Return to Darwin

Well, I won't offer the usual apologies for the long delay in writing here. I just got back to Darwin from a trip to the US, and elsewhere. It was quite a trip. I'm still pretty jetlagged, so it might take a couple of days to get through the trip, but here goes. I started by going from Darwin to L.A. Actually, I'll back up and say that I went to the US because of a conference in San Antonio. It was cheaper to buy a round-the-world ticket than to go round-trip, so I had a few extra stops to make.

Back to L.A. Well, Sydney anyway. I had a 9 hour layover, so... went to the beach. Yup, hopped the Manly ferry and had a look at the beach. Nice, but a bit cloudy and cool. When I got back to the airport, I was surprised to find that I'd been upgraded to business class. Very nice. Once the seatbelt sign was turned off, they flight attendants started passing out stuff. First, an 'overnight pack' (mostly a toothbrush and some socks. Then they asked, 'do you want pajamas?' Yup, apparently Qantas gives out pajamas on the trans-Pacific route, nice grey, sweats-looking things with some designer's signature on them. Very comfy, and very silly when most of the business class cabin wears them. I recommend Qantas business class - I got 7 hours of good sleep on that flight.

In L.A., I stayed with my Aunt Lucy and Uncle Clyde in Manhattan Beach. That was fun. I also met up with Trai and David up in Santa Monica. They're doing well. And thinking of moving out of L.A. Trai's applied to graduate schools, and in yet another parallel between our careers, she's applied to several of the same universities where I applied for jobs this year.

From L.A. I went on to Denver, but that will have to wait for another night because jetlag is starting to catch up again.

Litoria bicolor in pandanus

Litoria bicolor in pandanus
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

A little Northen Dwarf treefrog hanging out in a pandanus.

Cyclorana australis funny

Cyclorana australis funny
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

This guy was out taking part in a big breeding chorus of giant burrowing frogs. Have a look at the vocal sac on this boy

Magnetic termites

magnetic termites
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

A friend is studying these magnetic termites. We went to put little tents over a few mounds to see the effect on the mound temperature. Just over the hill, there was a pretty impressive storm. We managed to avoid getting wet. It's been a wet build-up season this year, with a lot of rain so far. Most days have seen a storm, and a few have been quite heavy (>50mm or 1 inch).

Story of a puppy

left puppy
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

This little guy just sat there, eagerly awaiting the return of his owner. Every time a person walked past, he jumped up eagerly. It was cute, in a sort of sad way.

more good news

Hmm... Well, it's been quite a few weeks. Not only did Keith and I get both of our ARC grant proposals funded, but now, it looks like some of my research on chuckwallas (a Mojave desert lizard) has been highlighed in a recent Ecology textbook (M. C. Molles. Ecology: Concepts and Applications, 4th Edition, McGraw Hill). Very cool stuff. Looks like he actually compares my work to one of the classic and foundational experiments in plant ecology from the 1940s. That is, he compares my work favorably, not that he's saying my work is very old science.

Otherwise, things have been pretty hectic around here. I've been trying to wrap up the project on rock slime, but it is going very slowly. Partly, that's because a big chunk of that research is on fairly sophisticated plant physiology, which is a bit outside my realm of expertise. The guy who actually did most of that has moved down south, so he's a bit hard to get ahold of. The really tricky bit is that Keith, Karen and I are supposed to present this research in a public lecture at the NT Museum in a couple of days. Could be interesting. The last time I gave a lecture there, it was on frogs, and the house was packed. There's a lot of interest in frogs around here. I doubt there will be as much interest in the green slime that grows under rocks in the middle of nowhere. Oh well.

I'm also in the thick of applying for jobs. Craziness there too. So far, it looks like there is a western bias to the jobs available this year, with a disproportionate number in San Diego. Actually, looks like there open jobs in 5 different California cities, and about 5 more western universities. Not bad for a guy who'd like to end up in the western US. Wish me luck.

More good news

Well, it seems that ARC is being generous to CDU folks this year. On Tuesday, Keith and I found out that ARC is going to fund our project on crocodile digestion. On Wednesday, we found out that they are also going to fund our project on frog water balance. Amazing! When we were wrtiting the grants, we sort of joked about the 'problem' of getting two different grants funded, and now we've got that 'problem'. To be honest, it's a problem I'm happy to deal with at this point. My main reaction is relief (after jumping around the room for a few minutes), because now I don't have to worry about finding an income in January. And I won't have to worry about getting shipped out of Australia because of an expired visa. Very nice.

The other big news this week is that Sarah has get engaged to Nudge. They were away in Alice Springs last week, and she came back with a ring full of diamonds. Looks like I'll have to find a new roommate soon.

Busy week

The last week has been quite hectic. I spent most of last week trying to figure out an obscure problem with one of th experiments I did on frogs about two years ago. We were looking to see how good a burowing frog species is at sucking water out of dry soils. Dealing with real soil is a pain, so we used water with some stuff dissolved in it to make a solution that acts like soil of various dryness. Normally this works just fine, but we used a weird molecule that does weird stuff - PEG.

For most molecules, it's easy to calculate their effect when they dissolve in water - if you double the concentration, you double the effect. Not so with PEG. Not only that, but it turns out that the effect it has depends on the temperature of the solution. Originally, we tried calculating the water potential (sort of like dryness) of the solutions we used. That gave weird numbers, but they weren't totally unbelievable, so we put them in a manuscript that was sent to several journals and eventually got accepted.

Recently, we got two different machines that measure water potential. I won't bore you with the details, but one looks at the freezing point of the solution, and one measures the temperature of dew point in the air at equilibrium over the sample. So, we decided to measure the PEG solutions we'd used before because we are about to start a new series of experiments. Of course, we got different numbers - ones that made more sense than the original ones we calculated. Unfortunately, when we measured in both machines, we got different numbers, which, because PEG is so weird, are probably both correct. What a pain.

So, over the weekend, I sent a letter to the editor of the journal where our manuscript was accepted, explaining all of this, and explaining that the numbers we'd used in the accepted manuscript were all wrong, and begging to change the manuscript before they sent it off to the printer. Well, turns out that they were just working on typesetting the paper this week, so I just got the changes in to them on time by a couple of days. So, no worries on getting the paper fixed. This could be one of the few times that I'll ever be happy with having a very long delay between having a paper accepted and having it actually printed.

That was the big, frustration of the week. The big news is that yesterday we found out that one of the big grant proposals we submitted in July has been accepted and will most likely be funded (the parliament still has to approve the budget, but they almost never change anything - they're too busy worrying about wars, health care, jobs, and getting re-elected to bother with individual science grants). So, looks like I will actually have an income after the 1st of the year. That's a huge relief!

Kimberley art 1

Kimberley art 1
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

One of the paintings I bought on the Kimberley trip a few weeks ago. No, it is not an electic avocado, nor is it an alien landing craft. Apparently, it is a stream that becomes a big waterfall during the wet season. These paintings are made with natural ochres by artists at the Warmun art center.

kimberley art 2

kimberley art 2
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

One of the paintings I picked up on the trip to the Kimberley. This one depicts a landscape, actually a river where there is always good fishing.

prehnite

prehnite
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

This is what's been keeping me busy this week. I've been working on our paper on the algae that grow under translucent rocks. One type of rock that supports this growth is prehnite, which is apparently used insome jewelry. You can see why - it polishes up nicely.

El Questro-boat chase

El Questro-boat chase
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

We swapped duties on the way back downstream. Mark put it in high gear, and we left the girls in our wake (notice the huge wake behind out boat). Serious power boating on this river. We thought about skiing behind the boat, but weren't sure if the boat would actually move if it had to drag a person behind. That and neither of us wanted to be the bait for the 4 meter croc.

El Questro-Chamberlain river

El Questro-Chamberlain river
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

We did get out of the boats and walk around a bit. The river was quite low in parts, so easy to walk around in. Very beautiful spot.

El Questro - rock art

El Questro - rock art
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

There is some amazing rock art in the Kimberley. This wall had some great Wanjinnas (the big, spaceman-looking figures) and some Bradshaws (the strange, dancing stick-figures in the lower left). Some of the bradshaws in the region have been dated at over 20,000 years old. The wanjinnas are much newer - a few hundred years old. These were about 4 feet tall. There was a sign below these saying that El Questro was in negotiations with the traditional owners about access to these paintings, so we weren't allowed to get close to them. Too bad, because you could see a lot of interesting figures through binoculars, and I bet there were dozens of interesting paintings hidden behind the rocks.

El Questro - Chamberlain gorge

El Questro - Chamberlain gorge
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

El Questro boating

El Questro boating
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

At first, Mark took photos while I drove. Turns out it was a lot brighter with Mark behind the lens.

El Questro boat ride

El Questro boat ride
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

On our first morning at El Questro, we hired a couple of boats to cruise up the Chamberlain gorge. Actually, we hired the little electric motors and a couple of car batteries - the boats were just waiting at the river. We divided into a guy's boat and a girl's boat, and headed upstream. the morning was beautiful - still, cool, sunny. The reflections off the water were amazing.

It wasn't until after we'd paid for the boats that we found out about the 4 meter saltwater crocodile that had taken up residence in the gorge. Apparently, that one was a replacement for a 6 meter croc that had been there earlier in the dry. We looked, but never saw either of these, which was a good thing - both would have been bigger than our boats, and those tiny little motors would never have outrun a big croc.

El Questro lookout

El Questro lookout
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

After picking up Mark in Kununurra, we headed to El Questro, a former cattle station that has been turned into an outback resort. I was really impressed with El Questro - it had every level of outback adventure, from relatively primitive camping and bushwalking, all the way to a 5 star resort. In fact, two weeks before we got there, Nichole Kidman had been visiting after she finished shooting for the film Australia, in Darwin, and near Wyndham. We camped on the river.

This photo is up on a lookout overlooking the million acre station (basically everything you can see from this big hill, and then some). The road up to this lookout was quite interesting - definitely a 4WD road. Very steep, and with switchbacks so tight that if you didn't hit them just right, you had to back up and make a 3 point turn out of them. Unfortunately, also a popular place to drive for the sunset, so we ran into a bit of traffic. The view from the top was worth it though. And we finally got to have the sunset wine and cheese we'd been planning to have for nearly a week.

Five rivers sunset

Five rivers sunset
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

There's not a lot to see in Wyndham, but it does have a big hill in the middle of town that looks over 5 major rivers. And it has a commanding view of the sunset.

Wyndham croc

Wyndham croc
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

The welcoming committe in Wyndham. There's a big crocodile farm in Wyndham, which is most famous because it is a shipping port for live livestock on their way to the middle east.

The Grotto

Grotto
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

After leaving the Bungle Bungles, we headed to Wyndham for a night, then on to Kununurra to pick up Mark (Katja's husband) for his weekend off. On the way to Wyndham, we came across the Grotto, a lovely place with a nice swimming hole and a very peaceful... well... grotto. The water was at the bottom of what would obviously be a huge waterfall in the wet, but it was just a dry, bedrock riverbed at this time of year.

Bungles afternoon

Bungles afternoon
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard

After my long walk, I was treated to some amazing, late afternoon views, like this.