The Washington DC area ...

It's wet. I had a very interesting taxi ride from Virginia Beach to Norfolk airport which is almost worth a blog entry to itself. Let's just say that the taxi driver was "Southern" (he told me that on numerous occasions). He certainly doesn't like "cruelty to children". Apparently, a dad and his son were in his taxi and the child was playing around. The dad hit the boy and therefore "I grabbed the dad around the neck to choke him. I pushed him into the corner of the taxi ... just where you're sitting now ... with my hand around his neck ..." He also told me how he drove a lady down to Florida who had just taken her husband's money (or something like that - the husband had apparently been beating her up) - Virginia Beach is certainly a lovely place.

Anyway, I arrived early at the airport and was lucky enough to get onto a flight that got into Washington a few hours earlier than I had planned. Mum and dad were there to meet me (and my bag also turned up)! We had a nice pub meal for dinner and then went back to the hotel.

Yesterday we had a wonderful trip around the Washington DC area (I think that we were mainly in Maryland). It's so green!!! We found a large "hill" called the sugar loaf and walked up to the top. I enjoyed that. Apparently a black bear was lurking somewhere in the bushes (with the rattle snakes), but we didn't see it. We did spot lots of colourful birds and some huge turkey vultures that were flying overhead!

The trees were also beautiful. Every now-and-then we'd come across a bright white tree amongst the green. I'm sure that mum remembers what they're called - something like dogwood (the name certainly has "dog" in it somewhere).

We then got lost on the road. I was navigating and spotted an interesting looking road by the river and canal. We drove for about 15 minutes (on dirt roads) and arrived back exactly where we had started. This was a tad embarrassing. But then, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, dad suddenly turned the car around to go and read a sign that we'd passed. It turned out to be a sign for the site of first discovery of radio emissions from Jupiter! Later I discovered that this was the site of the Mills Cross antenna!

We kept driving and came to the Potomac river. This was incredible. The river was huge and full of rapids and waterfalls! Apparently, if you fall in then you should 1) don't try to swim, 2) roll over onto your back until you can see you toes, 3) point your toes downstream and float through it. Otherwise your feet get snagged on rocks and you drown! On the canal that runs next to the river there was an old boat being pulled along by mules! When we left we passed a deer standing by the side of the road!

Today we had a late start, but ended up driving to Gaithersburg for lunch (which was interesting as a whole heap of policemen came in to arrest someone during the meal - although they finally departed without him). Gaithersburg has NIST (the national institute of standards technology), a train station, a music shop and not much else. We therefore took the train into the centre of Washington. The train was fun and then I left mum and dad at the Portrait Gallery and went off in the rain to see the various sites including the white house and the Washington monument. I leave tomorrow at 6pm, travel for 22 hours and 15 minutes and arrive in Sydney in time for work! :)

Good things to say about Virginia Beach

I'm going to try hard. Real hard. I'm going to find good, exciting things to say about Virginia Beach. Well it's odd. The hotel is odd. Apparently the lift ("elevator") has a capacity for 3500! I've just had lunch at a cafe called "blimpies" and believe (looking around at the customers) that the elevator could probably cope with about 2 people. (Blimpies has just given me food-poisioning!) My bags didn't turn up. I therefore had to wear the same T-shirt for about 30 hours. I went out to buy a new one. There were plenty of opportunities, but all the T-shirts for sale had witty American logos on them: "My PEN IS large", "Will YOU be my girlfriend" ... which probably would have been a little out of place at the conference.

The conference is full of old men. Out of 100 or so people, about 5 are female (and a couple are difficult to tell). They are all rather clever. Approximately 80 percent of the talks have been completely incomprehensible either because of the thick Russian accent or simply because of the content.

Anyway, Virginia beach definitely has a beach. Apparently it is the "World's Largest Pleasure Beach" and is the "No. 1 City for Women"! umm. The beach is very sandy and very long. On one side is a terribly beautiful concrete walkway. Beyond the walkway are lovely, concrete hotels. On the other side is the Atlantic.

It's historical!! In fact it's "rich in history". Apparently there's a cross giving the location where the "Colonists first set foot on the shores of the New World on April 26, 1607". I've just walked for miles, but couldn't find the cross. Probably I needed a car.

Okay there are some really good things. I spotted dolphins from my hotel balcony. I've just watched pelicans fly overhead.

Now it's time for the conference dinner.

Australia and America

I like America. I can tell everyone here that I'm Australian and they respond that I have "such a cute Australian accent". I've discovered that I can also describe the crocodiles that walk down the "side-walks" in Sydney and ... they believe me!

I've also made two other discoveries. (1) Don't drink a huge beer after going for approx. 15 hours without real food (otherwise you end up writing blog entries like this) and (2) "small" coffees in America are very similar to "extra-large" coffees in Australia.

I'm tired. I've now been on the move for 28 hours and I'm still not at my destination (in fact I'm in Dulles Airport in Washington - which (in L.A.) they pronounced as "Dallas" - which happens to be very confusing on boarding!) On the Qantas flight across the Pacific I was lucky enough to be upgraded to "Premium Economy". The chap sitting next to me read two books. One on French grammar and the other on Wagner's Ring Cycle. He was off to New York for a week to watch the entire opera. I felt a bit embarrassed watching the James Bond films and various cartoons. Oh well, we both got chatting with the guy in charge of our section of the plane. He was full of interesting stories about ... well I'd better not mention them in case someone from Qantas ever comes across this blog!

My bag was literally the last off the plane in L. A. The airport is appalling.

Washington Dulles airport is very dull.

Anyway, back to Australia. I haven't described our wonderful trip to Cervantes. "Our" = myself, Mike, David and a visitor Alberto (who's very Italian). We were in Perth for a conference, but then decided to spend an extra two days travelling around. Oh gosh, lots of good things happened, but I'm too tired to try and describe them all. We went to Fremantle (by boat), had some very good beers, watched some fire jugglers, went around the market, watched the most amazing sunset (Alberto's facebook page got updated to say "... was about to cry yesterday facing the best sunset he ever seen, lost on the other side of the world"), took a very interesting train ride back (particularly so for anyone that's watched "Last train to Freo" - it had some similarities!). Then for our main road trip. We went through a burnt out landscape, met a huge thunderstorm in the "gravity discovery centre" (where all the power went out), drove for ages, saw large eagles, ate a lobster for lunch, saw a crazy dolphin pushing fish (we assume) up to the shore, watched dolphins swim under us as we stood on a jetty, went to the Pinnacles national park (incredible), played pool, drove offroad, saw stromatolites, walked up to viewing towers, watched Alberto swim in the Indian Ocean (the rest of us were much too British) and ate in a sleazy road house.

What a holiday.

Hopefully the photos do a better job of describing the scene than I can!

I'm tired.

z v (an addition from a young kid that just decided to start typing on my computer - his mother has now removed him)

Oh ... and how could I forget. We all lay on the beach looking up at the phenomenal stars. The Milky Way was directly overhead, we could see the Magallanic Clouds and shooting stars. We lay for hours!

So much has happened ...

I've just realised that it has been almost a month since my last blog post. Wow! Since then I've had another wonderful trip to Melbourne. I have absolutely no idea why I didn't immediately write up that trip. Ms M. Mao and I drove (well she drove) down to the Southern Ocean on the Mornington Peninsula to the South of Melbourne. The views were spectacular. We first searched the rock pools formed from volcanic rock. Ms M. Mao decided to scare me completely by hanging off the edges of huge cliffs with just the ocean below.


She spotted a fish. I took photos of starfish. Anyway, we then got back into the car to drive to the start of a long walk that went along the cliff edges and finished at the Cape Shanks lighthouse.

I loved the walk. It was completely unexpected. I assumed that we'd have stunning vistas across the water and be able to watch whales frolicking in the ocean. Actually, most of the walk was far inland, where we strolled through shady woods, watched large eagles (I'm convinced that they were eagles) soar above the fields, walk across gullies, and ... every so often ... have a stunning view across the ocean.


Then the most exciting thing happened. We'd stopped for a rest and were chatting about all sorts of things when an echidna wobbled out onto the path. It looked at us, we slowly moved closer and then it simply came up to Ms M. Mao and rubbed her leg with his/her nose! It "snuffled" her, decided that she wasn't as good as an ant to eat and then set about trying to find some ants while we simply crouched down next to it!

It was wonderful.

In a rather happy frame of mind we then finished the walk (which did involve rescuing Ms Mao from the top of a tree) and drove back to Melbourne.

I had another fun flight back to Sydney (although my "window" seat didn't actually have a window next to it).

The next evening I went with Anna to the last night of Madam Butterfly being performed at the Opera House. That was wonderful as well!! The lead singer (Madam Butterfly) was phenomenal and we ended up giving her a standing ovation at the end. It's not a very happy opera. Unfortunately it seems that the opera season has finished this year in Sydney and so we'll have to wait for a while before going again.

What else? I played badmington. Dick's been away in China and so the work load has been ridiculous. I've been entered for a CSIRO award that meant that I had to write some embarrassing text about myself, the clocks changed, Ms Mao arrived in Sydney, the river flooded, Rick arrived in Sydney, I went tango dancing (with the two previously mentioned people), I've learnt how to say North, South, East and West in Chinese, I've booked a trip to China to see the Solar eclipse in July. The plan is to take a boat from Shanghai out to the islands off the coast and then go inland again! I'm rather excited.

I've also just discovered that my hotel booking for my USA trip (in a few weeks) didn't go through and so I'm frantically trying to find somewhere to stay. I head off for Perth in a few days (and plan to drive up and see the Pinnacles desert) and now ...

I'm going for a walk in the rain.

Sydney, Melbourne and Parkes

I'm back again at Parkes and finally finding time to do something about my blog (at 4am). Since the last posting Anna and I went to see the Magic Flute at the Opera House. It was great. The arias were all in German, but the dialogue was "translated" in Australian! Papageno went around drinking beers and cooking on BBQs!

Last Friday I flew down to Melbourne to have a bit of a holiday, to visit my new PhD student and to give a presentation at the university. The holiday was great. I met up with Ms. M. Mao and we went all over the place. We first went on a walk in the Dandenongs National Park. It's so beautiful. We decided to walk the "Kokoda track walk" which consisted of 1000 steps! It commemorated the Australian versus Japanese second world war battle in Papua New Guinea. The walk went up a gully covered in tree ferns. We spotted heaps of birds (including some gorgeous parrots), turtles and a brush-turkey. Wonderful.

Afterwards we decided to celebrate by having lunch in an "old-English-style" tea shop in Sassafras. We went into the packed "Miss Marples tea room" which served the largest ice-cream sundaes that I've ever seen! I also bought (from the shop next door) some tea bags that you put in the bath. Don't ask! We then found an "English-style" lolly shop and bought a walnut whip.

Melbourne is cold! I was so silly and only bought some T-shirts. It was only about 15C. Anyway, this is simply to remind me to bring some jumpers for my next trip in a few days.

On Sunday, we had an amazing trip. We drove (actually, Ms. Mao drove, I navigated and she ignored my navigation and got us lost) through the City and out to the "Organ Pipes" in the Organ Pipes National Park. "The park’s important geological heritage includes the basalt 'organ pipes', formed about a million years ago when a massive lava flow spread over the plains from nearby volcanic hills. At this point it filled an ancient creek valley so some 20 metres deep. A surface crust formed and the lava beneath cooled very slowly and shrank. Vertical cracks developed, and as the lava continued to harden the cracks lengthened until the basaltic mass was divided into columns. Jacksons Creek then cut a deep valley through the basalt, exposing the ‘pipes'." They were impressive. But not as impressive as "Hanging Rock" another 30 minutes, or so, drive.

Hanging Rock in the "Hanging Rock Reserve" is really spectacular. We walked up to the top of the rocks where the views of the surrounding area were superb. It's amazingly eerie up on the rocks - there are huge drops, narrow passages, it seemed so easy to get lost ... We stopped for our picnic in the branches of a tree and spent the time feeding loads of lizards that came running up to bite us. We had a dramatic trip back down the rock as we decided not to take the path. We ended up dropping 10 or so metres almost vertically down as we "clambered" (more correctly "uncontrollably slid" down the rocks).

Then we had an icecream and bought the DVD of "picnic at hanging rock". The story goes that a bunch of school girls went for a picnic at Hanging Rock on St. Valentines Day 1900. Four of the girls went up on the rock. Only one came back down and couldn't say what happened. A teacher went up and also never came back down. Later, one of the school girls was found alive, but also had no recollection of what had happened. The teacher and the other girls were never found. It's a very evocative film. Good grief, one "user comment" on the film is that it is "Eerie, beautiful romance porn ... The repressed Victorian schoolgirls, whose burgeoning sexual longings are channeled into torrid, purple verse and close romantic friendships". I thought that it was about people disappearing on a rock. Maybe I'd better watch it again.

On Monday we spent the morning at the Melbourne aquarium and then I went to give my presentation at the University in the afternoon. The aquarium was fun. They had a new exhibit with heaps of penguins from Antarctica (with lots of snow). They had the big king penguins and some smaller Gentoo penguins. The aquarium also had a huge display of very odd looking fish - including angler fish and other creatures that looked exactly like rocks.

In the evening we went dancing. I can't believe that I got enough courage to go, but in the end I really enjoyed it. I was pretty useless, but had fun. We "attempted" various Latin dances that all seemed to involve fast feet movements that everyone else found easy. Anyway, there were about 3 guys and 20 ladies and they all seemed willing to help! It was fun! :) I'm going to have to find a "complete beginners" course in Sydney somewhere and learn to count up to 4.

Tuesday was my birthday. BTW ... thanks to everyone that left messages on my facebook account or sent me an email. I'm so sorry that I haven't had time to reply yet. Ms M. Mao and I went to the zoo. The highlight was seeing the Snow Leopard cubs. We also found an ill mouse that we picked up and took to the information desk. They probably fed it to a lion.

On Wednesday morning I flew back to Sydney (my flight was cancelled and so I was rather later) and tried to get some work done. On Thursday evening I had a whole crowd of people around at my house. Luckily one of my guests turned up with lots of food and wine and cooked us a great dinner. Then on Friday Jonathan, Stefan (my new student) and I drove to Parkes. As it was Stefan's first time in the Sydney region we stopped off in the Blue Mountains (and probably had the longest drive ever to Parkes). Anyway, after driving through swarms of locusts we did safely get to Parkes where we almost immediately started observing. I'm tired! We return tomorrow morning back to Sydney.