Changeover Day

At the end of a tumultuous month we have just exchanged our 12 yo Toyota Camry for a new RAV4. It was a sad day as we took our faithful and very successful v6 Camry down to the local Toyota dealer. We had had 175,000km (110,000 miles) of trouble-free and efficient motoring from the old work-horse, but she was beginning to show her age as functionality decreased slowly. The two things that remained sound to the very end, however, were the engine and the ride. Au revoir, UZN288.

When we reached the show-room Max transported his child safety seat into the show-room and we picked up UZN's replacement after a few formalities like writing cheques. It's a RAV4 awd automatic with 4wd capability for steep slopes on unsealed roads, and unlike its predecessor is a bright red rather than silver colour. SIlver is easilty the most popular shade at the moment, but I regard it somewhat boring. Red matches my shorts as the photo shows, though I doubt that is the main reason for chosing the colour of a vehicle.

Dot wasn't around at the purchase because of a hair appointment, but we're all off for our first real drive in the vehicle to see the local waterefalls in full flood after some more heavy rain yesterday.

AS

Yabbying II

 Max and I headed out on another unsuccessful yabbying expedition late this afternoon - in the sense that we did not manage to catch one. This time we went westwards over the Great Divide to Booroolong Creek at the headwaters of the Murray-Darling system. The drive was lovely in the sense that the scenery was great and the car was air-conditioned, both relaxing after a terribly hot day that felt like 36C (mid-90s F). It was also a sticky heat with storms brewing to our south. The pictures show the Creek where it is crossed by the road linking Armidale to Bundarra and a view downstream to the south-west with late afternoon sun filtering through.

The creek had lots of rocks and pot-holes which favour yabbies and the stream was flowing sufficiently well to disperse the surface algae that were a problem at Dumaresq Dam earlier in the week. Despite our not sighting a yabby, Max had a good time walking across the shallow waters dangling meat on the end of a piece of string in the hope of luring a bite. And the site was so picturesque and peaceful that I was glad we went to get away from the hustle of modern life. By the way, today was a public holiday to celebrate the POMS turning up at Sydney Cove 223 years ago.

The nation has come a fair way since then and yesterday we had one of our great modern sporting successes. The Europeans have their European Cup (or whatever it is now called) and the Asians have the Asian Cup, albeit for national teams (like the World Cup) and not the best national club sides. Australia is now recognised as an Asian side and last night they beat one of the best Asian sides - Uzbekistan - 6 - 0 to reach the final against Japan this coming weekend.

AS

Yabbying

Many inland streams and dams are home to small crustaceans locally called yabbies (Cherax Quadricarinatus), and kids love to catch them. They're edible and rather nice. Indeed a colleague once hosted a Japanese delegation and served them yabbies from his farm dam to their great excitement and approval.

Well yesterday we went to nearby Dumaresq dam, just 15 km or so from home, at Max's request and we took along pieces of string and food to tie on at the end - chicken pieces, ham and that sort of thing. At one stage we had about seven pieces of string dangling in the lake. Alas we didn't even have a nibble as far as we could tell and when we left all the pieces of meat were intact.

Nevertheless, it was a lovely late afternoon excursion amid some more picturesque scenery in the shadow of Mount Duval, which is about 1400m high and completely covered in forest. And, by the way, real summer has arrived. It was 31C yesterday and 33C today!

The final picture shows Cherax Quadricarinatus, but the picture is from the internet - we didn't see one in the flesh, but they were there!

AS

City of Cards

Dot taught Max to construct a house of cards. From there they both ran riot and produced a veritable city of cards in just a few minutes. The result is shown here. Some of the cards were from Max's favourite card game, not bridge but UNO. The other cards were from a large-format standard deck.

AS

Rock Hopping at Dangars Falls

Today was an absolutely beautiful day: crystal clear, mild (only 26C), and sunny. This is much more like the summer weather we cherish than the heavy rains of recent weeks. It was also an invitation to go bush, so Max - who is staying with us for 2 weeks - and I headed off to Dangars Falls to go rock hopping, looking for lizards, eels and yabbies. We traversed the 20+ km from Armidale across some glorious countryside, as shown in the first photo. The rolling grasslands, with their knee-high grass, stretch some 40km into the distance. The low conical hills in the middle distance are the cores or vents of long dormant volcanoes.

Under normal circumstances, when the water is low in the Gara river, there are lots of exposed rocks over which to stroll or hop as the case may be, but the great volume of recent water had covered a lot of the rocks and crimped our style somewhat. The second and third photos show the natural pond at the entrance to the Oxley-Wild Rovers national park. Not only was the water high, but the vegetation was exceptionally green - almost like the Garden Eden.

From there the substantial outflow accelerated downhill towards the top of the falls and the column of water shown in the next two photos. You can see the rocky banks of the stream in the first of these and often one can leap across the river ... but not today. Even so, Max had fun chasing lizards and poking the water with a stick in his quest for snake-skins and yabbies, a form of crustacean. Judging by the number of tadpoles in the river, there will soon be an explosion of frogs.

The fifth photo shows Max in pursuit of those ends. We'd covered his legs up out of fear that he's encounter a brown snake like he did at the same spot last year, but all was well. And, for my British readers, he was wearing his Animal T-shirt acquired in Padstow last year. We're going to return to this spot within a few days as Max wants to catch some yabbies - not I hasten to eat, but to examine and return to the river. He's aware that this is a national park!

AS

Great Uncle Phil's Christmas Present

When we send money for Christmas presents there's always a nagging feeling about its ultimate destination. Well, let's put Phillip's mind at rest and show him the outcome of his present to Max, who received a new scooter. It travels with him wherever he goes because it conveniently folds flat and doesn't take up much space. It also means he hangs out local skate parks as these photos show. We've been home two days and already our skate park has received two visits, the latest at 7.20am when he was the only occupant. Yesterday, at mid-morning, the park was crawling with kids Max's age or a little older.

Our local skate park is large and well-equipped with the concrete shapes making them so much fun. It also caters for any age from 5 to 20 ... or as we shall see, 65. The first couple of pictures show Max in action on the more gentle slopes. He cannot handle vertical faces just yet, but is improving his style with each visit.

Of course, there's the occasional splat factor like this:



For the record, Max wasn't hurt although the fall was real enough. And a strange sight was caught by the camera Max just happened to be holding. That scooter rider disappearing into the distance looks much older than the traditional skate park inhabitant. Sure, the dress is appropriate - board shorts, singlet and cap, but the size and shape look suspect.

AS

Second Childhood

The last 6 months, including this Christmas - New Year break, have seen me do a few things that have been off the menu for a good few years. For example, the trip to Broulee mentioned a few posts ago saw me frolicking in the surf and even body boarding. Back in July I rode a scooter something like 700m down a mountain-side in Switzerland and then swung like Tarzan between trees in a forest. Come to think of it, I also had a few trips on a flying fox last year.

Well, the trip to Canberra last weekend provided another reminiscence of earlier days: I went 10-pin bowling! My earliest recollection of this deafening 'sport' was a game at an alley at Leicester Square in London at something like 5am. Don't ask me what I was doing there at that time! Anyway, this time around the alley was alongside Lake Gininderra and the time was a more respectable early evening. The deafening part was the blast of loud, but unidentified, muzak coming from a constellation of LOUD-speakers.

Apart from me, the participants were Emily, Rebecca, Greg and Max. He did especially well given he's only 6 and was rather dwarfed by the size of the ball. I won, if the aim of the game is to get the lowest score. Oh! It's not quite like golf. In fact, I probably got the lowest score anywhere in the world that day! In the second game, two-thirds of my tosses were off-line and failed to hit a single pin. Instead of a maximum 300, my score was a miserable 40+. That may well be my last game for a while, perhaps ever. My last round of golf was 35 years ago when I managed to do the last 9 holes of the Armidale golf course in an impressive 96. Factoring that up gave me 192 for 18 holes. Unsurprisingly I retreated to the bridge table.
I suppose the lesson from all this is that retired professors don't have to boring old farts. Such escapades might even be life preserving.

AS

A Baptism and a Funeral

If my memory serves me correctly Hugh Grant starred in two weddings and funeral. I even went to the see that film - unusual for  me, though I'm off to see the King's Speech when it arrives here shortly.

I was reminded of the film over the last week as I attended one funeral and baptism, both held under the auspices of the Catholic church. The former was for a long-term colleague, John Pigram, who had been in ill-health for some time. We'd known each other since my arrival in Australia almost exactly 40 years ago to the day, but John had retired well over a decade previously and out paths had rarely intersected recently. However, there was a large turnout of past and present colleagues for the farewell.

The second was for the arrival last year of James Castle, whose father, David, is brother to Greg, Emily's husband. It was a very large family affair, for Evina, James' mother has - if my information is correct - nine other brothers and sisters. I attended the sumptuous party afterwards, but not the ceremony itself for I was looking after Max at the time and there's no way he'd sit still through a long ceremony!

The first event was in Armidale and the second about 4 days later in Canberra, 800 km apart.

AS

The Singularity Is Near

I've just been whiling away time reading an article about Ray Kurzweil, the famous businessman and futurologist. That lack of discipline on my part could be costly, if Ray is correct! That's because has predicted that 2045 is the year of THE singularity when humans will have to be given supplementary brain capacity to deal with all the knowledge and information surrounding us and process it to make accurate decisions. I gather that we'll have to attach our brains to a battery of ultra-fast computer chips (or CPU) and storage back-up.

Of course, he couldn't know that I'll be turning 100 in that year, which raises some interesting questions. Because of my age, will I face discrimination in the surgery needed to augment my brain capacity? I hope not because I'm hoping adopt his health regime that he predicts will make him immortal, which will be fun. Imagine this, too. Even if I pass away shortly after my 100th birthday, I will have immortality of a kind. This is because the extra CPU and storage capacity wired to my brain will be able to download the contents of my memory for posterity. Still, I'd like to be around to experience all that life will increasingly offer.

No doubt, good readers, you'll conclude that I'm already becoming deranged and should offer myself for euthanasia. But, consider this! According to Ray's predictions, we will witness in the 21st century something like 20,000 years of progress at today's rate, or roughly 10% compound over the 100 years. That's why I castigated myself at the start of this piece. If knowledge, information and processing power are expanding exponentially at that rate, then reading that article could be a major indiscretion on my part - except perhaps it inspired this post. We've got no time to lose before being swamped by technology!

All this prompts some more predictions on my part. If Kurzweil is only half right, businesses and government are in for some exquisite turmoil. In fact, it will hurt government far more than business because the latter is far faster on its feet and business almost always leads in the technology game. Government, in practice, is desperately slow in making most decisions because of the need to debate different points of view and seek compromise solutions. Do you want to bet that by 2045 most of government will become completely dysfunctional? This process might bring more uncertainty to human affairs than all of chaos theory, complexity theory, and quantum mechanics put together.

I must stop here and start revising my Monterrey paper accordingly.

AS

A Nice Set of Numbers

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released employment data for Dember 2010 and they're a nice set of numbers. The unemployment rate fell to 5% and the participation rate remained at a high 65.8%. Over 2010, the workforce was up 3.3%, while unemployment fell a large 8.1%. So things look rosy nation-wide, and I doubt that the Queensland floods will have an impact on these numbers, which are all headed in the right direction. No wonder the stock market took off after the figures were announced.

AS

Water Water Everywhere

Some parts of the world are experiencing severe drought. Others are buried under meters of snow. And yet others are ravaged by flood. Just to remind you, the area of Queensland under water is now estimated to be greater than the area of France and Germany put together. The rain keeps coming and is now moving south of the border in our direction. After days of dull weather and misty rain, it is now beginning to rain harder and more steadily. Moreover, our local forecast sees the rain continuing for much of the week as a surface trough over the North Coast moves southwest - in our direction - and merges with another trough coming from the west. The winds are from the northeast bring moist and humid air in off the coral sea.

Our weather problems are mild compared with SE Queensland. The Mary River (affecting Maryborough and Gympie) has a 20m flood - that's > 60 feet in UK language if British Readers readers can believe it. That's the outcome of 350mm of rain overnight (or c. 14 inches). Many other coastal locations are drowning, including Brisbane and, of course, Rockhampton whose plight flashed around the world. Unusually, this rain has swept far inland and we've just watched pictures of vehicles being swept downstreet in Toowoomba to the north of us, a city 4 times the size of Armidale. To their west, Dalby has just been severely flooded by the Condamine system for the second time and even further downstream is St George, which has had close its largest flood ever - the second in two years. St George is one of the cotton producing communities whose small businesses we've been studying and is now a bit of a mess! We were last there three months ago.

In most countries floods are fast moving events. Australia's floods, especially to the west of us in the Murray-Darling basin, tend to be massive and slow moving affairs. There's an old story told of a paddle steamer moored on the Murrumbidgee River at Hay in the south of NSW. A big flood tore the vessel from its moorings and, after the flood subsided, locals scoured the countryside for it. Eventually they found the boat 17km (10.5 miles) from the river bank!! Water now flowing down the Condamine will take at least 4 months to reach the sea and, in the process, spread out over vast areas of inland NSW. Even the coastal rivers like the Fitzroy flowing through Rockhampton have flood peaks that may take a week or so to start subsiding in any meaningful way.

We're still in early summer and the prognosis is for a sodden continuation of the start. Armidale has hardly had any warm weather and today the temperature hovered around 20C, little warmer than a good day in mid-winter. We'll soon find that our tans are actually rust!

AS