SA Museum and return to Port Noarlunga

(The gum tree discussed in an earlier blog)

This has been a very interesting week. It started with a coworker inviting several people to go to a climbing gym. I haven't climbed post kids (except the occasional 1-climb wall at Cedar Point), but went anyway. It was a great work out and I found a lot came back to me. They have a different rating system here, I was encouraged to work my way up to a 15 (of possible 25?). My guess it is about a 5.8, there were some tough parts. The more experienced climbers of the group were challenged by 18's, so I felt pretty good about my accomplishment. This event is likely to occur on Mondays for some time to come... should be a good way to start the week.

Tuesday my camera came back from Olympus... this made me very happy because it was ahead of schedule and I had missed it pretty badly. All better now. Sunset gratis Olympus...

Wednesday, I and three other new Australian transplants (Kate and Garry from the UK who I snorkeled with, and Thomas, the new geologist from South Africa) went to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner. On the way there we stopped at the Belgian beer bar for a quick Belgian (they had Hoegaarden on tap!). The meal was good as was the company.

Friday night I hosted a poker night at my house. Five coworkers came over to play. A couple had played Texas Holdem once or twice, but otherwise they were neophytes. The evening was spent with me teaching several variant games and then some real play ($0.05 ante). I think Garry was the big winner. It was a good time and will likely occur again.

Saturday I took the bus into the CBD and went to the South Australia Museum. It was not a large museum, but had a lot to offer. There were cultural items from Indonesia see photos below(mostly Papua New Guinea), with even real shrunken heads (I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of these, don't know why, but they were pretty gruesome!). I found the totems interesting because they had men standing on women's shoulders! There was one that was obviously honoring a deceased child as well (my interpretations...). There was a large Aboriginal culture exhibit which deserves more exploration than I gave it and there was a room devoted to Mawson, the Antarctic and Outback explorer (with footage by Hurley, the same cinematographer who accompanied Shackleton on his ill-fated adventure). There was a section on Precambrian fossils from South Australia (one of the key locations documenting the transition to complex multicellular life), a great mineral collection, mostly from the SA mines (but a case devoted to Franklin NJ) and a section devoted to opalized fossils. They had a fossil pleisiosaur that was opalized, very cool!

Sunday I went with Thomas back to Port Noarlunga to attempt snorkeling again. It was a wonderful day for it. The water was flat and we got there at low tide. I spent about two hours face down in the water chasing all types of weird fish. I got some pictures of Port Noarlunga so you can see what I am talking about (You walk out a jetty to a stone reef teaming with fish and is great for snorkeling). The water was cool, so two hours was about all I could do without a wet suit... After snorkeling we walked down the beach and ended with the same seafood platter I had with Garry and Kate two weeks ago... m'mmm.

Fire and Ice

This week most people I have had contact with in the States have asked me if I am close to the fires in Victoria. The fires are northeast of Melbourne, which is about the same distance from Adelaide as Detroit is from New York City. However, it is a major event here which everyone is concerned about. Bush fires do happen near Adelaide and are taken very seriously. Relief efforts are very strong and there is an amazing amount of support. Our office usually has a 'beer and pizza' night every second Friday of the month. This Friday the usual funds for beer and pizza were donated to the Red Cross, and instead there was a pot-luck morning tea, where everyone brought something (a lot of sweets!) and a collection was taken up for the fire relief. We raised about $1800... The photo below was shared with me and I had to include it here. There was a video of this on CNN which you might have caught as well. Some of the stories coming out of the fires are amazing and heart wrenching. You hear so much it is hard to sort it all out. One person told me that the fires had been burning along one track for about 20 km, when the wind shifted 90 degrees and then there were 20-km fronts. It was very quick and caught people without warning. My thoughts and prayers are with those who are still dealing with this disaster. There are still fires burning, but the state of alert seems to be reduced for the moment.



Yesterday I went to a park called Morialta to the northeast of Adelaide (http://www.environment.sa.gov.au/parks/sanpr/morialta/index.html) . It is near where I went last week, but much more spectacular. It is a canyon with three large (but currently dry) water falls. The pictures below are from my hike and typify the scenery (remember you can click on them to get a bigger picture). I was hoping to see more animals but they remained elusive. There were, however, people rock climbing on the crags (all top-roping); it looked fun but challenging. The bird population was robust as usual. I heard, but did not see, a kookaburra which is a *loud* (think bird calls from Johny Weissmuller Tarzan movies) large, kingfisher.



Today I went back near where I snorkeled to a park called Hallett Cove (http://www.marion.sa.gov.au/web/webmar.nsf/lookup/Hallett+Cove+Conservation+Park). It was pretty spectacular, geologically speaking. A coworker had recommended I go there sometime ago. He was correct. There are four main geologic stories represented. The oldest rocks are shallow sea sediments that were laid down in the Precambrian, 600 million years ago (mya). 500 mya, they were highly folded in a mountain building episode. For the next 130 million years they were eroded until about 280 to 270 mya, when there was an ice-age (Permian). The Precambrian rocks were buffed and scratched by the glaciers and a glacial lake developed depositing both fine materials and boulders/dropstones. The glacial material remained on top and did not get very lithofied and now looks much like Pleistocene (Ice Age 10,000 to 2 mya) material I have dealt with most of my career in the Northeast, Ohio, and Michigan. About 4 mya (Pliocene) a shallow sea covered the glacial deposits and a layer of fossiliferous sandstone was deposited. Finally, during the Pleistocene the area was an alluvial plain with a thick sequence of silt being deposited. Now the neat part: over the last couple of million years the Mount Lofty range was uplifted and ultimately caused erosion to cut down through all of it exposing the whole story. The pictures below don't do it justice. The white mound is called sugar loaf (imagine that!) and is the glacial lake deposit. I have drilled through sediments just like it many times in the Northeast US (only 268 million years younger!)! The tide pools along the shore were very interesting and brimming with life. There was a kestrel that soared on the updraft along the shore, with some company - apparently this is a good place to fly RC gliders. The gliders didn't seem to bother the kestrel. All in all a good day out for a geologist...

Heat wave's over...

The heat wave continued through the week. Friday evening I met my coworker Dan and is wife and 2-year-old daughter at the beach. It was hot, but the water was wonderful and the sea was flat. I got a good one-hour swim in before they arrived. Dan joined a pick up game of beach crickett and I got roped into standing behind the wicket and throughing the missed balls back to the bowler. Apparently this is an important position, I am sure I did not show much promise at it though. I went with two coworkers, Gary and Kate, to a beach about 30 km south of Glenelg: Port Noarlunga (http://www.users.bigpond.com/sch57/portnoarlunga/portnorfront.html). There is a rock reef about 500 m offshore that just breaks the water surface and it attracts a lot of fish. So the place is also good for snorkeling and diving. There is a jetty that bridges out to the reef. We went with the hopes of doing a days snorkel on the reef, however, with a cold front coming through, the water was pretty rough; also we arrived just before high tide. We snorkeled anyway, but near the beach (we'll go back someday for the reef). It was actually pretty good even just off the beach. There was a school of fish right in the waves that were about 20 inches long (I think they were mullets, although they didn't have bad hair) and lots of other smaller creature and fish. We snorkeled for a couple of hours. Then we went to a local cafe and shared a seafood platter that had salt and pepper squid, prawns, garfish, whiting and chips. It was meant for two but did o.k. for the three of us. The garfish was particularly light and flaky... Last night I went for a walk and got some pictures at Glenelg jetty at sunset (with a borrowed camera):

Well, overnight the wind direction changed to be more southerly bringing cool air off the Southern Ocean. The heat wave is over and it is actually now kind of cool (mid 60's low 70's). Yesterday was the last hot day. Today I went for a hike in the Adelaide Hills. I was hoping to see some wildlife, but only saw some birds and lizards. The birds were real cheaky and would follow me until I wanted a picture then they would scoot away. I took a few pictures of the surroundings, they didn't turn out that well:

I want to a baseball game after the hike (the Cardinals again, see my earlier blogs). The Cardinals won and I chatted with Paul and Karen while thier son Matt played. Tonight, with the change in the weather, I thought there would be a good sunset, so I went to the beach. It was pretty nice but not so photogenic:

Heat and Reflection

This last week was one of the hottest in South Australia's records. The mid-day temperatures were above 40 C and peaked at 47 C ( 115 F) on Tuesday. On the hottest days, public transportation was reduced because trams and trains couldn't cope with the heat, so the only way to get around was by bus or taxi. With that I have now started engaging bus-riderdom. There is a bus stop on a major road about two blocks from my house, which makes it very convenient (two minute walk to the bus stop compared to the 15 minutes to the tram). Some buses have good AC and some don't. Being outside during the hottest days is an incredible sensation. As they say, it is a dry heat, but you immediately feel the presence of the sun and know the wisdom of hats. Sunscreen is imperative.

I took to ocean swimming as my daily exercise starting Tuesday evening. In the heat, this to me is preferable to the walks I had been taking in the evenings (as a bus/tram rider I do a lot of walking anyway). Typically I swim about half a kilometer down the coast and then back. There is a big castle-like house on the esplanade that I use as my turning point mark. Yesterday (Saturday) I swam about twice as far in the afternoon, it was a good workout. The beaches are sandy, but there are cobbles out in the water, so getting in and out yesterday afternoon at low tide was a little tricky... the water is bathtub warm for the most part, but there is a thermocline that if you swim beneath the water is much cooler. There are usually a few people in the water escaping the heat, but it is not crowded. I am usually the only one who is swimming.

I won't discuss the circumstances, but my camera was damaged last weekend and I sent it to Olympus in Sydney to be repaired. So in place of my usual photo log, I'll describe some of the impressions and experiences I have had here. The first is the over-all color of the place is dominated by tan and deep green, very earth toned that glows golden under the mid-latitude sun. Buildings generally incorporate these colors through the use of stone structural elements, muted colored awnings, and limited paint. There are a large number of homes that use this format in a relatively timeless architecture, usually with a painted brick framework enveloping stone walls. The houses are mostly one story with well-kept tin roofs. They are usually not large and are set on small lots with limited lawns. The small front yards are often crowded with flowering bushes, roses, and wygelias and there many low trees. Occasionally there are large trees and palms. In Glenelg there are giant pine trees lining the avenues (see picture from last post). I am not sure what species they are, but they are obviously planted and seem very old, but for the most part healthy. When I walk back from the tram there is one tree, an ancient gum, that is at the edge of the park near my house. When I see it towering over the houses and road, I know I am almost to my house. It is a truly beautiful tree, with tan smooth bark and bushy clumps of deep green slender leaves at the end of sinuous branches, like a tree from a Dr. Seuss book there are no straight branches. I think it is my favorite tree here and its colors are perfectly Australian.

Roads, even main roads, change size abruptly, so walking along the side roads to downtown Glenelg is a jogged affair. These changes in size seem to be a legacy of the street's growth: there wasn't a set plan, it happened more organically. But far from detracting, it adds a bit of quirky charm. Unfortunately, power lines are typically on poles and not buried, which detracts a little from the overall quaint feel of the place.

There are some very distinct smells associated with many of the places I visit. One place that really stands out is the enterance to Rundle Mall from King William Street where there is a cacophony of smells from cafes, shops, and bistros. There are two overpowering aromas, one is a confectioner's shop that smells strongly of chocolate and the other is from a fragrances shop that exudes a very spicy aroma (I think intentionally). A little further down King William there is a shop that makes deep-fried pastry shells filled with custard. The odor from this place is at first enticing, but then becomes overwhelming... I try not breath as I pass by because it is very unpleasant. I also found that Subway sandwich shops have a very distinct odor about them so you know one is nearby without having to look. I haven't noticed this in the US, but it is possible they have the same odor there. The area of North Glenelg has the aroma of the ocean about it, but I would be lying if I didn't also note that the waste water treatment plant is just up the coast, so there is also an undertone from that facility, not overpowering but usually noticeable.

I am finally getting used to the Aussie accent and slang and can understand most conversations (really, most but not all). One thing I noticed is that I can't always 'read' the meaning of the conversation and I am afraid that sometimes I miss important clues. While the Australians are generally gregarious people and almost always friendly, there can be a sarcasm brooding under the surface that is hard for me to capture. An example of this is the term "good on you mate" which can be either great praise or a biting sarcasm. You might use it because someone has done something selflessly or you might use it to yell at the driver who just cut you off. It is said with a little different inflection between praise and sarcasm, but enveloped in the accent it can be hard to tell the difference. I sometimes get a feeling that there is an underlying expectation from me, but I can't discern what it is and that when I say something in response it may be misconstrued. This forces me to be frank and straightforward in my responses and to shy away from using any 'Americanisms'.

I picked up Frank Herbert's The God Emperor of Dune to read on the tram/bus. I chose it because I didn't read it once I completed the original Dune trilogy back in high school/college. I really loved the series, but by the time the fourth book came out, I was ready for other authors and never got back to it. When I came across it at the bookshop, it seemed an opportune time to complete the series (although now Herbert's son is writing Dune series books with a co-author, so the list has gotten longer). Anyway, the parallels between Arrakis and Australia, especially the precious nature of water, are not entirely lost on me... a fortuitous choice. The Australians are very water conscious, and necessarily so, it is after all the driest continent and there has been a prolonged drought. Most houses capture rain water in tanks and all toilets have two flushing mechanisms: big flush and little flush... I have seen a toilet that has a sink on top, so when you flush and wash your hands, the rinse water is used to refill the tank; what a great idea!