Darwin - early buildup

Well, it's been a busy few weeks settling into Darwin. I've managed to find a nice apartment with a great view of the ocean, including sunsets over the water. Well, sort of, the sun actually sets behind a tree, but in a few weeks I'll be able to see it from the balcony. The location is great in general, I'm close to the Sunday markets - actually, I'm just a block away! - and it's close to grocery stores, and a pizza place. The bike ride to Uni is about 5km, if I go through the neighborhoods, or 6km if I follow the bike route along the coast. Of course, going through the neighborhoods also dumps me onto the bike path along the coast, so I still have about 10 minutes looking over the water. The apartment is also about 15 years old, so the vegetation is pretty mature around it. That means critters, which makes me happy. I've got a couple green tree frogs that hang out on my balcony at night, and a dragon lizard that comes out on the fence each morning. The mangroves seem quite popular with the friarbirds, so it gets a bit raucous in the morning. I'm told that every once in a while there are crocs in the mangroves too. Of course, when I left Darwin, I sold off most of my furniture, so I've been trying to recovers some of that. So far, I have a table with 4 chairs, a bed, 2 deck chairs, and a hammock. I'm using the hammock for a couch, and there is plenty of space to sit on the floor. I'm still working on the rest.

Once I got moved in, it was time to dive head first into work. Keith had a meeting to go to this weekend, and we had a pile of data that needed to be analyzed. Needless to say, it was a bit of a mess, and took a lot longer to work through than we thought. And once we got it worked out we realized that the data were still a mess. Or at least they were not as nice as we'd have liked. We managed to pull together something, and Keith says the talk went well.

Tomorrow, we're heading to Wave Hill station, near the NT, Western Australia border. We're going to find translucent rocks with green stuff growing underneath them. Ultimately, we'll be using molecular genetics to determine the species of cyanobacteria that grow there, and then we'll compare that with the communities that have been described in other deserts throughout the world. We'll also be reviving the green slime, and measuring photosynthesis rates under different light intensities. Should be interesting, and a good excuse to take a drive. The only bad part is that it is definitely build-up season now, and it's going to be bloody hot down there. The forecast for tomorrow is 39C (that's about 102F). We'll take lots of water, I think.