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.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
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
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
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