Catching up

It's a bit sad when my only online skype contact happens to be the "Skype Test Call". Anyway, it gives me a chance to catch up on my blog (it's raining heavily outside). My talk went well today (in front of about 60 PhD students) and I returned back to Perth by ferry. The 1 hour ride was stunning. Huge thunderclouds were all around and the colours of the sunset reflecting from the water were beautiful.

Back to the past ... a few weeks ago I went hiking with Christine and Heike (both exchange students at ANU). As they happened to be an hour late arriving (women!), I found the time to photograph a wonderful fig tree and watch the spit bridge go up and down to let the boats under.

The Spit-Manly walk really is good! We got a little wet as the tide was a little further in than expected. Christine and Heike also decided to complete the walk in record time. They had agreed to meet their friends later in the City and intended to do the entire walk in 2 hours (a bit different to last time with Faith and Mel where it took about 2 hours to pass the first Banksia tree that we came to)!

Probably the most exciting part of the journey was when I was returning by ferry from Manly (oh, did I mention that Marta and I spotted a penguin in Manly a week or so ago?). The water was incredibly rough and we were all told to sit down and hold on to something. It was great fun sitting outside and wondering whether the boat was about to turn upside down (it didn't).