Back to Kiama

I like Kiama! It's a great train journey from Sydney (which took a bit longer than normal because of a train derailment). Justin, Sarah, Marta, Dominic and I had a great trip. The blow-hole wasn't doing much more than burbling away, but we went for a great walk across the rocks. It took a long time to walk a few hundred metres because we kept discovering rock pools that were crystal clear and wonderful for swimming in. Unfortunately, I didn't have much to swim in (stupidly not bringing any swimming gear) and so I was a bit wet and salty for the rest of the day.

It was great.

By the way, I haven't just up loaded a photo of my feet for no reason. It only makes sense when you realise that my feet were far under the water! It was so clear! And there were colourful fish swimming around in the pools with us.

George's day out

A lot has happened again since I last updated my blog. The most exciting was probably my trip to Canberra. I had no reason to go, but 1) it was a nice day, 2) one extra flight moved me up a status on the Qantas frequent flyer awards and 3) I had a book token to spend. In the end I lost the book token and so that was a bit pointless. Anyway, I arrived in Canberra in the morning after a lovely hour-long flight. My taxi driver assumed that I was a British tourist and started telling me how awful Sydney was and that I shouldn't go there. Apparently it's full of people who "swim in sewage", "sit for hours in smog because of the cars" and the city has no good museums or cultural events. In contrast, Canberra is apparently amazingly full of incredible museums, events and "things-to-do". I asked the driver to drop me near the lake because I wanted to walk around it. He told me that tourists didn't do this and that I'd prefer to see an exhibition on Renoir (I was told that Renoir was European many times). I pointed out that the exhibition didn't actually open for a few hours. He didn't seem to mind this and told me that I should spend the time waiting at the Museum of Australia (or some similar name) and then take a taxi across to the Renoir exhibition when it opened.

Not wishing to upset my taxi driver, I did get him to drop me off at the museum and discovered that they had an exhibition on Darwin (the man, not the place). The exhibition was good. They had quite a few of Darwin's notebooks including one in which he wrote down the pros and cons of marriage. Apparently a wife is "object to be beloved & played with. — —better than a dog anyhow". So now we know!

Darwin obviously didn't like Australia much. "From so grand a title as Blue Mountains, and from their absolute altitude, I expected to have seen a bold chain of mountains crossing the country; but instead of this, a sloping plain presents merely an inconsiderable front to the low land near the coast. From this first slope, the view of the extensive woodland to the east was striking, and the surrounding trees grew bold and lofty. But when once on the sandstone platform, the scenery becomes exceedingly monotonous; each side of the road is bordered by scrubby trees of the never-failing Eucalyptus family". The exhibition tried hard to explain that Darwin was homesick and sea-sick and would have liked Australia if he had been well!

Anyway, after looking around the museum I decided to walk around the lake. My map made it look as if it was probably about 10km around and that would get me close to the airport where I could then just walk back to my flight. Sounded good. In fact, I now discover that the walk was 36km of which I must have done about 25km before giving up. It was wonderful! Apart from a detour to walk through the botanic gardens I kept close the lake side and managed to spot heaps of creatures including black swans, a huge brown snake (which swam off after looking at me for a while), some stunning parrots and even kangaroos.

I was much too late to try and walk to the airport and so tried to find a taxi. Canberra's a ridiculous city ... there's nobody around. Even on my trip around the lake I only passed a few cyclists. Now I wanted a taxi. It was impossible. I walked everywhere trying to find one. Finally (and just after I'd really started to think that I'd miss my flight) a taxi did turn up and I managed to flag it down. This time the driver spent the entire journey telling me how awful Canberra was and how he thinks that the greatest city on Earth must be London. He'd never been to London, but had heard how wonderful it was. Apparently "Canberra is a hell-hole". Interestingly, he drove me to the airport and then he was arrested (as far as I could tell) by some policemen that seemed to be waiting for him (maybe, they had heard him criticising Canberra!).

What else? I've been on a few walks in the local national park with the summer students, it was ridiculously hot for a few days (42 degrees C), we've had some bushfires, Anna and Maureen came around to rehearse the Schubert's "Shepherd on the Rock", I had a BBQ for all the pulsar astronomers (and bought a remote-controlled, indoor helicopter which Jonathan immediately landed in a bucket of water) and work is going very well. I've just booked a trip to the USA in April and need to book more trips to Perth and Beijing in the next couple of months.

Lots happening!

The end of 2008

It's a new year! I've got to find a way to stay awake - and in control of the telescope - until 7am and so I thought that I'd find some photos taken in 2008. (This is more fun than working out why my routine for calculating the inverse of a matrix is not working properly!).

New year 2008 started in Canada with Jonathan, mum and dad. That seems a long time ago! Probably putting a photo of us skiing is a bit unfair because 1) it was taken a few days before 2008 and 2) it gives the impression that Jonathan can actually ski. It was a wonderful holiday in Canada and I wouldn't mind cooling down a bit in the snow now!







Christine (who took the photo of us skiing) spent a long time in Australia. Joris and I went with her for a superb holiday in the centre of Australia. We flew into Alice Springs, drove to Uluru, back up (via some meteor craters) to the West MacDonnell ranges, across to the East MacDonnell ranges and then back to Alice Springs.

I managed to do quite a bit of travelling for work. We had a conference in the Blue Mountains and trips to Tasmania, Canberra, Melbourne, Parkes, Narrabri, Albury and Perth. During the Perth conference, I managed to find time for a spectacular boat crossing to Rottnest Island where I saw quokkas in the wild!









After the Perth conference I started the second of my main holidays this year and took the Indian Pacific train all the way across Australia from Perth to Sydney. The highlight of this trip, by far, was the crossing of the Nullarbor and spotting eagles, camels, dingoes, kangaroos, emus, etc. etc. from the train window.



The Sydney area was as beautiful as ever. I still haven't managed to get further down the Great North Walk (I hope to do that this year), but did manage to fit in some amazing hiking in the local area. I'm still exciting about seeing my first waratah in the wild (and before I forget, in Tasmania, we managed to spot a wild platypus)!







Alice, Anna and I had a wonderful trip driving around Tasmania. It is so incredibly varied that it's impossible to summarise in a couple of sentences. Anyway, I want to go back and do some more hiking and sight-seeing.














I was lucky enough to have a work trip to England and Wales. Emma, Peter and Alexander showed me areas around London that I hadn't seen before. I then spent a couple of weeks at Jodrell Bank before heading down for a relaxing weekend near Cardiff. This trip really got me excited again about doing more travelling around the UK with various walks around Devon and South Wales at the top of my to-do list!



I started the year in the cold and snow in Canada. I finished the year with the complete opposite in tropical Darwin. Another wonderful holiday which included a long drive to the Kakadu national park. It was hot, humid and completely different to Canada!

What a year!! I must admit that (out of all the places that I've been this year) the place that I'd most like to be at the moment would be Ormiston Gorge in the centre of Australia (although I wouldn't be at all upset if I was in Tasmania, Darwin, Canada or even Parkes - which is where I happen to be!)

Oh well ... enough procrastination. Now I'd better get back to my inverse matrices. Happy New year to all the strange people that actually read my blog!!