Rottnest trip and more

Oct. 25

We were off to the dock at 9:15 AM on a Saturday morning where we pick up the Rottnest Express to take us to the island. It has been a rainy week so all were hoping that the weather to start clearing up. The weather system was to be moving out but how soon that is the question. It is never a good sign when you are getting rained on while waiting for the boat. Fortunately there was a shed that we could take shelter in until we loaded. As we lined up to board, part of our group suddenly went off to the left headed for a smaller boat. As it turned out, it was the fast trip but the wet one. They wore rain gear from head to toe and needed it. They were going out and the slamming down off the waves. At one point the boat slid sideways down the wave front and caught everyone by surprise but the students loved it. Many of them said that they were going back in that boat again. Now this is told to me second hand since Norma and I took the regular boat as befitting our age. Hmmm - the other might have been more fun.

Once there all of us headed to the bike hire. Student Services, who made the arrangements, set all of this up including with our bikes. Now Norma has not been on a bike since we were last Australia four years ago. I will not recount what happened to her four years ago but let us say that the third was charmed in that no drama happened. At any rate we are on our way taking a short loop up along the north shore. There are ridges on the island so it is not flat as you might imagine. Our bikes are not 10 speeds, which would help handle the hills. In fact they have only two speeds: slow and push. We get to the top of a ridge and over to a lookout that views this beautiful bay with some boats anchored and lovely water. During this time, there had been two brief but wetting showers. Fortunately for us they occurred when we were either under some trees or the edge of a building so we were not damp. Norma decided that she had enough fun and would head back more directly while took a slightly more circuitous path back to bike hire place. It was uneventful but quite lovely.

Most of the students were staying the night with some camping and some in a hostel on the edge of the community area. The weather is finely getting better so the camping might be more fun than the night before would have been. It was very stormy Friday night so those that came out a night early probably got a little wet. They all got back Sunday without mishap and I think they all enjoyed it.

Tuesday, we were invited to St. Thomas Moore College on the University of Western Australia campus. Craig Buchanan has been working there since many of us got to know hims when he was on the UNDA campus. We left the apartment early not knowing how long it would take us to reach the campus. We found the bus 99 stand and found that it did go past the campus. I went looking for the 98 bus stand but the 99 came as I just made the rounds. Now I am beginning to think that we should take the 98 but the 99 is here and Norma is ready to get on it. How long can it take to take the bus in the reverse direction? Close to forever if you need to be a place at a certain time. We were almost two and a half hours making that segment. I called Craig twice to let him know where we were once I knew so he could estimate when to expect us. We finally arrive and I take out his instructions and we head along the road as per. But ... we are not finding the dorms that we expected so something is up!! The directions were for us to arrive coming from the south and therefore on the other side of the street headed in another direction. He came out and braved traffic and retrieved us. When we met on the median I ask him if they were still serving lunch or will we be taking him out for dinner? Such interesting things can happen.

I will post this because I have waited too long to get it out and I am getting busier as things draw to a close.

B.

Politics at a distance

It is quite interesting watching the presidential campaign from the other side of the world. You might think that news would be difficult to come by but such is not the case. We watch the PBS Lehr Hour from 4:30 until 5:30 PM and there are other reports on regular TV news. The print media carries even more news. Even the Western Australian, which is the WA paper, carries quite a number of articles before and as many after the fact. They are intensely interested in the presidential race because what we do effects them regardless of the distance. We have problems in our banking system and they suffer problems though no fault of their own. We can hear and read excerpts of the campaign speeches from McCain, Palin, Obama, and Biden. They liked to examine what is new on the campaign trail. One early morning TV talk show on channel 7, much like the Today Show on NBC, had an email came in from a listener who thought that they were giving too much coverage to the election and the announcer than went on to explain at some length how important and momentous this election was. We are probably as well informed about the candidates here as we would be at home but without all the noise of the campaign. Something that we did not miss.

We know from our experience here four years ago and from our conversations with people in South Africa during the spring 2007, George W. Bush was not popular if not down right reviled in some cases. I can assure you that he has not gotten more popular during these four years! I have yet to meet a McCain supporter here. They are all for Obama. Many cannot understand why McCain would choose a candidate with as little experience as Palin to be the vice president. They see how complex the world is and that no one nation regardless how powerful can go it alone today so to potentially put in someone in with so little experience just confounds them.

After the elections, we received congratulations from all our co-workers here. They see the election as a step away from the type of policies of Bush and his ilk and toward people more open to collaboration. They also see it was a sign that we are finally loosing some of our racism. Maria, the Aboriginal owner along with her husband who take the students to Broome trip, called down especially to congratulate us on Obama's win. We saw that the leaders in Europe were very pleased with the win as reported on in the news. It has been very interesting and may be alarming how negative other people have been toward the U.S. because of our policies over the last eight years. Obama has his work cut out for him but at least he has their good will for now.

It will be a difficult time to deal with all the problems so Obama will need every one's help. I hope that people's patience will last more than a few months because some issues are not going be solved immediately regardless of who will be in office.

B.

What is the apartment like?

Welcome to our humble abode! We are on the second floor that includes all three sets of windows on the second floor.

You come in through the gate and you confronted with a long set of two flights of stairs. Yes that is Norma at the top. It has been good for our conditioning since we now make it up with ease...mostly.

As you come in the front door, the kitchen is on the right. It is decorated in loft style. There is reasonable counter space and drawers and cabinets to store every thing that we need.

Looking from the kitchen and to the left hand side of the living room you see the "L" shaped sectional sofa. Plus you see the end of the dinning table and chairs. The living room is down about two steps.

Looking to your right, you more clearly see the dining table and the entertainment center with the TV. They do have a high definition cable box so we can get digital or HD signals. It took us a while to find out how it worked. We get two public television channels and three commercial.

The bedroom has the loft-office, which works for us. It has wireless router in the spare bedroom but it is not secure with a password so I use my office computer to do Internet banking and other activity needing a secure line. Norma tends to work here during the day and many evenings and I work in the office. Note her height! It does not pay to be tall to work here. I have to stoop a little.
Looking more to your left and you see the hot tub and shower in the corner. We don't use it because this is a country in a water shortage so filling it up to bath doesn't seem right. The bed is king sized and comfortable.
We did not show you the washroom with toilet. The washer is combination washer and drier, which we are unfamiliar with before this trip. When it is done, it plays an ever so pleasant melody. Washing is fine but the drying leaves the clothes a bit damp. We have to hang things up to finish drying.

There is another shower and basin room as well as a spare bedroom but there is nothing particularly special about them so no pictures. All and all it is very serviceable. It is just 2 1/2

blocks from the P&O and about three-four blocks from Coles grocery store.

Staying in the southwest/Sterling Range

We got back from Broome and spent two days getting all that red dirt out of our clothes. The university was closed for the next week so some of our students went to Bali, some did a bus tour up the west coast, some stayed a few days in a house in Margaret River, one went to Melbourne to see some relatives, and the rest stayed in the P&O and just did more local things .

We wanted to get to the southwest again to see wildflowers since our last time was in the fall and there were no flowers to speak of blooming. Where we started on our stay was determined by Jessica and Todd because they found this wonderful hillside retreat (Tathra-Hill top Retreat) in the Blackwood River valley so nice that they bought us two nights there. That was very nice of them!! It was indeed a lovely spot as you can see from the two pictures below. The one on the left was the view out our patio doors down the hill. The one on the right is the view up toward the building. We are in the room on the extreme right, there is a smaller room in the middle and the owners are in the part on the left. It was quite a calming setting. Even though we were in peaceful locations in the Broome area, being with 36 other people in group situation does not quite make it relaxing.

The birds in the area were very interesting because they were mostly new to us. We had Ringneck parrots coming to feeder, which is the brown thing (looks like a house) on the right looking out of our patio doors. We put bread out in it and they would take a piece out with their beak put it into their foot and hold it and eat it. It was quite interesting to watch. We had some kind of Honeyeater (a small bird, yellow and grey and white) that zoomed all around

I could not get the birds to like my sitting in the chair on our deck with my camera so I walked down to the little restaurant just down the road that had a lovely garden and many birds. I also noted when we stopped there the day before that they were not afraid of the people. So I figured that they would tolerate me sitting there with my camera. The little ones were tolerant but fast, so that as soon as I just started to get focused they moved thus no little bird pictures. I have a number of the Ringneck parrots but they were not patient models either. They are a funny bird because one landed on the roof and walked along for a yard or so and then peered over the edge to see what I was up to and kept walking until it was past me and flew to the water in the garden. The parrot on the right is a Western Rosella and was less common and less aggressive than the Ringneck. I also was seeing a number of other interesting birds. It is a shame because I had some nice views of two Fairy-wrens. One the Splendid (There is a western species.) and the other was the Red-winged. Both are really spectacularly blue. I will put up a link so you can see what it is like even though I didn't get a photo.

The next day we visited the little town of Nannup about 12 km south of our place because rain clouds were moving through every so often. We considered a walk through some bush just up the hill from our cabin but showers were getting heavier so a walk didn't seem like a good idea. On the way to town, I snapped this picture of some trees with bright red flowers and backed by a hillside covered with yellow flowers. You just note the yellowish aspect to hill in this picture.

The whole area is hilly so there are mostly dairy farms, sheep, cattle and some lumbering. The lumbering is now mostly pine that is planted because it grows fast and makes good lumber. It is not native to Australia but does not spread, so it safe to grow here. The same was true in New Zealand. Both countries have native trees that produce super quality wood but the growth rates are so slow that using them for most building materials is not feasible.

Norma made an interesting find while in Mannup. We went into a bakery to look for something to take back with for the evening or the next morning. We were close to closing for the day so we struck up a conversation with the owner. He was a native Australian who married an American and had lived in California for about 20 years many of those in Winters, which is near Woodland, CA where Norma spent her early years. It was fun talking to him and his daughter who had just moved down to Australia because she could keep animals more easily than in California. At any rate it is a small world.

Our second day, we drove over to Mount Barker and took a more direct route across the countryside where we had not been before. It was mostly National Park and forest land for the first half at least. In one area, we kept seeing these lovely flowers so I got out to take a picture and Norma picked some. What she found are being held in her hand in the picture below and are all in the pea family. There are many many different kinds of peas down here and in fact some are poisonous. I don't think any these were.

We drove on to Mt Barker to taste some wines and see some wildflowers and that is what we did. We drove through national parks and forest before we came to Muir Lake and Nature Preserve. It is not much of a lake by MN standards (Notice I didn't bother to show you that picture.) but the flowers along the edge were quite lovely.

We found, through the serendipitous help of the man in Groundrey's tasting room, a flower tour on the edge of the Sterling Range National Park. We called, got listed and the result is three orchids shown below. We saw a total of 14 orchids in flower and three others from their leaves or buds. We had to use kangaroo trails in order to keep from crushing the orchids because you would find that once you saw them they were all around you. It was stunning. It was quite a trip and was the main impetuous for going there. I was happy as a clam! Hmmm I am not certain how happy clams are but rest assured that I was.

Jug orchid

Purple Enamel Orchid

Spider Orchid but not certain which one

Coneflower (Isopogon formosus)
This is not an orchid but is quite lovely.

Then we came home which now seems so ordinary we were scarcely excited. What a lovely holiday it was!

B & N

back from Broome

This is a quick note to say that we are back from Broome without an accident or other problems happening while there. We went with 31 students (two from Boston College) and we came back with 31 - yes the same ones! Norma and I did fine although Norma found the heat of the day, which was in the upper 90's, to slower her down.

What is Broome for those who do not know what I am talking about. It is a city two hours by jet north of Perth on the coast. It reminds me a little of Florida because of the palms and mangrove trees in the area but it is drier than Florida. It has a distinct wet and dry season with this time of year about to bring the end of the dry. Generally in November, it will start to change and they will get rain every day so the humidity goes up.

We go take the students there because the University of Notre Dame of Australia (UNDA) has this experience as part of the Australian History course that all the American students take. We stay at a hostel on the Broome campus for UNDA and get picked up by Wundargoode Tour Company run by an Aboriginal family. We travel up the Dampier Peninsula to near the tip. The road is about half paved and half not and it takes about 4 hours in the four wheeled drives we take to get there. This is land which the Aboriginal title claims have been settled and is all owned by various tribal groups and families now. The company does an excellent job of organizing the activities, transporting and feeding us. The students seemed to get a great deal out of it.

We camped on a different parcel of land this time. I took this picture the morning that we left and I realize now that the scene we saw out over the bay was not available because I had not taken the photo. There were some flies, which are ones that like your face and eyes but few mosquitoes. It had highs from middle to upper 90's during the day but cooled to very comfortable temperatures during the night. So it was nice sleeping weather. This site is on red sand, which gets into everything but the view compensated for it. When you get back home you try to get the Kimberly out of your socks.

This is picture is of Bruce the assistant on the trip along with Norma and I the other Bruce. Colin tried to get me to say goombaly when I met him because it would say in his language that I acknowledge and honor the person with the same name. Well, I flubbed it when we first met but Bruce was patient and I did get it down. He sometimes used the related term to say goomba, which means person with the same name but who is older. His is a hard worker and works well with the students. He is talking classes on community development and land management in Sydney. We went crabbing on his brothers, Phillip, and he's property. In fact we saw the first salt water crocodile that this has been seen by this group or any of the others over the years in a tidal pool. We did not find many fish of good size in the tidal pool so I assume the croc was dining on them.

Some things happened that seem to be standard operating procedure. We are told that we must keep the lid down on the toilet because the lit toilet facilities (all 2 of 'em) drew insects which in turn drew tree frogs. Not the little green jobbies like in Florida but lovely ones about as big as your hand. The students were very compliant because tree frogs are the preferred diet of the snakes in the vicinity, all of which seem to be remarkably poisonous. We did find frogs one of which Norma removed from the shower so because the kids found the frog unnerving. The frog, in frog fashion, peed all over her so she got the first spot in the line for showers. The showers were curious in the the ground water was tepid. We think of our ground water as cold.

We got to go by a aqua culture farm. They were growing torcas (We think this was the name.) shells for buttons. They get quite a good price for them. Actually good enough price that Indonesian fishermen come all the way down to find them. They have been depleted off the reefs in the area so restocking them is a major part of their work. The center also worked on a recovery nursery for sea turtles and certain fish one was clown fish like the Nemo character. It was a very interesting side trip.

I will finally get this off. I find that Blogspot is very touchy with pictures and when I move text around the pictures I can inadvertently delete a picture and there is no undo button. Need I say more!!

Nice weekend

Friday - 09/12/08


We had a great weekend with Jessica and Todd showing them some of the sights in the area. It was a rainy day Friday when Jessica, Todd and Bruce took the train in to Perth to see the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit. Norma stayed home because the cold that she has been fighting for over a week was being a little worse again so rest seemed a better option. The exhibition was in a tent on some open park space down by the Swan River in downtown Perth. They have wooden models showing how the designs worked. In some cases you could play with them others just look at them. You begin to see how many other things he worked on other than art work. He developed cannon balls that had fins on them to make them more stable. He had a mobile stairs that could be pushed up to a castle wall and provide cover for the soldiers to get to the top without being speared or shot with an arrow. I have a picture of a car that you tightened down some springs and released them to drive it along for a distance. I think you can see that this might not be very helpful since cranking up down the springs every little distance was not make it move rapidly but it was ingenious for its time.

This is the car that he invented. You can see the leaf springs that he used to store the energy but you had to crack it up tight and then release it.

Here is Todd showing the proper amount of contemplation of one of his inventions. There is a boat with a crane coming out of it, which was another invention.

This is the Bell Tower on the water front in downtown Perth. You can see the amount of rain that was coming down at that moment. Fortunately, these were short lived showers and we walked into the business district to eat without getting soaked.

As we walked back toward the train station, we decided to eat rather than face a full train during rush hour. The Lonely Planet guide came to the rescue by suggesting a Japanese restaurant that was maybe six or eight blocks down Hay Street (a major street in the downtown). Also the price seemed to be better than usual and when we walked up to it there was a line waiting to get in. Now they were just opening so that seemed to be a good omen. We got in and the waitress asked if we had a reservation, which we said no. She said “Can you be finished eating by 7:00?” It was just a little after 6:00 at that moment but we said certainly! Everyone was getting the same treatment and we didn’t get our food until 6:40 but we did finish not long after 7:00. It was very good. We caught a train back into Freo at a reasonable hour and did not get wet in the process. We managed to be some where there was cover whenever it rained heavily. It was an interesting day.

Saturday

Saturday, we had a car from the university so we headed up to AQWA again. The main draw for Jessica and Todd was the leafy Sea Dragon which I showed in another an earlier message. They would have loved to see one in the wild while diving but they did not have the time. We took our time and looked at all the exhibits. We had fish ‘n chips in some shops near the marina. The fish was good and it was its usual greasiness. This is not a low fat meal. We ate with everyone else in an area under a roof that was open to the outside and with a view of the boats in the harbor. Now this is an idyllic setting except that there are aggressive sea gulls lurking. If people just left their trash sitting on the table, the gulls would move in quickly to have a food fight. At times they will fly just past your head almost touching it. Picturesque to being obnoxious changes in a moment!

This was a shallow tank at AQWA. You can see the sea anemone in front at the center left. The colors of the other animals were quite striking.

We were heading south from AQWA to turn left at hwy 3 to cut over to Caversham but we never saw the sign and didn’t know we had missed it until some way down the road. With Todd navigating while I drove, we got through the northern part of Perth, closer to the downtown than was planned; finally back on the right road. Because we were late in the day, there not many people present. We ended up seeing more things than we had the other two times that we have visited the park. I will include more pictures later.

A family picture with a wombat! There is nothing quite like it.

I have a picture of the baby of one of the koala's but it is a little hard to see so I am not including it at this time. Most of them were awake, which is unusual since they sleep 20 hours a day. The female with the baby sat on the head of male and finally he got cranky and bit her. After which they both vocalized their disapproval of each other. It was quite exciting for a moment.

This is a pair of young gang gang cockatoos who are posing well in this shoot but started fighting shortly after I took the picture and they had to be separated. They are really quite lovely even if they were busy fighting.

That is all for now.

B.

accident report

09/13/08

It is rarely dull!

As we were driving up the coast from Freo, we noted all the wind and waves and thought about Peta with the students who were going out to Rottnest Island for a field trip in her seashore geology class. We figured it was a rough boat ride.

As we let Caversham Wildlife Park late in the afternoon, I got a call from Peta that there had been an accident with one of the students while riding a bike. The phone reception was poor and I first thought she said she had fallen off the boat. But clearly Peta seemed to indicate that she was safe but at that momentI lost phone contact. I handed the phone back to Norma told her call back while I drove. It turns out that she had gone over her bike and hit her nose on the front basket. It did not break her nose but it did gouge it. She needed some stitches in her knee and had abrasions on her arms and some outstanding bruises. There is a nursing station on the island so Peta got help for her but she had to wait until everyone was finished and they caught the boat back. She said that many elderly women stopped and offered help and would take her back to their flat if she wished. It turns out that the rear brakes were poor and as she came up on two student one swerved into her lane and she braked harder but the front one worked best. That was too bad since it sent her over the top.

Norma took her to the doctor Monday morning to get the bandage changed. It is a type that promotes healing and should be able to avoid a scar as long as it gets changed every day this week. She was less sore than she and we thought she would be. She is doing well and will go on the trip to Broome next Monday. She is a plucky young woman.

I think the doctor could open a clinic at the P&O!!!

At this moment all is well but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

B.

Father's Day

This past Sunday was Father's Day here in Australia. We saw more families than usual in restaurants in Freo area celebrating the day. I am sure that had we gone to other areas that the same would have been true. It has some of the commercialization that we have but not quite as much. For some reason places like Home Deport (not called that here) think that advertising more leading up to Father's Day will increase their sales in power tools and not in ties at the clothing stores. Now I have not seen any statistics but since I don't see many men wearing ties, I assume that a cool power tool may be a more likely gift. Hmmm, maybe I would like it here!

What has prompted me to talk about this is the response I have heard from some of the students. Father's Day?!? You mean that they don't celebrate it in June like we do!?!? Gosh that is strange. This makes me chuckle because where in the great cosmic universe is that there a reason to have Father's Day in June? I tell them. Look you have another chance to wish your father well on Father's Day if you neglected him the first time. How often do we get second chance? By the way Mother's Day is in May so there the cosmic forces are working together for mothers... I guess.

This is not an earthshaking observation but just a fun filled fact from Freo.

Bruce

Wildflowers in the Sandhills

August 23 & 24 we headed north to Jurien Bay and Green Head to see wildflowers. We were looking forward to the trip because the last time we were here it was fall, which is very hot and dry. No flowers to be found except in a few cases. The is the end of winter now and the start of spring so we hoped that with the rain there would be a good crop of wildflowers. These are not the flowers that we would expect in the Midwest. The are some small plants like like our lilies but most are low woody shrubs and some large shrubs that have beautiful and interesting blossoms.

The first picture is of some bush lands south of Jurien Bay just along the road. Most of the yellow that you see are wattle bushes and I don't know what the bush is with the white flowers but I think that is a smoke bush. I found something similar a flower book. You can see two bushes in the next frame of this same bush but a little closer.

More smoke bush

This a Banksia bush which has the pink and white cone shaped flower. There are many kinds of Banksia and some species will be blossoming throughout the year.

Common Catspaw

This is a type of Grevillea.

This is a Grass tree that has the flowering spike found in an area where we were looking for other flowers. They are really quite interesting so I am making a link that will let you know more about these interesting plants.

And now for something entirely different, the Pinnacles Desert south of Cervantes a town along the coast. These are limestone rocks that were formed as part of the typical limestone formation that resulted from the raising and lower of the ocean levels over millions of years. These were the harder parts while all around them the stone was broken down. It makes for quite the stark contrast of standing in this desolate area and being able to see the ocean just a couple of kilometers away. It is not a large area but it is very interesting. The National Park is called Namung.

There were no flowers here but the parrots Galahs were nesting in holes in some of the pillars so we were told. We saw a flock of them flying but did not see any coming out of the holes. We saw some Black-Cockatoos when we stopped further inland and in another park. They were noisy but it was great fun watching them landing in these small bushes and the bush top would sway under their weight.

It was a very nice trip.

Improving health

I thought I needed to report that Nicole is improving. I think that the antibiotic that she got Monday is helping with the sinus infection. At least that will allow her to get better rest during the night. The throat is down a little because we can tell it in her voice but she still has a way to go. She needs to sleep a lot and drink lots of liquid, both of which she is doing so we wait.

Yesterday, I took an young man down to the doctor because of a very sore throat. If it is still really sore Friday, he will go back and get a blood test and we will know the result Monday. We hope that he does not have mono as well. They call it glandular disease down here. It is still the same nasty bug (virus). It have been good that we are close and have the spare bedroom for such a situation. We have not had an occasion to use it in the pass but there is always a time.

Other than that, we had busy day yesterday with class so afterward we had dinner at home with Nicole. Norma had purchases a chocolate cake for my birthday but it had raisins in it. I didn't think it was bad but Norma decided that she would not buy it again. By the way, raisins are called sultanas down here. So I have been buying Sultana Bran Flakes in the store.

This is a short entry and one just to say the Nikki is doing better.

Hope all is well you!

one sick kid

The weekend was going to be low key but we had decided that the wild flowers were starting to come out around here so we would go to Kings Park in Perth to see some. It is quite a huge park and has many wildflowers that are rare growing there. At first we were going to go Saturday but we had a number of things to do so we decided to do it Sunday. We hear from a student Friday night that she just got back from the doctor and she has mono. Norma went over to check on her. She was pretty sick with very swollen tonsils, sore throat, enlarged spleen and liver. The doctor told her to go to bed immediately, take lots of fluids and get rest. She also said to not go to class for two weeks. That is a lot to miss. Norma invited her to our place and on Saturday afternoon she called and said that she thought it would be better to come over. The P&O is an interesting place but the kitchen downstairs and you have to go outside to get into it, which is just not great when you are feeling this bad and running a fever. We talked to her this morning at breakfast and her nose is so stuffed up that I going with her this afternoon to check with the doctor to see if she also has a sinus infection. She says that her throat and everything do not seem to be better but mono does not improve quickly. If she also has a sinus infection, that will not help her get well either. We shall see how she improves over the week. This is one of those cases when we are glad that we have the spare bed room and are close so can offer Nikki the help to get better. Mono is virus so they can't give her antibiotics but they did give her some steroids to help her throat because it is so swollen.

We are glad to be able to offer her some help.
B.

Winter in WA

What is winter like in Fremantle Western Australia? To be a typical winter here, it should be cool and wet and it has been up until this past week. In fact it has been as wet as it was back in 1991 with a little above average in rainfall. When you are this dry a little above normal is great. The reservoirs are still only 35-40% full so they need more but it is still better than it has been. If I were looking at 35-40% full, I would be looking at the clouds for more. Australia in general is the driest continent in the world except for Antarctica but we will give it some special exceptions status. Australia has for many thousands of years had long severe droughts and ones that can be unpredictably as to when they will arrive and how long they will last. So the one they have been in for nearly ten years or so is not completely typical so it is still long even for here. When we were here in 2004, they were in it so it is nice to see that it seems to be breaking a little. Temperatures have ranged from the middle to upper 60's and lows in the 40's to middle 30's. There ares some below freezing temperatures in the interior of WA but they are only 2-4 degrees below freezing. The first few weeks we had a lot of clouds and showers would come zipping by with some drops some rain and move on. It made things very changeable. The Friday before the students arrived, there a very deep low that moved through that blew down trees, damaged roofs and did other damage but most are not that strong. Most are not nearly the strength of good old Midwestern storms.

Now in a country that is so dry would you expect to find a white water race down a river? Well they did and it was on the Avon River, which is a tributary of the Swan River that flows out through Fremantle. They held it again this past weekend and the water levels were so high that they had to close two segments because it was too dangerous. One because of the clearance under a bridge and another simply because the section was just too treacherous. Even with the two diversions, they were setting record times getting down the course. I was fascinated because they did the run in single kayaks, doubles and in flat bottomed power boats with a maximum of 10 horses outboards for power. The kayaks are not the whitewater style we see in the US but long narrow ones that I think of as racing kayaks for flat water. There were kayakers who did not make it through the rapids without getting upset. One picture in the paper showed a fella in the middle of a rapids standing on a rock and diving to his right. The caption said that it was his kayak that he was trying to catch but it was not visible in the picture. Another kayaker, a South African, stopped and helped another kayaker who tipped over in one area and when on his way to win the event anyway. I would have like to have watched it but I do not have a car so it was not possible at this time.

Winter stays on through August and starts to moderating in September. What am I saying! We are already moderate at least by Minnesota standards for the only snow is in the Sterling Ranges south of us. Now the southeastern part of Australia has some higher mountains and they area little further south so there is snow there in the high country. They are having a great ski season in the mountains there this winter. But again that is not here.

Here is a link to the Australian weather bureau so you can see what is happening here weatherwise. I used Google map street function and gave our address here and found myself looking at our gate. Hmmmm very interesting. Much discussion about privacy.

As always more to come!

B.

first six blokes for dinner

This will not be sent via email message sent to everyone. I thought that I would take a moment to comment on the first six students that we had over to dinner. We will have all of them over at least once and likely more. I am sorry that I did not get the chance to take pictures but next time or have posted them.

Norma put up the sign-up sheet last Friday only saying that it would be seafood and she marked out six slots. One young man signed up right away but than it stayed untouched for a while. I asked them last night if they muscled aside the young women to sign but they said no. I guess the next week will be lamb or so says Norma and we will see who comes then.

We like to get them to try different things so Norma got three kinds of fish: one red snapper, one pink snapper, and ??? I can't remember. Norma had read and listened to people's receipts and did not decide until just before she put them in the pan. White wine and some olive oil plus some herbs. She couldn't get the lower part of her oven to work right (This was the first time that she tried to use the oven. She just assumed that would operated normally.) so she used the broiler. We kept and eye on it and it turned out great. The fellas even commented how good it was. I also had them try some green tiger prawns, which they helped to clean and we boiled. We also had a taste of yabby and bug. What is he talking about!?!?!? Well a yabby is a crayfish and these were of good size and tasted great. The bug is some kind of "sand" lobster I guess but a very strange looking one. Think of Bobcat with the scoop on the front but flattened out. [I hyper linked to a web site that has a picture because my description just does not do justice to it.] Tim thought that it had a hint of blue cheese and some others thought so as well. My piece didn't but it was good. Norma also had a great green salad plus for another dish potatoes, green peppers, and onions sauteed together which were good. Finally dessert Norma cleaned a custard apple and put custard over it. Now this is custard that comes from the store and you just pour it over whatever. Tim since his home is in the UK had grown up with this kind of custard and he loved it. By the way, we had first seen this fruit in the Bahamas and they called it soursop (Although I only found a reference to a sweetsop in the grower information on them from Australia.). I think the fellas enjoyed the meal because there was little left of it. Oh - I forgot to mention that they had slices of zucchini sauteed with garlic so they could be eaten with crackers along with some Havarti cheese. At a little after eight, they went off to a dorm meeting and I cleaned up. We also had the requisite bit of Vegemite for them to try. No one loved it but Tim again because it is similar to Marmite back in the UK.

Norma went over to the meeting to hear what was happening to the students and say goodbye to a student that was leaving. The student was from Purdue and doing this all of this adventure on her own. She had been suffering anxiety attacks for a while and although our students were befriending her, it was too much. It is a shame that she was here only a week and a half and things are only getting started now. It is too bad.

That is all from here for now.

B.

Adventures in Oz

July 20, 2008
I am starting this update at 4:45 PM with six lost “sheep” still to come to the barn (dorm -P&O) exactly when we do not know. With bomb scares on the plane in L.A. and general confusion in Sydney because World Youth Week with the Pope ending Sunday, we have students straggling in over a much longer time than expected. It may be a late night before they all get here. I hope not too late because we are fixing them breakfast tomorrow morning at 8:00 and their orientations starts at 9:00. We had a pizza dinner in the P&O during the evening since some would not have had a chance to get to the store for food. (Note: They arrived at 11:00 PM but were not able to get their phone to call us so they came over in taxies. They were all tired but all arrived safely.)
Actually this email was to say what happened on our flight as I promised in my earlier short email to some of you but the students had much more arduous trek than we. Monica and Dave dropped us off at the Holiday Inn to catch the Executive Express to the airport and all was good. We thank them for doing the service. It was very nice. Our flight out on NWA was a tad unusual. We had a couple asking or sort of demanding that the stewardess find three seats together because they had a cranky two year old. I would have left the two year old in the seat by himself while having mom and dad sit together. (Well maybe not?!) Finally because this was delaying getting us off the ground two men volunteered to swap seats just to get us going but at this point it was two late, so said the stewardess, to make the switch so their were going to make do at least after the start of the flight but it didn’t happen. The little boy was good for a time but than he was not so happy. I was not certain that his lungs and throat would hold out. They did.
Our flight out of L.A. was uneventful except for an hour delay to replace a temperature probe. I don’t know where or what it was being probed but it seemed to be important to the pilot. The flight was long as usual but not unbearable. As we were within a couple of hours range of Brisbane (yes, this is a good distance when you consider the total flight takes 13 hours) in particular, the captain came on and said that we were a little short of fuel and that although we might have enough to make it, it would be outside the safety margin so we were to stop in Noumea capitol of New Caledonia. This is a French speaking island just to the northeast of Australia. It appeared lovely looking out the window but who knows we might go back. Captain said at the start of the process that it should take less than an hour to get the needed fuel. Of course it didn’t. As he told the stewardesses to prepare for take off, he said that the ground crew had never fueled a 747 before so they had to get out show them how. There was also something about hand pumping but that is foggy in my mind. So when we landed in Brisbane, we were several hours late and there were many people needing to make new connections. I must give Qantas a lot of credit because they put some of us who had longer delays up in a very nice hotel in downtown Brisbane with lunch and a snack, and taxi to and from the airport. When we finally arrived in Perth, Neil, the landlord of our flat, met us at the airport at about 1:30 AM to bring us to the new apartment and show us around for a moment. That was awfully nice of him to do this.
We will talk more about the orientation week in the next entry. We see some changes at the uni (Australian for university) and in Freo which we will describe. I will send this out via email and enter it on the blog. Some find it easier to read via email and others may not want to read it until they can bring it up on the blog. Here is the connection: http://bndickau.blogspot.com/index.html - B