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!!

Back in Parkes

I've just discovered that I can discover the keywords that people have typed in to find my blog. This is interesting and a bit worrying. Apparently the most recent keywords include:

- Humpty Doo + traffic lights
- frogs in trousers
- platypus lock ness
- pretty sheep
- tasmania's big thing platypus

Well! This is even more worrying when you realise that my blog entry comes up as the 9th hit when you search for "pretty sheep" on google. My entry doesn't rate higher than "Want a Inflatable Sheep for your party?", but does come above "I might be buying a sheep What do they eat and need ?".

I've had a fun few days. Ms. M. Mao again turned up. This time brandishing a huge leek. Oh gosh, I do hope that nobody finds my blog by searching for "huge leek". She turned my milk blue. Yesterday I went to the pulsar group beach picnic in Manly. That was fun. We played some beach cricket, had some food and went for a snorkel. It was great ... I spotted a huge, bright blue, groper (oh dear, another word that hopefully doesn't come up in too many google searches) - I found a wonderful photo here. I also swam amongst the squid (they're lovely - they keep changing colour), mados and leatherjacket.

Today, Dick, Justin and I drove to Parkes. Now I have to find a way to stay up until 4am.

Day 4: Mum better not read this blog entry ...

I'm back in Sydney. It seems to be just as hot and humid here as it was in Darwin. I had a beautiful last day in Darwin. I walked down to the harbour area and got excited watching a ferry departing for the Tiwi islands. Hopefully, I'll be on it sometime soon.

I sat around on the beach reading "Gould's Book of Fish" that Faith and Mel sent me for Christmas. What a wonderful book! It's impossible to put down and I've now finished it, but wonder whether I should just start again from the beginning.

For the flight back I bought "See Australia and DIE". It's a book full of how people have died in Australia. I bought it trying to learn about the mistakes that people made (so that I don't make them myself). It was scary reading. One guy (in Sydney) was changing a light bulb in his house and then got off the chair and stood straight on a funnel-web spider. Amazingly he survived - by being rushed to Ryde Hospital!

Oh dear, I'm listening to the radio at the moment and someone has just been "taken by a shark". There's plenty of stories in the book about people being eaten by sharks. "Since the shark wouldn't release its grip, they figured they'd have to drag it in. So two of the rescuers grabbed the 2.5-metre shark by the tail and began to haul it towards the shore. One young lifesaver ran into the water and smashed the shark over the head with a surfboard."

Bloody hell ... I've just had the shock of my life. I was reading about all these dangerous creatures and then trod on a lizard that had ambled in and was sitting under my dining table! Its tail is now wriggling around on the floor.

Anyway, after reading the entire book it does seem that there are a few things that you can do to survive in Australia. 1) Don't be "religious" or "spiritual". It seems that if you are then you have a good chance of deciding to walk across the Great Sandy Desert or something equally stupid. 2) Don't pick up animals. One guy picked up a friendly blue-tongue lizard and played with it before realising that it was actually a death adder. Another person decided to let a "blue-ringed octopus" to walk around on his arm. 3) Don't eat a fish unless you know what it is. There's a story of a young couple that caught a fish, ate it and then died. It turned out to be a puffer fish. 4) Get an EPIRB. It seems that almost half of the people in the stories would have survived if they had one. I plan to get one before my next trip. Finally, 5) don't go near crocodiles. It's just as well that I read the book after my trip otherwise I probably wouldn't have left the hotel. There's one story of a group that went camping. "At about 4am, a massive 4.2-metre crocodile emerged from the water and made a beeline for one particular tent. Strangely, it ignored the tent with all the food. Instead, it lumbered up the bank and went straight for one of the furthest tents from the water." The people in this story survived because 1) a 60-year old grandma jumped on the back of the crocodile and 2) they had an EPIRB.

This isn't a cheerful blog post.

Anyway, I'm planning a new trip somewhere. There are so many options!! Ms M. Mao will be visiting tomorrow and then I'm going snorkelling with the pulsar group on Monday. Then I drive to Parkes.

Day 3: Not having Christmas in Humpty Doo

What a Christmas!!

I decided to go for a short drive around Darwin and ended up driving for more than 500km. The scenery was spectacular. I had planned on a day in Humpty Doo (the nearest town to Darwin - according to my map). The web makes Humpty Doo sound particularly exciting. Apparently "The plan [by CSIRO] was to irrigate the subcoastal plain of the Adelaide River and produce a commercial rice crop. The theory looked good. The practice was a total disaster." I arrived in Humpty Doo at about 9:30am and then left again, after seeing all the sights (i.e. the boxing crocodile) about 2 minutes later. This was rather terrible as I'd planned to spend most of the day there. Oh well, I set off toward the Djunkbinj National Park with the plan of doing a few bushwalks and then returning back to Darwin.

The driving was fun. Slowly all the radio stations disappeared (the last going was the BBC World Service) until it was just me, the road and wetlands on either side (with a few huge termite nests every now-and-then for company). I passed a car coming the other way approximately once every 30 minutes.

I crossed huge rivers (all called something like "West Crocodile river", "East alligator river", "Large crocodile creek" etc.) and there were signs everywhere warning me that I'd soon be eaten.

Discovering that you could only get into the Djukbinj National Park with a 4WD, I headed on towards the Mary River National Park. This park was beautiful, but again to get into the park I needed a more manly vehicle. So I kept going ... for another couple of 100 km ... and then reached the Kakadu national park. Wow! Because of the amazing (and accessible) waterfalls, termite nests and hikes, the Litchfield National Park was initially the most spectacular, but the Kakadu park just keeps going on and on and on. It's huge (half the size of Switzerland according to Wikipedia).

Oh, an aside. I forgot that I stopped for a coffee at the Annaburroo Billabong where I chatted with an Aboriginal guy for ages about all sorts of things. We were standing next to a huge (live) crocodile that was behind a fence and he was explaining how one bit his uncle when his car broke. He also told me the names of various animals in his language (which I'm shamed to say I've forgotten) and told me to respect the human bones. He told me this quite a few times and I assured him that I would.

A one-armed Aboriginal chap then came up to me and tried to ask me the time by pointing at his non-existent wrist on his non-existent arm. That was confusing, but we sorted ourselves out after a while and after bidding each other Merry Christmas, I went on my way.

I was hungry by this point (having now missed breakfast and lunch), but kept moving East through the wetlands. There were kangaroos and wallabies everywhere. At one point, I felt like I was playing a dodgem game with these small red, furry bouncing creatures. I didn't hit any. I also just missed squashing a huge brown snake that decided to cross the road in front of me.

The amount of wildlife was incredible. There were huge eagles above, large water birds in the swamps, kangaroos everywhere, dingoes walking past, lizards on the road, parrots in the trees, buffaloes in the distance ...

I stopped at the Aurora Kakadu Resort on the "South Alligator river" because I'd spotted a sign for a bush walk. The walk was superb, but (I must admit) did make me a little nervous on my own. As far as I could tell (by the huge spider webs across the path) nobody else had been on this walk for a very long time. There was also a huge booming sound coming from the forest (which I can only explain by some very large bird nearby), there were lizards everywhere, lots of signs told me to beware of and not go near: 1) crocodiles, 2) dingoes, 3) kangaroos, 4) horses or 5) eagles.

I hope that some of the photos can give you a sense of what the walk was like (except you won't get to feel the humidity, flies or mosquitoes). The creature that, on first glance, looks like a black snake (in the photo below) is actually a turtle of some type! The billabong was beautiful and the area around was simply covered in wildlife of all types.

















Oh dear. I really don't know how to describe the scenery. Maybe I'll just say that it was hot, humid and amazing! In no particular order (certainly not in the order that I saw them) the photos below (or to the side - I can never work out where "blogger" is going to put them) are of some fungi that I spotted growing on a tree, two different species of butterfly (this is the first place that I've been to in Australia where there are lots of butterflies), a weird lizard that just sat watching me, two correlas in a tree and a huge cane toad (that I almost trod on).

































































After my walk I decided to keep driving a little further East before turning around to drive back to Darwin. I'm glad I did decide to keep going. The weather was perfect, the road was exciting (lots of holes to dodge with a 130km/hr speed limit). For most of the way the road was raised above the floodplain below. I stopped every-so-often to take photos of the magpie geese or cranes that were standing in the water. There were some rather strict signs (in English, German and Chinese!) telling me not to get close to the crocodiles.






























I kept driving until I reached the Mamukala Wetlands. So beautiful. A large bird-hide had been built in which I spent rather too long watching the storm clouds build in the distance and magpie geese flying around. I then went for another lovely walk around the lake. By this time I was hot, hungry and tired and so decided to turn around and head back to Darwin before the storms hit.

I didn't make it!! Driving home was dramatic. I kept getting swamped by huge rain storms that reduced visibility to basically zero and the wind pushed my car from side-to-side. I stopped at a road-house at about 3pm for Christmas lunch. All they had to offer me was an orange muffin (which admittedly tasted very good).


I got back to Darwin in time to visit the fish feeding. This is where milkfish, mullett, catfish, batfish and various rays (I spotted a shovel-nosed ray) come into the shallows to be hand fed. A huge batfish came and nibbled at my toes.

Afterwards I went for a swim in the hotel pool and then decided to have Christmas breakfast, lunch and dinner all rolled into one. I headed out looking for a pub that was open. Unfortunately I failed. I walked all around Darwin to discover that my choice was between Domino's pizza (to eat in my hotel room) or something from a seedy-looking cafe. I chose the cafe. Christmas dinner was a leg of chicken (ate without cutlery), fried rice and a soft drink.


What a wonderful Christmas!!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL.