Restart

After weeks of disruption, I am finally settling back into a normal life. We moved on Dec. 18th, which is when I lost my internet connection for more than two weeks.  Since that day I have been sweating it out with moving heavy boxes of books (there were nearly 40!), putting together wardrobes from Ikea (no built-in closets at the new place), hosting a small NYE party with six kids in attendance, going to a Wiggles concert (those guys are geniuses), attending the Brisbane International tennis tournament, driving to the mountains, and washing lots of dishes. The picture below was taken aboard the Wheel of Brisbane, just a few days before Christmas. Although Will and V. enjoyed the views, I wasn't thrilled when the operators gave us an extra turn, due to my lingering fear of heights.

Our new home is a rented Queenslander house built in the 1920s. It features a large fenced-in yard in which Will loves to play.  Before I provide more details about our home, let me just preface this by saying that we really LOVE it.  It's one-storey, with all three bedrooms off the main lounge (living room). There's a separate large kitchen and dining room, full of bright, sunny, windows overlooking the garden. The entire house is built above ground, with plenty of storage in the space below. But, being an old Queenslander that hasn't been updated in decades, it does have a few quirky bits:

• no air conditioning--very tough to deal with when the temps hit the mid 30s (95 deg F) during the past week.
  
• no window screens-- allowing all sorts of strange insects to bite us all night long, as well as several small lizards to roam the walls.
  
• no dishwasher-- this is especially hard on V., who hates washing the dishes.  I am trying to do as much as possible, but I think we'll have to figure out how to get one installed soon.
  
• laundry done outside and under the house-- it feels a bit strange having to go outside to do the laundry, but I'm getting used to it.
• across the street from the railroad tracks-- Queensland Rail uses these tracks for both commuter and freight trains. We have pretty much habituated to the noise at this point, and Will still loves to watch them go by every 10-15 minutes.
  
• on a busy street-- the traffic going by our master bedroom window is often louder than the trains going by.  I am really starting to hate motorcycles.
• one powerpoint (electrical outlet) per room-- I have become quite proficient in using power strips and extension cords to keep our many devices running
  
• one bathroom--it's been years since I have had to share a bathroom, but we're getting along so far
  
• a 35-year-old stove-- the oven temperatures are printed in both Celsius and Fahrenheit, which means it was probably bought around the time that Australia was going metric.  One of the three burners doesn't work, and it takes forever to heat up the oven.
  
• maggots in the floorboards--yes, the flies like to lay eggs in the cracks of the kitchen floorboards. This is pretty disgusting, but we're determined to get it under control.
  

Again, I want to emphasise that we LOVE this place.  Now that I have a big lawn to mow, I went out and bought a classic Australian lawnmower, the Victa.  It turns out that power mowers are still a novelty in Australia, and the same Toro that I owned in the States is considered a luxury mower here.  I find mowing very relaxing, and I'm already looking forward to my next chance to cut the grass tomorrow.

So, that's our new life in a nutshell.  I am back at work this week, madly trying to catch up with everything I have had to neglect in the past month.  Happy New Year to you!

A Walk in the Rainforest

The Trail
Originally uploaded by The Prof

Between the rain showers, we managed to drive up to Maleny last Saturday. Maleny is a small town that sits atop the Blackall Range, with excellent views of the Sunshine Coast and the Glass House Mountains. Because of the much heavier rainfalls that it receives, the entire area is a brilliant green right now, with rolling hills speckled with grazing cows and horses. We drove along the winding road to the Baroon Pocket Dam in beautiful surroundings similar to pastoral England. The highlight of our little trip was going to the Mary Cairncross Reserve, which contains one of "the best remaining subtropical rainforests in Australia." Will had an excellent time running along the approximately 2 km trek through thickets of strangling fig trees, ferns, and gums. At the end of the walk we looked out over the Glass House Mountains. We later found a man selling avocados from the trees in his yard. It was all so perfect!

Click here to see more of the trip.

Denial: It's Not a River

At long last, SE Queensland has been getting some very good rainfalls this week.  There's a vibrant green everywhere, which I have never seen before in my previous wintertime visits to Brisbane.  Still, the drought continues because we are still woefully down on the annual rainfall total, which has been the case for several years.  I find the graph below, which is updated every day, especially scary.  The dams represented here comprise the major water supply for the Brisbane metropolitan area.  The largest dam is Wivenhoe, which is at less than 16% capacity.  Somerset is at 35% capacity, but it is a much smaller reservoir.  

Note that the black line, which represents the total system capacity, hasn't been above 30% capacity for 18 months.  Even with the recent rainfall, there hasn't been much of an increase above 20% in the last six months.   I find numbers very convincing.  As the experts keep saying, unless we get a weather event equivalent to a cyclone, with heavy rains in the catchment areas that last for several days, we aren't going to see those lines going back up anytime soon.  By the way, this information is freely available and publicly repeated nearly every day.

Thus, reading the following comments from the Courier-Mail web site left me stymied.  How can anyone think that this 'drought' is actually some sort of government conspiracy to increase revenue?  Why do some people have such a difficult time understanding that there are always limitations to our natural resources?  And, if you live on the driest continent on the planet, how can you not think that we have to be particularly careful about our use of water?  A few examples of The Denial:

• though that this was supposed to be all taken care of after the 1974 flooding so we don't have this risk anymore? while i love the fact that we are getting the rain is the local government infrustructer really up to the weather we are about to be facing over this year and next? the state take over of the watter supply is not going to change anything and i think even if we got all the dames full they would try to take us all up to level 7 or 8 watter restrictions... they ate now seeing that there is money in watter and in fines and while they are the government they know they can do what ever they like and every1 eats must play along. after all last time the dames got 3 months i think it was instead of keeping to the old planed time table for the higher restrictions they moved it flowered i mean really how much of a mushroom are we in Queensland? and how much longer are the government going to be feeding u crap for!!!  Posted by: Mark Brown 12:52am today

• an independent surveyor should be engaged to tell us exactly how much water is in our dams, as i dont belive the crap the government and media reports on a daly basis, and i agree with mark brown the government will tell us lies for as long as possible to extract every last cent out of us to pay for there billion dollar blow out of the water grid,  Posted by: global warming my ar@# of qld 7:29am today

Resignation and Change

The Premier of Queensland (the equivalent of a state governor in the U.S.), Peter Beattie, announced his resignation yesterday. For my American ears, it was refreshing to hear a politician resigning after nine years of service--and well before his current term was to end--for fairly simple reasons, such as wanting to spend more time with his family and desiring a healthier lifestyle. Although there could be an ulterior motive to his actions, he is leaving a booming, economically healthy state to his successor, Anna Bligh, who will be the first woman to hold this office in Queensland. Pretty cool.

Six years ago today (on a Tuesday as well) I went to work without having watched the morning news. I therefore ended up not hearing about the World Trade Center towers until after they had collapsed. At around 11 that morning I made a quick trip to the CNN center in the hope that I might learn more about was going on, but it had been immediately evacuated in case of another terrorist attack. I then went home and watched the news for the rest of the day, as life in the U.S. came to a sudden standstill. That was a horrible, scary, and sad day. And the week got only worse for me, with an unexpected change in my personal life happening a few days later. That was an important week in my life because it led to many huge changes. Thinking back to that day six years ago, it seems incredible where I have ended up today, happily typing this entry from my new home in Brisbane, Australia, with a completely different life from the one I had back then.

I heard that Michael Jackson turned 49 recently. Harrison Ford, at 65, is filming the next "Indiana Jones" movie. And an older, plumper, loonier Britney could hardly move around the stage this week at the MTV video awards. Time flies when you're having fun.

Campus Tour

Inspired by Lori's request, here are a few pictures that I snapped this morning while I made my way to the office. It turned out to be a graduation day for some parts of the university, so there were many people walking around in caps and gowns. You should be able to click any picture to enlarge it.

This first just shows some of the interesting trees that grow here. Someday soon I hope to be able to identify them.

The building below is the Social Sciences Library, which houses the psychology collection and is just across the street from my building. It's also a good example of the sandstone exterior that is found on several UQ buildings.

This is the Student Union. It includes a pharmacy, a hair salon, a (meat) pie shop, a refectory, a pre-school/nursery, a convenience store (called a lolly shop here), a school supply shop, a noodle stand, a sushi restaurant, and so much more:

There's a series of ponds or lakes behind the Student Union. It's a great place to eat lunch:

This is one of many cafés on campus. That's the co-op bookstore next to it.
Here's a little news shop, selling all sorts of salacious mags to the students (and staff).

Here's a shot of the Great Court. It's home to a Great coffee shop.
Keep in mind that this is winter and SE Queensland is experiencing its worst drought on record. Imagine how much nicer it would look if a little rain were to fall...

A Wondrously Venomous and Toothy Country

We are about to leave Atlanta with its troublesome squirrels and gentle deer to go to a place with a few more natural challenges.

I was re-reading Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburnt Country" last night when I came upon this vivid description of the "delicate and diaphanous" box jellyfish, which lives along the shores of Queensland during the summer:

In 1992 a young man in Cairns, ignoring all the warning signs, went swimming in the Pacific waters at a place called Holloways Beach. He swam and dove, taunting his friends on the beach for their prudent cowardice, and then began to scream with an inhuman sound. It is said that there is no pain to compare with it. The young man staggered from the water, covered in livid whiplike stripes wherever the jellyfish's tentacles had brushed across him, and collapsed in quivering shock. Soon afterward emergency crews arrived, inflated him with morphine, and took him away for treatment. And here's the thing. Even unconscious and sedated, he was still screaming.

Good news! This will not be the only jellyfish to worry about in our new land. The Irukandji jellyfish, a highly venomous creature only about an inch long, was recently spotted in Hervey Bay (near Brisbane), forcing the filming of a new movie starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson to move to a safer location. I also found this story about a recent stinging by one of these little critters in a pool in Townsville. I like how the story reports that the teenage girl was "severely stung," but there is no other word about her condition. I guess "still alive" is considered good enough.

And then there are the pythons. Apparently they are commonly found around Brisbane, although pythons are not one of the 14 species of Australian snakes that are poisonous. When I was at a group dinner last October, one of the staff at UQ told me about the python that once slithered up on his veranda while everyone was enjoying the sun, including his cat. A few minutes later there was a muffled scream--his cat was being crushed by the snake. The End. Everyone at my table (all Australians) chuckled at this story and then went on sipping their wine.