food like us. One guy working in his driveway turned down a sandwich, saying he'd be gaining weight if he accepted all the handouts. We saw two other big BBQ tables set up grilling sausages and the like for the masses. One guy had a meals on wheels set up with a BBQ in the back of a ute.

Fairfield is way worse than Taringa where I was helping James and Jacky yesterday. Not because they got hit harder (although they did), but just because of the scale of the affected area there. J&J's place was one of maybe 40 or 50 dwellings in the area affected. I posted a picture of the junk on the street yesterday. Multiply that by 4 or 5 on every street, then imagine the same thing on 30 or 40 blocks in Fairfield alone, then imagine that in every one of the dozens of other flooded suburbs. So many ruined houses. All along the streets there are mountains of flood affected crap that had been hauled out of houses and piled by the roadside. One such mountain was about 12 feet high and 80 long. Just endless amounts of garbage. Brett and I only covered about 6 blocks of it too, so we saw maybe a half percent of the affected part of the city. I don't know where they're going to put everything. It will take hundreds of dump trucks to clean out even one suburb. God help you if you live anywhere near the place they'll put it all. Hopefully they can dump it in a big quarry and just set it all on fire. Maybe that'd be worse.

It's astonishing to see at the street level. There have been lots of pictures of the damage from the sky but when you're at ground level moving around on foot you appreciate the damage much differently. Every scrap of vegetation is a dirty grey-brown. Every house is just destroyed. Every driveway is full of inches of mud. Streams of water and crap from people spraying out houses, every lawn turned into bogs. And everywhere the smell. A fetid, cloying odor that coats everything and everyone and hangs over the whole area. You can practically taste the tetanus. Storm drains block up unless people get down and push the muck into the sewers. One guy in a bobcat had the right idea. He grabbed a mattress in the front claw and used it like a great big mop, pushing a wall of muck down the street. Most places we saw haven't even begun to rip out the gyp rock walls yet, and when they do that will flood the streets with another massive load of muck soaked trash. The gyp rock will be even less recognizable as having once belonged to a house than the endless fridges, chairs, sofas, books, and fabrics that litter the place now. We also passed a warehouse that got hit. A house has a lot of stuff in it, but the amount of junk people were pulling out of this warehouse was unreal.

A scene - one block had a communal fire hose that was being passed from house to house. There was still a bit of traffic on the road, so to keep people from driving across it and crimping the hose, somebody made a little ramp on either side using about 16 volumes of a soaked through set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Luckily it's nice out. Sun with a bit of clouds, and only 28 or 29 or so. It would be worse if it was 30+ or if it was pouring rain like in '74. All the same, some places are starting to dry out, and as that happens there will be a lot more silty dust. Masks will be more important for everyone in the upcoming days. There are still a lot of cavalier attitudes towards safety. More people are wearing proper boots and shoes than I saw yesterday, but I still saw a few people in just singlets, shorts and thongs, with no gloves. Hell, I saw one guy walking barefoot out of the area. He'd better hope he doesn't have any cuts. I grabbed a big box of gloves from the lab yesterday and was handing them out along with the sandwiches. I found humour worked - "Kevin Rudd got dropped by an infection already, and if it can bring down an ox like him it'll do the same to you." That worked better than the blatant appeals to self interest I tried previously.

The army and cops are around here and there, but the vast majority of the people are residents and whoever they can convince to help. We saw a few volunteer groups. The boy scouts had a BBQ table set up. There has been a massive outpouring of good will from people just showing up though. We saw lots of people that had no connection to the place they were scrubbing down. It's kind of a tale of two cities. If you're outside the flood zones life is pretty normal. I think everyone who is up above it all feels the need to pitch in. Right now every pair of hands helps, but it within a week or two most of the gruntiest of the grunt work will be done. After that, the city is going to be chronically short of carpenters, electricians, plumbers, tilers, and skilled tradespeople of all kinds. If you know any skilled construction people who are looking for work, send them down.

I'll be going back to school next week sometime. Summer classes reconvene on Thursday, but campus will be easily accessible earlier than that. I got across it with a bit of difficulty yesterday on my bike, so by Monday or Tuesday I'm sure most of the walkways and roads will be cleared off.

For now, I'm just thankful that I can come home to a shower and my own clean bed.

Cleanup

2011-01-14T19:13:00.003+10:00

Today I went to James & Jacky's place to help them clean up. The flood waters have started receding in a big way, so there were loads of people out doing the same.

The street they're on, Westerham, is just brutal. All the greenery that went under the flood waters is now an awful muddy grey-brown. There's debris all over the place, and the whole neighbourhood smells like a sewer. All things considered, the mood was pretty good. It seemed like there was lots of help to go around, which was lucky since there's so much work to do. Throughout the day strangers kept coming by to offer another set of hands, and a few people brought food & drinks. Two girls on a scooter randomly dropped off an esky full of ice & drinks, some chips, and a big tray of donuts. They were heroes, second only to a neighbourhood woman who brought us cupcakes.

James and Jacky are healthy and remarkably happy despite this. You can see the floodline behind them on the brick wall.

Better shot of the floodline here.

Everyone is dumping their ruined stuff by the curb. It's nuts to see how much stuff is really ruined. It gets worse when you put this in perspective. A relatively small portion of Westerham Street was underwater. There are whole suburbs that were hit even harder.

This photo breaks my heart. Luckily, they've got digital backups of these.

This photo also breaks my heart, but for different reasons.

To get to the north side of the river I had to go through St Lucia campus. It too smells like a sewer right now.

The St Lucia riverbank from the Eleanor Schonell bridge.

A couple of the UQ lakes. You can see the floodlines here. All the walkways in this area are covered in 6 or 8 cm of thick brown ooze. This place was so beautiful.

Thursday floods

2011-01-14T18:53:00.005+10:00

On Thursday Mary and I headed out to Kangaroo point and around South Bank. By this time, the flood waters had receded from their peak, but they were still very high.

Kangaroo Point Cliffs. I climb here regularly.

Loads of people were watching from the cliffs.

Newsies with a good view.

What's left of the Eagle Street Pier.

Some flooded docks around Kangaroo Point.

I don't know the name of this bridge, but it's the Pacific Motorway between the botanical gardens and the start of Kangaroo Point.

This barge or boat or whatever was wrapped around one of the piles of the Goodwill Bridge.

This pelican statue was almost submerged. Mary has a photo of these birds from a year ago.

One of the South Bank City Cat stations.

Another river ferry dock.

The Diamantina in the maritime museum. You can normally see the entire hull of this boat. It is no longer dry docked, it is just docked.

The Diamantina as it normally looks. Not my photo - from here.

Aquapocalypse 2

2011-01-12T22:56:00.003+10:00

I took a number of panorama photos today. These are all enormous, but they give a bit more of a sense of the situation. Click on the picture to see bigger versions of them.

The South Brisbane Cemetery.

The lower part of Fairfield Gardens.

Downstream of the Brisbane River from the Eleanor Schonell Bridge.

Upstream of the Brisbane River from the Eleanor Schonell Bridge.

Along Sir William MacGregor Drive.

The other way along SWM Drive.

This is supposed to be a road.

The UQ Lakes Bus Stop & some of the pathways.

Same as above but from the other side. On the right of this photo is one of UQ's playing fields.

Somewhere under all this water are the UQ Lakes.

Aquapocalypse

2011-01-12T22:10:00.002+10:00

Brisbane has been making the news lately. The current bout of flooding has beat out even the 1974 floods. Luckily this time we have the Wivenhoe dam on our side, but things are still pretty crazy here. Luckily, Mary and I are in a safe place on top of a hill. We're a solid 30 or 40 meters out of reach of the river. However, a good 50 or 60 thousand people are not so lucky. We know a few people whose houses have gone under. On the plus side, it's supposed to be pretty nice this week. I went for a walk out towards campus to take some pictures. It's unreal.

The Eleanor Schonell bridge, looking towards St Lucia campus. I ride across this every day to work.

I ride down this path to get to work.

The UQ Lakes bus stop.

Cops on rescue patrol with jetskis. They pulled into the bus loop and looked around, but I guess no one needed rescuing so they didn't launch the jetskis.

Someone's dock floating by, complete with deck chairs. The broken shit in the foreground is the old dock for the ferry that linked St Lucia with Dutton Park before the bridge was put in. It's just been hammered.

A better view of the old ferry dock.

This is Sir William Macgregor Drive, under about 2 or 3 meters of water. This is like the St Lucia equivalent of Marine Drive around UBC.

SWM Drive looking the other way, underneath the Schonell Bridge.

Looking out at the river from under the Schonell Bridge.

Looking from the top of a parkcade on campus across the lakes.

The ducks are loving it. Their swimmable range expanded about a hundred fold.

Somebody's bike locked below a parkcade. The bottom floor of this parkcade has been flooded since Monday.

These guys had tried to drive their truck out of a car park into water that was too deep for their vehicle to handle. They got it out, but the electronics/battery got fried. At this point they weren't trying to start it, just secure it to a tree so that it wouldn't get pushed away by the flood and cause damage.

Chunks of the South Brisbane Cemetery are underwater. I was the only person walking through here at the time and I have to admit, it was a bit spooky. If swamp zombies exist, they are here.

This is just outside the cemetery. I had been talking to a couple who had just agreed to buy a house down this street but hadn't settled, and the 3 of us were just being flood tourists when the two people in this photo walked up. Most of their house was underwater. They had kayaks, but they were trapped at least 2 meters under brown opaque sludge. I felt kinda guilty about just being there taking pictures, but what can you do.

This Lab just didn't give a shit. He was pretty cute, but I was not about to pet it after it had been flopping around in this muck.

This is Fairfield Gardens, a mall nearby our house. You can't normally canoe up to the front door.

The backside of Fairfield Gardens. The intersection that is to the left of the big sign is probably about 4 meters under water.

More to come.

Merry Stephmas

2010-12-31T18:41:00.002+10:00

When Mary came back from Melbourne on Christmas Eve, she had a stowaway in her bag - our friend Steph. She stayed with us from Christmas Eve until yesterday. Here are some photos.

Christmas morning.

My new shirt, a gift from Mary. I can't wait to wear it when I TA.

One night we caught a gecko in a tupperware.

We took a trip up to Mt Coot-tha, here are the girls at the top.

Part way along the trail we came across this butterfly floating in mid air above the trail. When we got close, we could see that it was a battle to the death between it and a spider. For scale, the butterfly was about 7 or 8 cm across, about the size of a tiger swallowtail.

This guy and a bunch of his friends were hanging out on the overpass.

That night we went along South Bank and stopped near the Nepalese Pagoda.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-23T22:51:00.002+10:00

It's been far too long since I've posted any pictures, but here are a couple.

Merry Christmas from down under!

This guy (girl? hermaphrodite? who can tell with frogs) was just hanging out on the rail of our steps tonight. Kinda cute, in a slippery and slimy way.

Glasshouse Mountains

2010-10-25T22:23:00.002+10:00

On Sunday James, Jason, David and I drove up to the Glasshouse Mountains to do some hiking. The Glasshouse Mountains are a set of a dozen or so weathered volcanos that haven't been active in 25 million years. We got an early start so we were able to climb two of them - Mt Tibrogargan and Mt Ngungun. We started with Mt Tibrogargan.

Mt. Tibrogargan. You can see the track on the right hand side of the mountain in this photo. About 50 meters of elevation was particularly steep.

James coming up, with farmland below.

Me at the top, with Mt Beerwah in the background.

A panorama from the top of Tibrogargan looking west.

Mt Ngungun was considerably easier and lower, only about 260m to Tibrogargan's 350m.

On the way up Mt Ngungun we passed a pretty sweet cave. It didn't go that far back, but it was still pretty neat to step into the stone. It was much cooler inside as well.

Us at the top.

Jason and a butterfly, just shy of the summit.

Mt Coonowrin in the front and Mt Beerwah in the back. These stony spurs were the central magma cones of the volcanos that were once here.

SEM Spider

2010-10-25T15:27:00.003+10:00

Last week I had some more time on the scanning electron microscope. This time I turned my attention to a spider I caught on my desk. I'm pretty sure it is some form of jumping spider, but I'm not positive. Whatever it is, I know it's fairly common because I've seen them a number of times around the office. This guy (or girl, I don't know) was about half a centimeter long in body.

Wide angle of the body and head. It is laying on its back.

Closer up to one of the two pedipalps, which as far as I know is basically part of the mouth.

Close up of what I believe is some kind of sensory hair/antennae. This structure, whatever it is, is located on the pedipalp, and measures about 5 microns in diameter and perhaps 80 microns long. By contrast, a human hair is about 100 microns in diameter.

Slightly wider angle of the same kind of structure as above. All of the hairs or sensors on the pedipalps looked like this. The almost leaf like structure makes me think these are sensors and not just hair, but I really have no idea.

The spider's body is very hairy. The wavey texture is the spider's skin underneath the hair near the back of the abdomen. The distance between those wavey lines is about 2 microns.

This is the very end of one of the spider's legs.

This is the same thing from another angle. I have no idea what all these bits are.

This is the hair bracketing one of the two central eyes (spiders have 2 pairs of 2 eyes - this is one of the larger central ones).

Dreamworld

2010-10-09T10:41:00.002+10:00

A couple weeks ago we went to Dreamworld, an amusement park/zoo/water park down near the Gold Coast. My favourite was seeing the tigers.

These guys were scarier than the tigers. The little one on the left is the female, the other is a male.

After we left the park we went to our friends' place to visit their tiny kittens. There were 5 at about 5 weeks old.

They were pretty wound up when Mary was trying to clutch them.

Then they nursed.

Then they crashed.

Scanning Electron Microscopy

2010-09-25T22:17:00.002+10:00

Over the last year I've been lucky enough to get a membership with UQ's excellent microscopy center, which includes 100 hours of time on the various microscopes. Ostensibly this time is earmarked for my thesis work, but I've been using a significant portion of it for my own hobbies, such as looking at animals from my back yard. This Friday I used it to look at a skink's hand and a moth. I did a more careful job of sample preparation this time, so the pictures I got were much more impressive than what I'd previously been able to achieve.

This is the front left hand of the skink.

This is a close up of one of the moth's main antennae. You can see several different types of sensilla on it. Some of the long hairs are chemoreceptors for tasting the air and some are mechanical actuators for measuring air currents. I'm not an entomologist so I don't know what's what really. This whole structure is about the same size as a human hair.

This is one of the mechanical actuator type sensilla. You can see the ball and socket type anchor.

This is the end of something - whether it's the moth's foot or another antennae, I'm not sure.

This is one of the compound eyes. It is close to a millimeter in diameter.

The same thing but a bit closer up. Each hex is an individual photoreceptor called an ommatidium.

This is an individual ommatidium. It is about 20 microns across. I'm not positive, but I believe the little dots on it are part of the cornea and are like an anti-reflective coating for each photoreceptor. I'm really not sure about this though. There's only so much moth literature I can read.

This is the moth's proboscis, all curled up.

These are the feathery bits at the end of the thorax, or whatever a moth's ass is called.

These are the scales on one of the wings. Each one is about 50 microns by 250 microns. I'm pretty sure they're curled up because of the way it was dried out.

Pretty cool!

Ekka and Stargazing

2010-09-19T18:09:00.002+10:00

A few weeks ago we went to Ekka, the Brisbane Exhibition. It was a huge event filled with all kinds of stuff - a dog show, loads of animals, a bunch of gov't exhibits, a big food fair, wine tastings - all over the map. It's a big deal here - the city gets the day off on the day it opens.

We went to the petting zoo area. The best was the way the aggressive goats would head butt the other ones in order to stuff their faces into the feed cups.

We got to play with these guys.

They were cute, except for when one pooped on my hand.

There was also a huge section glorifying agriculture in Queensland through awesome displays. It's amazing the art you can make with beans.

Later that night we met up with some friends and drove out to the middle of nowhere for some stargazing. I spent most of the evening looking through the scope, not taking pictures, but I did get this one:

Point Lookout

2010-08-09T19:11:00.003+10:00

This past weekend James and Jackie invited Mary and Jason and I for a weekend up at Point Lookout on North Stradbroke Island. Last year we were on the island to volunteer for the Moreton Bay Research Station's open day, but that was in Dunwich. Point Lookout is the more touristy spot on the opposite side of the island, facing the open Pacific.

Us on the North Gorge walk.

On the opposite side of the gorge.

Mary and I in front of Main Beach.

These birds were either fighting or mating. Sometimes it's difficult to tell, much like with humans.

This is a wagtail willy, a type of bird that uses it's large tail to counterbalance it while doing crazy maneuvers in midair.

A piece of coral washed up on the beach near Dunwich.

Cylinder Beach from the headlands. I want to come back here and string up my hammock between those two trees.

A little succulent on the cliffs.

Sandpipers or oyster pickers, I'm not sure which.

This picture was taken shortly before the plovers started going apeshit and swooping and diving at me for approaching their nest. I just wanted to see the babies.

Taipei

2010-07-26T22:15:00.003+10:00

On the way back from Canada we had a stopover in Taipei in Taiwan. We only had 18 hours between landing and takeoff, but it was enough time to get into the city and see some sights. It was a great time and I would go back in a heart beat.

The first place we visited was the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial complex. On the left is the National Concert Hall, on the right is the National Theatre, and in the center is the CSK Memorial/museum.

This style of monumental architecture is amazing. Standing before it you can't help but be awed, which I guess is the whole point.

This is one of Chiang Kai-Shek's sweet bulletproof cars.

This is in the top of the memorial, with the honour guard in the foreground.

A Taiwanese vending machine. Note the asparagus juice and the milk peanut soup. We didn't try either.

This big fish had a bunch of writing on it and a coin slot. I didn't know what would happen but I knew I had to give the fish money. In return we got a little canister of pellets with which to feed the fish.

Longshan Temple, built in 1728 in an older section of Taipei.

We called this the lovecat, but like so much Taiwanese art, we have no idea what it signifies.

The National Palace Museum, a massive gallery of Chinese and Tibetan artifacts. Depending on the narrative you listen to, the pieces in this museum were either stolen by Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese Nationalists, or saved by the same from being destroyed like so many other artifacts in Mao's Cultural Revolution.

I'm pretty sure a Taiwanese hobbit lives here.

The Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world.

The Super Big Wind Damper inside that helps the building maintain stability.

The city from the top of the Taipei 101, approximately 400m up.

Figurines in the little shop at the top of the Taipei 101.

We were heading back to the airport by the time the sun set, but even in the short time we saw Taipei after dark it was clear the city changes clothes every evening.

Skimboarding Glam Shots

2010-07-26T21:43:00.005+10:00

Skimboarding is always good for some glam shots. If you take enough photos everyone gets a chance to look badass. Note that some of these photos were taken by Rob and some were taken by me.

Long Beach

2010-07-26T21:37:00.002+10:00

Every year for the past few years we've gone out to Long Beach to camp and skim. Lucky for us, Rachel organized it this year so we were still able to do it. As always, it was the best.

I love having beach fires.

The Fam

2010-07-26T20:47:00.002+10:00

Katie and I bought each other these shirts. The one I'm wearing is the sport shop uniform at the heliski resort she worked at for the winter. The one she's wearing is one of my own creation. She has Australian friends.

All together now.

Lighthouse Park Climbing

2010-07-22T21:30:00.002+10:00

Nick and Gareth and I visited Lighthouse Park to do a bit of climbing. It's not the best place in terms of the routes you can climb, but you can't beat the scenery and setting.

I made Gareth pose for the camera. He's too good to actually fall like this.

Garibaldi

2010-07-22T21:11:00.003+10:00

Alex and Sarah and I headed up to Garibaldi Lake and near the Black Tusk for a day hike the day after Canada Day. The trail report for June said there was 1-2 meters of snow on the plateau, so we figured that since we were going in July it would've melted. No. They were not kidding. Despite it being a real slog through the snow, it was a beautiful hike. I hated my life for the first few hours when we were gaining elevation with no real view points, but once we got within view of the Black Tusk and Garibaldi Lake it was all worth it. Plus I got to see Alex with his shirt off.

The peak of the Black Tusk is in the clouds behind.

Up here it was difficult to find the trails because they were all covered up. We were going by flags and a few foot prints.

Garibaldi Lake still looked a little cold.

On the way back down, after we passed the lake, we came to The Barrier wall, a massive unstable rock formation created during a volcanic eruption about 12 thousand years ago. We stopped there for a break and were immediately accosted by some very brazen chipmunks and whiskey jacks.

This may be the best picture I've ever taken.

We made it!

Ripple Rock

2010-07-22T20:23:00.002+10:00

Mom and dad and Mary and I went up to Ripple Rock RV just north of Campbell River for some glamour camping (aka glamping) in their big new RV. It was a great place - very relaxing and right on the water. While we were there we did a hike out to a bluff overlooking Seymour Narrows, the ex-site of Ripple Rock. Ripple Rock was a titanic treacherous rock that sunk or damaged 120 odd ships until finally being blown up in 1958. The blast was the largest commercial non-nuclear explosion in history and thankfully it is commemorated in this video here.

Browning Bay in the morning fog.

Buzzing around in the zodiac.

These two eagles hung out up in the tree looking over the RVs.

Kelp gardens just off the shore.

Mom and I at Browning Bay.

Hurray for underwater cameras.

He looks so sad.

Us at the view point looking over the site of Ripple Rock.

Ben and I at the viewpoint.

Clearly there are sea otters in this bay.

I love that you can see the pollen on this guy.

Neck Point

2010-07-21T21:50:00.002+10:00

Neck Point is one of my favourite places in Nanaimo.

I blamed Ben for scaring these geese and their goslings into the waves, but it was me.

I would not do this with a jellyfish in Australia.

Pygmy Goats

2010-07-21T21:39:00.003+10:00

My cousin recently got a couple of little pygmy goats named Marigold and Sweetpea. When we went to see them my dad dropped Mary and I off at their pen while he went to visit Grandpa. A few minutes later when he came back he thought my cousin's 3 year old Eli was home because of all the squealing and giggling, but it was just Mary.

The Start of Canada

2010-07-21T21:34:00.003+10:00

We spent the last month in Canada. It was great.

Good to be home.

Mary's mom knows just how to pet Ben to make him look like a goof.

Jake the vicious jungle cat, lurking in the periwinkles.

Perth

2010-07-21T21:29:00.002+10:00

It's been a long time since I've updated this blog, but I'm going to stick to chronological order. Here are a few photos from my trip to Perth back in May for the ALTA conference.

Bronze roos downtown.

A swan trying to stay warm.

This guy did a lot of posing/trying to dry off in front of the downtown.

Australian Winter

2010-05-15T11:14:00.003+10:00

Southern Queensland and northern New South Wales had their first frost of the year last night. I've noticed a lot more people out and about wearing thick winter pea coats and scarves in the evening. At the same time, here is Mary and I enjoying the morning in our back yard.

Hurray for the Australian winter!

Gladstone

2010-04-25T11:32:00.003+10:00

This weekend I was up in Gladstone QLD, an industrial town about 600 km north of Brisbane. I was up there with the chemical engineering class that I tutor so that the students could see some real industrial sites. The group I was part of visited Queensland Alumina as well as the Boyne aluminum smelter, so we were able to see the entire aluminum production process, from red bauxite pebbles to fine white alumina flour to solid aluminum ingots.

Most of the students had never been in a serious metal production plant before, so this was new to most everyone. The two plants were large, even by resource industry standards. Queensland Alumina produces about 4 million tonnes of alumina per year, about a third of which goes to the smelter in Gladstone to produce 550,000 tonnes of aluminum metal per year. The smelting process for aluminum is very energy intensive thanks to the vicious thermodynamics, and as a result the Boyne smelter uses about 20% of Queensland's electricity.

The safety regulations of both plants prevented me from taking any photos - they don't want you looking down a lens when you should be watching your footing. You can see both plants on Google Earth though - Queensland Alumina, with the clear division between red side (bauxite dust) and white side (alumina powder), and Boyne Smelter, next to the giant red mud tailings impoundment. I also picked up some true Aussie safety lingo - QAL's slogan was "Mates looking after mates", and BSL's is the beautifully eloquent "If it isn't safe, don't do it that way." Short and to the point, I guess.

The place we were staying was right next to a nice beach park, so my photos from the weekend were limited to this area.

I found a few colonies of these green and orange weaver ants that build nests by sewing together clusters of leaves and living in the enclosures. Each nest was about the size of a softball, but one was almost the size of a football.

On the beach I found all these little balls of sand that are apparently pushed out of burrows by the crabs that live in these holes. As the tide comes up and down every day, this has got to be a lot of work.

I also noticed a curious thing in the trees. I saw a number of messy looking spiderwebs that all had leaves right in the middle of the web. At first I figured they were just abandoned/old webs, but then I realized that was what they wanted me to think. Underneath the central leaf in every one of these haphazard webs was a little red spider. Obviously this is their way of hiding from the flying nasties that would eat them if they were exposed.

Finally, a blue feathered kookaburra who was nice enough to pose while I got up close, and some yellow flower.

Beenleigh Kitten

2010-04-14T17:53:00.003+10:00

Last week we spent a few days down in Beenleigh in the 'burbs house sitting for one of Mary's actor friends. It was a nice week because they had a pool, a couple cats, a couple dogs, and a nice TV with a bunch of DVDs. The first morning I spent there was a little too exciting though.

At about 7:15am as I was leaving for work I went out into the back yard to grab my bike and found blood all over the patio. One of the dogs, a black lab named Nina, had gouged her achilles tendon on her back leg and she was bleeding profusely. Mary and I had to field dress her with some torn up face cloths until we could arrange for a trip to the vet. The dog made it OK but after a few hours of surgery she'll have a metal plate in her leg for another couple months. Ness, the owner, credits us with saving the dog's life as she lost a lot blood despite our efforts and would have lost more without us preventing the bleeding. Pretty crazy.

Despite that one morning, it was great to get some animal time, since we don't get a lot of that down here. We spent most of our time relaxing with Millie, the little 2 or 3 month old kitten. These are photos of her and Mary playing in the pool.

Australia Zoo

2010-04-04T09:36:00.003+10:00

This weekend Mary and I went up to Beerwah to go to the Australia Zoo, the zoo run by the Irwin family. It was a long trip up and back, but it was definitely worth it. The zoo is really well run, with lots of handlers, big pens for the animals, and a very strong overarching theme of conservation and research.

Here's us out front:

Our first stop was with the small clawed asian otters. We got there in time to see the two sisters begging and whining for one of their daily feeds from the handlers. It reminded us of the various cats we've had as they beg for treats.

With a snack:

After that we saw a handful of injured kookaburras who could no longer fly.

This crocodile weighed well over a ton. I can't remember if he was a saltie or a freshwater croc. He had a little friend on his back, hitching a ride.

They had several beautiful cassowaries. Looking at these birds that are part of a family that is 20 million years old, it's hard not to see the dinosaur genes in them.

Of course, being Australia zoo, there were also a good number of koalas. This one was good enough to come into the sun for a photo.

We also enjoyed the trundling echidnas.

The common but still cool water dragon, popping up out of a hole in a stump.

There was a kangaroo/wallaby enclosure where you could pet and feed the docile animals, so of course we spent a bit of time there.

This red panda was fairly active, climbing around his enclosure while his mate slept in the trees.

This bird was in the underbrush so I decided to use the flash to illuminate him more, only to find that he was actually demonic.

At the end of the day we went to the tiger enclosure. This was really neat, because at the Australia Zoo they do an incredible job of acclimatizing the tigers to their handlers as cubs. As a result, the trainers and handlers can get right in the cage to interact with the tigers directly. Unfortunately the photos I got were from behind glass, so there was a lot of interference from reflections, but you can still get the idea.

This is one of the tigers jumping for a piece of meat thrown in the air.

And this is them acting like big kitties, enjoying a carton of milk. It was really funny watching the 3 of them swarm over the handler trying to get at the carton.

All in all a great day.

Ducks, Stars, and an Unexpected Guest

2010-03-01T22:41:00.003+10:00

It's been rainy here for the last several days - perfect weather for the new batch of ducklings I've seen around the UQ lakes for the last couple weeks. Luckily the one day I had my camera out it was sunny.

They were all cute and nice...

Then I got too close and the dad swore at me...

And then they took off.

I've been experimenting with more astrophotography from the back yard. Even though there's not as many stars that are visible with the naked eye, the extra city light makes framing silhouettes easier and more dramatic.

Looking west at Orion.

Looking southeast at Crux and the Milky Way.

Last night we had an unexpected visitor. Mary and I were hanging out on our computers when we heard a bunch of racket outside and on the roof, followed by scritching and scratching on metal. We looked out and saw this idiot hanging off the screen right out from our kitchen window. I have no idea what he was doing, but he was certainly doing a lot of it. After I took this shoddy photo I opened the door to try to get another one but he got spooked and jumped back into the trees.

Astrophotography

2010-02-13T18:13:00.003+10:00

Last night I went out into the northern boondocks with a friend and got far away from the city lights in order to check out the cosmos with his telescope. We headed about an hour north of the city and found a little cul-de-sac surrounded by cows and a whole lot of nothing. It was perfectly clear, and with the moon being almost opposite to full, there was nothing obstructing a crisp view of the streak of the milky way. Using Dan's telescope we looked at Mars, the rings of Saturn, the nebula in Orion's belt, the Pleiades, and numerous other deep space star clusters. I also learned a thing or two about long exposure astrophotography.

Orion from the southern hemisphere.

The Southern Cross is near the top of the picture in the middle.

A composite of 15 images taken 1 minute apart.

Fun times. It makes me want to own a telescope.

Australia Day

2010-01-27T20:41:00.002+10:00

Tuesday was Australia day here, so we had the day off. We got up stupid early in order to go up to Kondalilla falls near Maleny, about an hour north of Brisbane.

I haven't seen one of these in a while.

In the parking lot of the start of the hike there was a baby bird on the pavement that had fallen out of the tree. It was covered in ants biting it all over. A couple of the girls with us picked it up and painstakingly picked all of them off. We left it in the crotch of the tree it fell out of, so hopefully the parents find it and it makes it.

This is the empty skin of a cicada.

Cute, in an ugly way.

The Obi Obi Creek valley.

We saw a couple of these guys on the trail. This one was about a meter long. He was the little one. The other was closer to 2 meters.

Lake Baroon, the lake that the Obi Obi leads into.

We had lunch here.

On the way up we passed the Glasshouse mountains. These are made of the hard central core of lava plumes from ancient volcanos. The soft parts of the mountains have eroded over millions of years and all that is remaining are these rocky spurs.

Some flowers from one of the lookouts.

The Tiniest Gecko

2010-01-10T18:13:00.001+10:00

I caught this little tiny gecko today out in the yard.

Closeup:

Critters of Melbourne

2010-01-06T22:13:00.003+10:00

While we were in Melbourne we also visited the Melbourne Aquarium and the Melbourne Zoo. There were so many cute and scary animals that I felt they deserved their own post.

Antarctic penguins!

The jelly fish were beautiful too because of the cool lighting.

Upside down jellyfish.

Fairy penguins!

We got to the elephant enclosure just in time to see them feeding them by throwing 40 or 50 apples and gourds into their wallowing pond. The one right in the water was 22 months pregnant.

It was super hot the day we visited the zoo and everything was just nuked, including this lion. We felt sorry for all the cats with their big coats.

Mini dilophosaurs from Jurassic Park.

We saw this peahen and her chicks out on the picnic grounds.

A painted ibis.

Some kind of heron.

The zoo also had a butterfly enclosure. Even though it was 100% humidity and over 30, it was still cooler than outside in the sun.

Plus meerkats!

This guy was just splayed out on the ground because it was so hot.

Huddled under a log in the shade.

The brave little sentinel.

A short clawed river otter.

A nest of wombats, sleeping in their burrow.

Melbourne in the City

2010-01-06T20:41:00.004+10:00

One of the greatest things we learned on our trip to Melbourne was that one of the first settlers was named John Batman, and so the city was originally named Batmania. Batmania! As a result, there's a Batman Avenue, Batman Hill, Batman Street, and Batman Park, among others.

As a city, Melbourne has put a lot of emphasis on the preservation of old buildings. It makes walking around the downtown area really interesting, because there are so many well maintained pieces of 19th century brick work, from cathedrals and churches to old administration buildings, as well as modern architecture from more recent development.

The Royal Exhibition Hall, which used to be the Melbourne city hall.

Inside the old Melbourne gaol, where 130 odd prisoners were executed by hanging including the infamous Ned Kelly. The gaol is now open to the public in a series of exhibits. It was creepy. The guy pictured was one of the tour guides who played in re-enactments.

Outside the jail.

Flinders Railway Station.

From the steps of the Victoria Parliament building.

We went to the docklands to watch the NYE fireworks, but they were rained out by the storm front that you can see moving across this photo. As the evening wore on, the sky got angrier and angrier until it finally opened up with rain and lightning.

Melbournians taking shelter from the rain on NYE.

Chinatown.

The Forum, a venue in town for theatre and bands.

St. Pauls Anglican Cathedral.

Dave, a friend of Mary's, and us with St. Pauls in the background.

Dave and I in the atrium in Fed Square, near the National Gallery of Victoria.

The CBD from the south side of the river.

A bee on a flower in Carlton gardens.

The Fairy Tree in Carlton gardens, a nearly 100 year old carved tree stump covered in little fairies.

The other side of the Fairy Tree, with a somewhat disturbing look at fairies caught in the web of a giant spider...

We also explored the amazing and titanic Melbourne Museum. We spent about 5 hours here and I don't feel like we saw it all. They had a big history of Melbourne exhibit (although strangely, they didn't play up the Batmania angle).

Aboriginal sails and canoes in the museum.

A giant armadillo.

A menagerie of stuffed animals. There were a couple hundred species represented here from around the world.

And even dinosaur bones!

Melbourne - Point Nepean Park, Cape Schanck, and Brighton Beach

2010-01-05T20:14:00.002+10:00

Mary and I spent last week down in Melbourne visiting with a few friends and doing touristy stuff. We did a whole load of fun things and really enjoyed ourselves in a truly beautiful city, so I'm going to split up the photos into a few posts.

One of the first places we visited was Brighton Beach, with its colourful beach boxes. These little shacks were built before it was illegal to build on the beach. Now, their grandfathered status makes them very valuable.

Adam and Nicole, our Australian and Australian-in-spirit tour guides.

He was asking for it.

We also passed a big set of sand sculptures.

Later in the week we went for a drive with Adam and Nicole to Point Nepean National Park, way out at the end of one of the bull horns that encloses the giant bay Melbourne is built on, Port Philip. Historically this has been a defensive position for Australians since 1880ish. Now there are a bunch of ruined gun emplacements and the like that date to WW2. The beach on the oceanward side of this park is also where Australian prime minister Harold Holt drowned in 1967.

In the distance is one of the watch towers. In the foreground, the domed structure used to have an artillery piece.

Somewhere around here is where Harold Holt drowned. This beach also claimed the SS Cheviot in 1887.

The other side of the point is not as threatening. Apparently this is a great place to skin dive.

One of the WW2 era bunkers.

During WW2 Happy Valley was the ironic name for the barracks here, as the soldiers were beset by boredom, incessant flies, and blistering heat. Now the irony is the numerous unexploded shells.

That day we also visited Cape Schanck, just 70 km or so north of the southernmost tip of continental Australia. The weather turned by the time we got here so it was colder, overcast, and very, very windy.

I lost my hat here =[ (bottom right corner).

Northbrook Gorge

2009-12-09T08:59:00.002+10:00

On Sunday I met up with Jenni and Brad and a whole load of their friends to go on a hike through a part of the Brisbane National Forest Park near Mt Glorious. After a slog through some bush up onto one small peak, we descended into the bottom of the Northbrook gorge to rock hop our way down stream. Parts of the walk necessitated swimming in boots.

Heading down into the gorge through the bush.

We scared this guy up a tree as we walked down. He was about a meter long.

Rockhopping before the gorge got too steep. When this place floods it must be a lot different.

The Northbrook gorge. Walking through this stuff I felt like Dr. Livingston.

A river crossing just before lunch.

Another one.

Before jumping once more into the water. Just around the corner from this picture was the biggest spider I've ever seen, but my camera was in my dry bag.

Townsville

2009-12-05T11:04:00.003+10:00

This week James and I headed up to Townsville for a few days to check out some industrial sites. We hit the nickel refinery at Yabulu and the Sun Metals zinc refinery down the road. In between trips, we did a bit of touristy stuff around the city, including climbing up Castle Hill, the mini mountain that looks over the city.

The view from our balcony.

A big chunk of coral from the nearby Great Barrier Reef.

Castle Hill at night in the middle of the city.

The same place from Queen's Garden, one of the oldest Botanical Gardens in Australia.

The city, from Castle Hill.

James and I from the top of Castle Hill.

On the way back down.

Christmas in 33C high humidity.

The ugliest bird I have ever seen.

The cockatoos were nicer though. They followed me around the cage, staying right in my face.

Open Day at Moreton Bay Research Station

2009-11-21T23:59:00.005+10:00

This weekend Mary and I headed up to Moreton Bay Research Station on Stradbroke Island to volunteer for the station's open house. They open the doors to the public to show off how cool marine biology is through exhibits, touch tanks, and fun activities for kids. We had a great time out in the little town of Dunwich. I'm sure we'll head back out again to explore the island more.

Mangrove trees in Moreton bay on the way out.

A little mangrove island in the middle of the bay. It's weird seeing trees kilometers offshore. The whole bay is very shallow so they do a lot of dredging for ships. In between the deeper channels, there are little patches of mangroves.

I was pretty excited to see this pelican as we came in on the boat.

The research station and the park next to it. The park is the site of an Aboriginal midden. Along the water if you look at the sediment you can find shells from the waste of generations of indigenous people.

Mary and I in the harbour.

There was a beautiful little cemetary by the jetty. Apparently koalas live in the gum trees nearby, but although we looked, we didn't see any.

The beach in front of the station. Some of the samples in the touch tanks came from the mud flats and sea grass beds just off here.

Mary and another volunteer, Carla. We saw pelicans, so I had to run out to get a closer look.

I spooked one.

But they relaxed. In the background is some kind of oyster picker bird. Stradbroke is home to a lot of oyster farmers, human and otherwise.

We saw lots of other crazy animals in the tanks at the station. Some dangerous, others not so much.

I was pumped to see this Wobbegong aka Carpet Shark. There was a picture of one of these in a shark book I had when I was about 6, but of course I had never seen a live one until this weekend. It was about a meter long.

This puffer is apparently toxic to eat, so I didn't try.

Watching this brittle star move around was great. It's a sea star but it moves super fast. It kept running away to stuff itself in this hole on the underside of the rock.

I held what I'm pretty sure was a navigator from Dune or an Advisor from Half Life 2. Or maybe it was a brain slug. Or maybe just a sea cucumber. Actually, one of the few unpleasant things about this weekend was when a sea cucumber decided to barf up its innards all over a tank and we had to move everything quickly before the toxic guts poisoned the rest of the animals in the tank. Apparently the prolapse of sea cucumbers is a defence mechanism, but I don't really get it.

Egg sac from a conch. The egg sac was almost as big as the animal - about 8 inches long. Very bizarre. They expand when they leave the animal, but it's still a huge egg sac compared to the size of the animal.

Meggie and a sea star from the touch tank.

Gimme 5. Or one.

Sunset on Friday night.

Mary and Meggie on the way home.

A bunch of us volunteers on the way back.

Definitely a fun weekend. I'd like to go back to Stradbroke sometime to explore it more.

Another Trip to the Botanical Gardens

2009-11-18T21:06:00.002+10:00

Mary and I headed up to the Brisbane Botanical Gardens. This was her first time. It's a beautiful place, and it was neat to see it again deeper into spring. Far more of the flowers were in bloom, and many of the plants were subtly different than a month or two ago.

This was in the tropical plant dome. When we saw it a month ago it wasn't blooming like this.

I really liked this cactus. Every segment was either covered in spiderweb or was erupting with little flowers.

After we left the garden, we met up with James and Jacky. Jacky has excellent taste in terrible hats.

More Ducks

2009-11-06T18:51:00.002+10:00

The other day Mary met me after school so we could have a walk around the UQ lakes and spot ducklings. Unfortunately, we couldn't find the ducklings I pictured previously, but we did find a bunch of little purple swamphens. I was getting pretty close to take pictures of these guys and one of the swamphen parents was not impressed. (S)he kept rushing at me with wings outstretched, trying to chase me off. I stayed put at great personal risk to bring these photos to you.

On the way back home I took this photo of the evening over the Brisbane River. Click for a bigger version.

Would you like SARS with your Sars?

2009-11-06T18:48:00.002+10:00

Down here sarsaparilla is the drink of choice over root beer. Mary picked up a bottle made by the McSars family. It has double the SARS of ordinary sars.

Fun Fact

2009-11-04T09:44:00.001+10:00

Fun Fact: In Australia, the noble weiner dog is known as a sausage dog. I didn't think weiner dogs could get any funnier, but here we are.

Ducklings

2009-10-29T18:34:00.003+10:00

Yesterday on my way home from work I saw 9 tiny ducklings huddled together on the sidewalk, flanked by their parents. I was really disappointed that I didn't have my camera to take pictures of the little balls of feathery fluff, but today I saw them again.

Some Ideas Canada Should Adapt from Australia

2009-10-22T10:20:00.002+10:00

I've been here long enough now to notice some things that Canada really ought to adopt from Australia. Such as:

Including GST on all listed prices. It's great to pick up an item listed at $2.50 and pay $2.50 at the till. In Australia it's illegal to display a price without including tax. Tax is listed as a subtotal on the receipt/invoice.

Doing away with pennies. Here, all prices are to the penny (so an item can be $1.69 for example), but when you get to the till the total price is rounded to the nearest 5 cents. As a result, much less shrapnel in your pocket.

Fast and free money transfers between banks in lieu of cheques. No one here uses cheques. Instead, you get someone's account info, punch it into your online bank, and the money moves immediately. Paying rent or bills is easy, as is giving money to an individual.

Prostitution is legal in safe, clean, regulated brothels. Fuck you, Pickton.

In every park there are electric or wood barbeques that are free to use. Barbequeing is a right of life.

The public transit here uses oyster cards, which you scan as you get on and off the train/bus/ferry.

Public transit emphasizes the use of trains and light rail, with a 25 year expansion plan for new rail lines. The Brisbane area system extends approximately 300km from end to end.

More Koalas, Jacaranda Trees

2009-10-12T15:23:00.002+10:00

Yesterday while at Lone Pine Mary and I also each took a turn holding Bentley. It was pretty great, even though he pooped on me a little.

Also, right now the Jacaranda trees are in bloom so there are beautiful purple flowers all over Brisbane. These photos are from the UQ campus near the lakes.

The Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

2009-10-11T18:51:00.002+10:00

Yesterday was me and Mary's 5th anniversary, so to make it memorable we headed to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, a park/zoo in the southwest of Brisbane that's been operating since 1927. It was great to finally see marsupials that aren't possums that live in my house. They had loads of different Australian fauna there, from the fuzzy and cute to the scaly and scary.

Most of them looked pretty much like this. Grey lumps in a tree that didn't move much.

Super cute though.

We went to the Birds of Prey show, where they showed off a bunch of hunter birds. This is Amiga, a wedge tailed eagle that hunts anything up to the size of a wallaby.

A white bellied sea eagle landing on a perch.

A handler bringing in an Australian masked owl named Jarrad. This guy was pretty nervous about the crowd. Before he flew anywhere he would anxiously watch the crowd, then turn away and eat the mouse offered to him.

A barn owl named Smudgie. She was very graceful in flight, less so when the mouse tail would dangle from her beak.

We also were around for the wild lorikeet feeding, where they set out dishes of sugary slurry for the dozens of wild lorikeets that live near the park.

This myna and her chick were pretty cute. The mom kept bringing cockroaches down for the baby to eat.

It wasn't all cute though. Some of the stuff we saw could definitely bite your face off.

Like this freshwater crocodile.

These lace monitors are too small to threaten you, but I wouldn't want to find one licking my face all the same.

The part of the park that was probably the most fun was the kangaroo/wallaby enclosure. You could buy bags of little feed pellets and the various animals would eat them right out of your hand. They were very comfortable around people too, so you could touch them, pet them, and do pretty much everything but ride them.

Me and a pretty-faced wallaby. That's actually what they're called.

This kangaroo was so hungry she grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go until all the pellets were gone. Clever girl.

A mom roo with a joey sticking out. When we first approached only the joey's tail was sticking out of the pouch, but after we offered the mom food the little one stuck its head out. It was shockingly cute.

This is a wombat. It is about 3 feet long and looks like a giant mutant hamster. Mary wanted to pet it, but apparently they bite.

Tasmanian devils also bite. They're only about a foot long though.

It's hard out here for a koala.

Hens and Chicks

2009-10-06T16:51:00.002+10:00

Today I took Mary around the UQ campus and then down to South Bank and the West End.

6 baby dusky moorhens and their parent from the UQ lakes.

Mary on the city cat.

Life is good.

More Birds of the UQ Lakes

2009-10-02T18:01:00.003+10:00

I still haven't seen any real marsupials since I've been here (except those asshole possums) so I've had to be content with all the colourful/weird looking birds. Luckily, there are a lot of those on campus. Most of them congregate around the UQ lakes.

The orange faced one is a dusky moorhen, the one with the white is a eurasian coot, and the other two are some kind of duck (real specific, I know).

These funny looking things are guineafowl.

The white bird is a cattle egret and the black billed one is an Australian white ibis. The ibises are all over campus. They look pretty and exotic, but they lose some of their charm when you see one with a beak covered in salsa because it has been picking through the trash.

I really like these guys, the purple swamphen. I really like the birds that have that kind of colourful megabeak.

The last 3 are photos of the little corella. These guys form huge flocks and sit around in trees beaking off to people down below. They're the peanut gallery of the UQ lakes.

UQ Lakes Goose

2009-10-01T20:53:00.003+10:00

Every day on my way to and from school I ride along side the UQ Lakes. It's great because there's a whole pile of waterfowl that live in or around it. Geese, cockatoos, guinea-fowl, swamphens, wood ducks - all kinds of crazy stuff. Sometime in the future I'll post photos of everything I can find down there, but in the mean time, here is a goose making a funny face. The little white guys by the water are cockatoos.

Surfer's Paradise

2009-09-27T19:38:00.003+10:00

Today James and I hopped on the train and headed down to Surfer's Paradise. It's a beach town that's full of condos and resorts along the water. It's worth looking at on Google Maps/Earth because of all the little canals/rivers that break up the town. They've got about 20x as much waterfront in the town than you'd think if you just looked at the coastline.

But forget that, the real reason to go here is the absolutely massive white sandy beach that stretches along the whole coast. It's almost 20 kilometers long from one end of the other. By comparison, Long Beach in BC is only about 14 km long, even if you include Comber's Beach.

I was too busy having lots of fun in the water to take too many photos, but here's a wide shot of one side of the beach. What you can see in this one, up to the buildings in the far distance, is about a fifth of the beach at most.

But really, I've seen big beautiful beaches before. What I haven't seen before was hundreds of huge goddamn bats flying around in broad daylight. There's a park that we walked beside when we were heading back to the bus home, and all of a sudden a massive number of giant bats started flying out of the trees they roost in during the day. They were titanic fruit bats. Some local guy who saw us gaping told us it's pretty common for them to all flip out and fly around if something spooks them, but that didn't make it any less bizarre for us Canadians. There were literally hundreds in the air at once. I felt like I was in a scene from a Hunter Thompson book.

This photo was just a fraction of them.

After they settled down they went back to roosting. All those black shapes near the top are curled up bats.

Also, I'm a huge dork so I thought this apartment block was pretty funny.

A Day at the Brisbane Botanical Garden

2009-09-26T21:49:00.007+10:00

Today Jackie and James and I headed over to the Brisbane Botanical Gardens at the bottom of Mt. Coot-Tha. It was great - they've got a whole pile of crazy and beautiful plants and flowers, and the place is huge.

As per usual, I don't know what the vast majority of these plants are called so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

More behind the fold:

I loved these things. Too cool.

The base of these guys are great. I think the next image is of a much bigger individual of the same species.

I saw these on Mt. Coot-Tha growing off the gum trees.

Figs!

This guy was about 3 inches across. There were a whole pile of them in the fenced in overpass going over the highway. I like his little mummified dead bug storage space.

This floss silk tree looked just vicious and hateful. Those spikes are over an inch long.

This is too cute. The big one is a statue, the little one is real.

More lizards. Both these guys were in the meter long range.

These seed pods or whatever they are were about the size of boat bumpers.

I'm sure these weren't actually orchids, but they reminded me of them.

Cacti often have such beautiful flowers. It's Australian spring, so lots of stuff is in bloom right now.

We saw this guy on the way home. He was about 40cm tall, and half of that height was his big stork style legs. Jackie said she thought he was an endangered species, but I don't recall the name.

What a great day!

Dustbowl

2009-09-23T14:39:00.002+10:00

It's been really dry and windy here today, so much so that a few hundred clicks south, Sydney is in the middle of a brutal dust storm. Up here in Brisbane it's not nearly as bad, but all the clouds are tinted red/brown and I can't see nearly as far out my window as is usual. The air sticks in your mouth and throat. Luckily I've got a particulate mask to wear for the bike ride home today...

Photo taken this morning in Sydney, ripped from Kent Johnson's Flickr. Tons more photos on Flickr here

Australian Cop Scandal

2009-09-22T17:22:00.003+10:00

When I heard this story on the news on TripleJ the other day I nearly died laughing.

5 SERT officers (the Aussie equivalent of SWAT) got busted for jumping out of a police minivan at traffic lights and running around it naked. This has been all over the news the last few days.

Several of the hilarious aspects about this:

First, the sheer idiocy of doing this in a marked police minivan

Second, the fact that the police union is backing the guys on this one

Third, my favourite bit, the fact that the Courier News decided their readers needed to be linked to the wikipedia entry on Chinese Fire Drills.

Australia!!

More Lizards

2009-09-22T17:13:00.004+10:00

I've seen some pretty cool lizards while I've been down here. Here are some more. These ones are all bigger than the ones I've posted before.

I saw this guy by the road in the morning a couple weeks ago. I think it's a bigger version of the bearded dragon that the little girl had in the market the other day, but I could easily be wrong. This guy was about 75cm long.

This guy was in James and Jackie's garden. He's a Eastern Blue Tongued Skink

An Australian Water Dragon that was down by the ferris wheel at Southbank. He was about a meter long from tip to tail.

A smaller version of the above, also down at Southbank. This guy was more like 35cm long.

My favourite thing about all these species is watching them move. When you see them walk around and watch the way their hips rotate you can't help but think you're looking at a direct descendant of the dinosaurs.

Marsupial Sightings 2 through 5

2009-09-22T11:26:00.000+10:00

Since I moved into my new place, I've since revised my opinion on possums being cute. Well, perhaps they still look cute, but when they're running around on your roof in the middle of the night and making stupid noises in your attic, it's less cute and more irritating. Allow me to elaborate.

On Saturday night I was woken up at about 4am by a big THUMP in the night. At the time I assumed it was just somebody else in the building getting home late from partying and slamming their door, and I didn't think anything of it.

Later on Sunday I was doing stuff around the house and I decided to stick my head into the neutral hallways that bisects the house. It doesn't belong to any of the four units, merely joins the front entrance to the back yard. I look in and I see a kitty cowering in the corner. I start to approach, "Here kitty kitty," when it looks at me with big lantern eyes. "Wait a second, you're not a kitty, you're a possum!"

At that point, it started flipping out and trying to climb the walls to escape what was obviously a predator coming right for it. Meanwhile, I opened up the door to the outside and flushed it out with a broom. It is one of my great regrets that I didn't get out my camera to videotape this thing tearing out into the bright afternoon sun.

Afterwards, I was trying to figure out where this thing came from. I couldn't find any possum sized holes in the hallway, until I looked above me and found a trap door in the ceiling that went right up underneath the roof. That's when it struck me - this stupid possum falling out of the ceiling was the thud I heard the night prior. It must've fallen into the hole and not been able to get back up to its roost.

The next night it was back to making stupid noises and messing around on the roof. Possums have definitely crossed the line between 'cute and novel' and 'tiresome and irritating.'

I've never felt such empathy with postmen

2009-09-16T10:36:00.003+10:00

Around here there are magpies all over, and they're complete dickheads. When you're riding your bike or jogging and you go underneath one of their nests, they'll swoop down and chase you, bodychecking you about the head and occasionally going for your exposed bits of skin. They're the assholes of the bird world and I hate them. They're fiercely territorial about their nesting sites, and apparently this time of year is when their the worst because it's nesting/breeding season.

Anyway, apparently the posties here have a lot of trouble with them and must "arm themselves with protective gear, strategies and steely nerves." I'm seriously considering going one better and mounting a badminton racquet on the side of my bike in a quick draw holster. Then we'll see who's laughing.

My nemesis

Kangaroo Point Climbing

2009-09-16T09:25:00.002+10:00

The other day I was out at Kangaroo Point, which is a place I heard about even before I left because it's right in the city and it's a great spot for rock climbing. These pictures are from the first weekend I was here when we had a barbecue. Unfortunately my bum arm has kept me from climbing myself, but in another couple weeks when I'm better I'm definitely going to become a regular here. In the meantime, I'll have to be content with barbecuing.

A panorama from the top of the stairs at one end. The cliffs are on the left, downtown Brisbane is on the right
Google maps link to Kangaroo Point

Another thing that's cool about climbing here is that they've got big flood lights at the base of the cliffs. It gets so hot here in the summer that the only time people climb from November-February is in the evening after the sun goes down. I imagine the shadows make it challenging, but it beats not climbing at all.

Six of one, half dozen of the other

2009-09-16T08:40:00.002+10:00

I'm not sure if it's because Canada is more sober and stodgy or because Australia just likes taking the piss out of sexism, but this is a business name I don't think you'd see in Canada. This was on a housing construction site in the equivalent of Point Grey just off the St. Lucia campus.

Platypi Stormdrains

2009-09-16T08:30:00.003+10:00

Fun fact: The differing environmental priorities of Australia are reflected in the storm drains down here. Whereas in Canada we're worried about the salmon and so have little fish icons next to storm drains to warn people not to dump chemicals and toxins down, here they have something different...

Taken on the UQ campus. I haven't seen these anywhere else so far

Flower Power

2009-09-15T16:56:00.002+10:00

There are a zillion tropical flowers that grow all over the place around here. Some are cultivated in people's gardens, but lots seem to grow wild and naturally without any help from green thumbs. On the weekend I walked up the street and found all these within a block. I have no idea what any of them are called, I just thought they were pretty.

First Marsupial Sighting

2009-09-15T16:48:00.003+10:00

Last night I saw my first wild marsupial of Australia. I'm pretty sure it was a ringtail possum, but it may have been a brushtail possum. [Adam says it's a brushtail] They're both very common down here, especially in cities where they can raid garbage cans. I saw this one in the tree outside the laundry room. Pretty cute, for a nocturnal animal.

It's seriously called this

2009-09-15T16:45:00.002+10:00

Fun fact about Australia - down here, cheddar cheese is known as tasty cheese. Seriously. It's not a brand name or trade name. If you go into a Subway they'll ask you if you want mozzarella or tasty cheese. How can you say no to tasty cheese?

Mt. Coot-Tha

2009-09-13T14:38:00.003+10:00

One of the first places James and Jackie took me to here in Brisbane was the lookout on the top of Mount Coot-Tha. It's a little mountain around here that's in the middle of a big system of trails and forest, and is also the home of the broadcasting towers of several (all?) of the major TV stations. On the top of the hill there's a little tourist trap area where you can grab a bite and drink something cold while you look out over the city. The walk up takes you through a nice forest full of a few varieties of gum trees. The view from the top is great - you get a full panorama of the greater Brisbane area, all the way from the ocean out to the mountains to the west.

Me and my supervising professor, Dr. James Vaughan.

Panorama of Brisbane from the top. Click for a bigger image. Downtown is in the center of the image, and St. Lucia is in between the two bits of river visible just to the right

Skink vs cockroach

2009-09-13T14:28:00.003+10:00

Last Sunday started as a nice lazy morning, but I soon found myself instigating an epic conflict between a bunch of rainbow skinks and a near dead cockroach. Rainbow skinks are little lizards about 5-10cm long that normally eat tiny bugs in the garden. However, this morning the skinks found themselves going after a pretty nasty looking cockroach that I flipped on its back and left on a rock. It was much larger prey than they were used to, but one made a valiant effort and eventually dragged the roach away. I later caught one of his brethren (which was tough - they're fast little buggers).

I'm slowly working my way towards Steve Irwin levels of animal annoyance.

Birds on campus

2009-09-13T14:09:00.003+10:00

I haven't been to that many university campuses in my time, but UQ St. Lucia is definitely one of the nicest. Similar to UBC, it's on a peninsula, but here the surrounding water is the Brisbane River rather than the ocean. There are a whole pile of random animals that live on the campus, from ducks and swans to tiny parrots to 3 foot long water lizards to my personal favourite, the brush turkeys.

Google Maps link to UQ

Me and Jackie (my supervising professor's wife who has helped me find my way around the city) in the Great Court in the center of campus at UQ

A brush turkey scratching around at the bottom of Mt. Coot-Tha

A rainbow lorikeet (basically a mini parrot a little bigger than a sparrow) - image from NRPG

Lots of cool stuff around here.

The Inaugural Post

2009-09-13T13:58:00.003+10:00

As of tomorrow morning I will have been down here in Brisbane for 2 weeks. A lot has happened since then - I'm now student at UQ, I gave my first presentation to my research group, helped out at a tutorial with some students, found a permanent place to live by successfully navigated a lot of byzantine paperwork, seen several crazy lizard species and dozens of different birds, had a barbecue, and traveled up the nearest molehill they call a mountain, Mt Coot-Tha (although it is apparently less of a molehill if you are riding your bike up it...). So far I'm really enjoying Brisbane - it's a beautiful city. The weather is always sunny except for brief periods when it the tropical rainstorms roll in with thunder and lightning, and the people seem nice and laid back.

I've been trying to take lots of photos while I've been down here, so this blog will mostly focus on sharing those with you guys back home. Many hearts to you all.