Ummm… Anyone have an ark we can borrow?

When we moved to Dubbo, we were looking forward to dry weather, big blue skies, water restrictions, none of the chronic mould problems we had in Sydney. And that wasn’t just being naïve – that was based on my experience in Dubbo over the last 1.5 yrs. We were NOT expecting one of the wettest years in history. But that’s what we got.

Burrendong dam has gone from 8% full to 130% full over the last 6 months. Farmers have gone from one of the best harvests due to the rain to one of the worst harvests due to the rain – even small farms have lost $80,000 in the blink of an eye. The river has been higher than I have ever seen it, and the rain keeps interfering with my bike commute to work – a problem I never had before.

And then last week, the clouds took it to a whole new level. On Wednesday, the bike path bridge went under. On Thursday, the Serisier/“little” bridge went under, meaning there was only 1 way to get from one side of Dubbo to the other. Traffic chaos ensued – there were back-ups that would put Chicago or Sydney rush hour to shame. The highways in almost every direction from Dubbo are closed. A few remain open, but are covered with water. And I don’t mean there’s a bit of water on the road. We had a friend coming home from the coast who said the water was almost over the hood of her Forester and she couldn’t tell where the road came out on the other side. Several towns around central-west NSW are being evacuated or have already been cut off completely.

And there’s another major storm heading our way this week.

And the locusts are starting to move in. Guess the “worst locust outbreak in years” doesn’t pose much of a threat to the farmers anymore.

River lookout when Mom and Dad were here.


River lookout on Thursday.


Now it's all underwater - I can't even get in to take a similar pic.

For more pics you can check out this website

Our new baby!

Didn't know we were expecting, did you?!? Neither did we!
But we are now the proud parents of a baby sugar glider - a little boy, 37 grams.

How cute is he!?!
He was found in a tree that had been cut down. His mom and siblings probably moved on after the tree was cut down, and he was left behind. He will be released eventually, so our job now is to get him to that stage. He's on 5 feeds a day: 6am, 10am, 2pm, 6pm, and 10pm. Other than that, he pretty much hangs out in his pouch.
And he still needs a name, so suggestions are welcome!

Ani's Birthday

Happy 7th birthday to Ani!!

Being the loving parents that we are, it took us about 3 months before we got around to celebrating it. And we still made her do the humiliating birthday photo with a tempting treat sitting right under her nose. But she didn't seem to mind when she got a whole meat pie - this year's "human treat" birthday present. Notice those flashy new bowls that she got for her birthday, too! (The dog she stayed with when we went to the States ate her old recycled tupperware bowls.)

Her technique was pretty amusing - she took off the top and ate it, first, then licked out all the filling, then ate the bottom crust.

She seemed pretty satisfied with her birthday present.

Spring!!!

Today, spring sprung! :) Sunny, amazing blue skies, and 27 degrees (that's 81 in US-speak)!! It was so sudden and so perfect. I love warm weather. Some people blame their moods on hormones - for me, it's all about the weather (which still probably gets back to the hormones, but that's OK). I didn't have to wear gloves or a hat on my bike ride to work (and could have gone without a fleece), I almost put on a dress to walk Ani this evening (but then got lazy), I didn't have to turn on the heat at all. And it was capped off with an incredible sunset that just kept going and going. I'm sitting outside at 10pm, completely comfortable. Happy girl.

Dear Mr. Magpie

Dear Mr. Magpie,

Despite what you might think, the more you dive bomb my head, the more I want to hurt you. You are not doing yourself any favours by snapping your beak as loud as you can in my ear, striking my helmet with your big ol' beak, or thumping your chest against the back of my head. I call myself an ecologist, and I understand your motivations, but I promise I don't want your chicks. And why don't you attack the walkers right next to me? What did bikers ever do to you? I appreciate a good obstacle course, but this is getting to be a little much.

So in the interest of yourself and your loved ones, BACK OFF!!!

Sincerely,
An intrepid bike rider

PS - If less that 9% of you are vicious attackers, why are there THREE of you along my 15 minute commute??

PPS - Why did you have to teach your bad habits to the wood duck along the bike path, too?? Seriously, what duck charges a bike??

Election Time

It’s election time down under.

“Wait,” you say – “didn’t you just get a new prime minister?”
Why yes – yes we did. Now it’s time for another one.

In order to understand the last regime change, it is critical to understand that in Australia, the person who is the head of the majority party is the prime minister.

So when the party leaders freak out because poll numbers slip a little bit and decide to oust the current Head of the party and put a new person in place, there’s nothing stopping them. And that’s exactly what the Australian Labor Party did. Almost overnight, they executed their ‘bloodless coup,’ as the papers called it. When Australia woke up on 24 June, rather than talking about Australia’s win over Serbia in the World Cup, everyone was saying “What the hell?!?” K-Rudd got the boot, and Julia Gillard became our new leader. First female prime minister.

And that was all done in preparation for the next regime change – the federal elections.

Elections have to be held every 3 years, but the prime minister can decide to hold them earlier. So shortly after Gillard took office, she announced that elections would be held 21 Aug – a mere matter of weeks away. So Australia has been a flurry of election activity. Everyone is whinging about the never-ending campaining. Seriously?? 5 weeks?? That’s NOTHIN’!!

But here’s what cracks me up. Watching the campaign ads, you’d think it was all about which prime minister – a lot like presidential campaigning in the US. But Aussies don’t vote for the prime minister. They don’t even vote for the party they want for prime minister. There is nothing on the ballot related to the prime minister. In fact, there is nothing about the prime minister even written into the constitution. You just vote for Senate and House representatives. The prime minister comes from the party that wins the majority of the seats in the House (turns out the Senate doesn’t really matter). And yet there are lots of furious people saying "I didn't vote for Gillard, I voted for Rudd!!" Well, no, you didn't.

Vegetarian

Yup - that's melon rind.

Mmm - meat!

Aussies love a good slab of meat. And if you can gamble on it, that's even better. Which has led to the creation of meat raffles.

Meat raffles are a standard fixture of any good pub in Australia. They're a weekly event, so you show up, buy your raffle tickets, and drink some beer while you're waiting for the numbers to be drawn. And if you're a lucky winner, you get to go pick out your tray of meat. The owners of the pub have to buy all the meat, and they generally don't make much off the raffles. It's just another way to draw customers in.

So the South Dubbo Tavern has one of the best meat raffles - mostly because they have the best tray-to-customer ratio I know of. Every week they raffle off 42 meat trays, and on an average night, I'd say there's around 100 people there. Ben and I bought $10-worth of tickets and won 2 trays - $50-worth of meat!! Mmmmm.

Movin' right along

Yep - it's that time again. Time to update your address book. Two years in one place was starting to push our limit - our feet were getting pretty itchy. So we up 'n moved.

Now we're happy Dubb-ites, or whatever you want to call people living in Dubbo. I got a 7 month contract at the zoo, and Ben is at the "writing stage," so he can do that anywhere. Although everyone looks at you a little funny when you say you like it (as if it's not physically possible to find Dubbo pleasant), we're really enjoying the rural NSW life.

A bit of research into moving vans revealed that it was out of the question to rent the van in Sydney and return it in Dubbo. For the few companies that did allow it, they charged a ~$5,000 one-way fee. (Yes, that's the correct amount of zeros.) Although we always love a good opportunity to throw away some money on fees, we decided to opt out of this one (just for you, Mike). Since I was already living in Dubbo, I rented a truck there, drove it ~7 hours to Sydney, we loaded up all our stuff (in the dark), slept in an empty house, and then drove back to Dubbo (me in the truck, Ben and Ani in the car).

Not only was the truck big (and Australian highways small), but it was manual AND the position of the gears was different (i.e., reverse was top left). But after ~14 hours and 1000 kms together, I got a bit attached to our little truck (or at least my ass did). I spent the whole drive singing "The Lady was a Truckie" by iconic Aussie country singer Slim Dusty, and "Bumpin' up and down in my little red wagon" (the truck had good shocks).

The side-note to all this is that when I left Dubbo with the moving truck, we didn't actually know where we were moving to. But that's another story, and we did know by the time we got back to Dubbo with our van-load of stuff.

So this is our new home: 10 Lovett Ave., Dubbo

We're paying $100 less per week for about 3 times more space. Hard to complain about that. So if anyone wants to come visit, we have lots of extra space now! It even has a little cubby house out back for Ani.

Skink in the tub

We have a skink who has moved into our tub. It just crawled up through the drain (which is open to the outside). I think it might be escaping the cold weather, although it probably doesn't hurt that we bring home some of Ben's flies to feed it. It mostly just likes to curl up in the drain.

A day in the life: Fly Boy

Things are going well with Ben’s research. The big huge experiment that we started in December is almost finished. There were 2 flies that outlived all the rest and acquired names: Ponce and Methuselah. My parents regularly inquire about them, right after asking about Ani. But now we're just down to 1: Ponce (who, by the way, is female).


Having proven that we can survive an experiment that size, he and his honours student (Sarsha) decided it would be a good idea to run an experiment 4 times bigger. They just finished setting that up. So all is well in Fly-land, but very busy. That's a lot of mouths to feed.

Pumpkin

Fall is here and it’s pumpkin season. FYI – squashes are called pumpkins, here (e.g., butternut pumpkin, kent pumpkin, grey pumpkin). And we don’t have the orange variety that you typically think of. But they’re still tasty – especially in fall.

So I got inspired, despite the lack of spare time on my hands. I found a recipe for stuffed pumpkin gnocchi, and figured while I was at it, I should make pumpkin scones, too. And somehow, I decided that I needed 2 whole pumpkins to get 500 g of pumpkin. With all the leftovers, it looks like now we’ll be making pumpkin soup, too. But everything turned out pretty well!

And not only did this culinary adventure produce some tasty food - it also provided Ben with some valuable insights about my kitchen skills: 1) I'm no good at estimating quantities, 2) the time estimates that they provide on recipes are a gross underestimate for me, and 3) apparently I cuss a lot when I cook (probably due to our extreme lack of counter-space).

When ya gotta go

Ben stumbled across this webpage the other day (he was doing race searching, if that explains anything) - the site just cracks me up:
The Australian National Public Toilet Map

You can browse them or search for a specific one. There's even a trip planner function - I guess for short you could call it the TP function! (hahaha...) The header reveals that it's a project of the National Continence Management Strategy - who knew such a thing existed! Mom and Dad - maybe you want to offer your modelling services over here. (I don't remember what your life-size poster/advert was for, but I remember jokes about incontinence...)

Anyway, for those of you contemplating a trip over here, don't forget about this incredibly valuable resource!! :)

New Zealand

It's a year late, but better late than never, right? Last February, we went on a whirl-wind road trip around New Zealand with my parents. The 4 of us have been reminiscing over the past few weeks: "Remember what we were doing a year ago today?" It's hard to capture the trip in words (and I'd never get anything posted if I attempted that), but here are some of our memories captured in pictures.

And our hearts go out to the people of Christchurch. We have such happy memories of strolling through the city on a gorgeous day - it's hard to image the destruction and hardship they're enduring now.


View New Zealand in a larger map

Baby Update

It’s been a busy few months in the zoo nurseries here in Oz, so it’s high time for an update. These aren’t all the zoo babies that have been born in the last few months – just the pregnancies that I’ve had a hand in monitoring.

Cheetah Cubs – 3 Oct 2009, 2 boys & 2 girls

After months of trying, one of our young cheetahs got pregnant just as I was leaving the zoo last July. She had 4 adorable cubs the week before I went back to Dubbo in October, and the big excitement was that 2 of them were king cheetahs. King cheetahs have a striped coat instead of a spotted coat, and while it’s a natural thing, it’s very rare. So all the cheetah keepers are busting their buttons! They’re all healthy, and growing fast.
king (sister) and regular (brother) coat patterns side-by-side


Mali (Asian elephant) – 16 Jan 2010, girl

If you remember the “elephant doula” story when I was working closely with Melbourne Zoo to monitor an elephant pregnancy – this is the outcome! An adorable (and very hairy!) little girl. She took her sweet time making her grand entrance. Everyone involved – whether they were monitoring her behaviour, or her hormones, or using ultrasound – expected her to give birth weeks before she did (which isn’t that long when you have a 2-year pregnancy). Anyway, when she finally did come out, it went very smoothly. And the vets at Melbourne Zoo (who are some of the best people) just sent me an adorable picture thanking me for my help. Yes – it’s proudly hanging on our wall. You can see more cute pics here.

Kufara (black rhino) – 17 Feb 2010, girl

When I started working at the zoo last year, Bakhita’s pregnancy was the first one that I diagnosed, so I have a special attachment to her. She just recently gave birth to the cutest little girl, and is being a very good mum. I was able to get a few glimpses of her when I was out in Dubbo recently. I’ve been told before that rhino babies are the cutest of all babies, and I kinda thought “whatever – most babies are cute.” But they really are SO adorable!!! And I’m not a big mushy cute-baby person.

Pathi Harn (Asian elephant) – 10 Mar 2010, boy

In contrast to Mali, who waited until the very end of the “parturition window,” Pathi Harn initiated his grand entrance to the world fairly early and caught everyone a little off guard. And then he decided to put everything on hold. PornTip (the mum) looked like her water broke, she was showing birthing behaviour, the German guy who travels the world assisting with elephant births had made it into town… and then everything stopped. They couldn’t detect fetal movement, and after the water breaks, the fetus can only survive a couple of days. So they decided it had died, and announced that to the media. And then FIVE days later, a zoo gardener was making his early morning rounds, and spied a small grey blob in the elephant enclosure. PornTip had a very short labour and gave birth at 3am to a little boy, who was weak, but alive. So now the zoo had to go back to the media and explain that by “dead,” they actually meant “alive” – you know, one of those common misunderstandings. So he was our “Miracle Baby,” also known as Mr. Shuffles. And despite a close call with the pool a few days later, he is doing just fine.

Pathi Harn with his cousin Luk Chai and rest of fam

When it rains it pours…

… but not in a bad way. Just a crazy way.
From December through February, I was mostly unemployed. And frankly, I wasn’t particularly assertive about changing that. I’m happy being a couch potato! When we got back from New Zealand, I one tentative job in the pipeline. But within a week of coming home, I somehow managed to acquire a total of 4 jobs. I could have had five, but I decided I needed to draw the line somewhere. Don’t ask me how – it just happened. And don’t ask how the logistics of that work out – I’m still not sure. Anyway, here’s the run-down:
Job #1) Research assistant working with Gouldian finches – I’m looking at sperm in egg yolk membranes to look at pair-compatibility.
Job #2) Lab coordinator organizing and managing the lab sections for an introductory biology course.
Job #3) Lab instructor – teaching 4 of those lab classes mentioned above.
Job #4) Reproductive biologist – doing the same thing I’ve been doing out in Dubbo.
Yes, Dubbo is still 5 hours away from Sydney. Yes, the first 3 jobs are at Macquarie Uni, which is in Sydney. At least it’s keeping me out of trouble!
But it's also keeping me from blogging, so I apologize for that. I think I'm getting everything under control, so I'll try to be better.

Easter Holiday

Generally, when planning trips, we try to avoid the “peak” times as much as possible. That’s the benefit of being semi-employed and in grad school – our schedule has a lot of flexibility. However, when we decided to buy tickets to the Blues and Roots Festival in Byron Bay, we neglected to notice that 1) it was during the Easter long weekend, 2) Byron Bay is one of the busiest places in Australia during Easter, and 3) our driving route would take us along one of the main holiday arteries at peak time. But despite the crowded campgrounds and traffic jams in the middle of nowhere, we had a fantastic getaway.

Hanging out in traffic in the middle of nowhere, with guys honking to draw attention to their mates peeing on the side of the road because there was absolutely nowhere to go.


It's hard to get a sense of how crazy it was, but this is our crowded campground at the festival. We're waaaaaay at the back


The Blues and Roots Festival was good fun. They had some great artists, and it's just fun to listen to live music.

And the gumboot fashion was just astonishing! Here's just 1 example:


Other highlights of the trip included the Macadamia Castle,

a dip in the orange-coloured Lake Ainsworth,

and several Big things, because all good road trips in Oz MUST include some big things. We saw the Big Banana, the Big Prawn, and a big oyster (but I don’t think it was officially “the” big oyster).

We explored several small towns and their quaint personality. We had Devonshire tea in the beer garden at the post office/cafe/general store in Wollomombi. There were flowers and sculptures on one side of the garden, and shark jaws and beer signs on the other. We missed the goanna pulling championships in Wolli, but we had some great fish 'n' chips. And we drove down Waterfall Way, each enjoying the waterfalls in our own way.



We also spent a lot of time on the beach, 'cause you just gotta.








View Easter 2010 in a larger map

Good times

Australia likes Easter. A lot. The local papers are filled with announcements about Easter parades, Easter bonnet workshops (seriously - I think it's a national requirement that all children must make at least 1 Easter bonnet and then be paraded around, generally to their great embarrassment), Easter chocolate raffles (which replace the more typical meat tray raffles), Easter brunches, etc. So I'm scanning through all these wonderful Easter activities, and stumble across this:

A week later, it was followed by this:

It was part of a celebration for the bicentennial anniversary of Governor Macquarie. No place like a cemetery to celebrate an anniversary! Along with crematorium tours and hearse-rides, the open day also featured a colonial costume parade. Oh yeah, and a stations of the cross service. You know – all those normal anniversary celebration activities. Unfortunately, Ben and I were unable to make it.