On the Bottom Half

Canberra and a fellow Canuck

All right, so it's not that interesting, but I spent the first part of February in Canberra on an isotopes course learning about how to apply isotopes to petrological problems (petros = rock; logos = study of; at least, that's my sort-of-Latin translation).

Thirty-five+ students and ~15 lecturers were flown in from several corners of the world, but mostly from Europe, to the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra (it's pronounced "Can-bra", not "Can-bear-a"). There was a local student/lecturer contingent from ANU, who also hosted the conference. My verdict is that the European Union, who funded the conference, must have lots of money for this sort of thing because, first of all, the bulk of the attendees were flown from halfway across the world, second, the catered food was excellent, third, we ate out at restaurants every night, and fourth, we stayed in the university hotel for the entire week. The first picture is showing what interested geologists do, which is ignoring the scenery and instead obsessing over a single rock in an otherwise grass-covered field. This one rock is all there is of this formation that is accessible. One rock 1 square meter of outcrop.

The first few days of the course were spent on a tour to the coast south of Sydney. One of the graduating PhD students from ANU did his research on the area and toured the group through the geology, which apparently represents an island arc that mashed onto eastern Australia in the distant past. We overnighted in a town called Bermagui and ate a stylishly Australian pub meal of steak or grilled chicken, veggies, and chips. Then, a large group bought a case of beer with most standing on the beach drinking. I laid out on my back and watched the stars because the sky was crystalline in its clarity. A Belgian girl had been stargazing for a while and had a few "what's thats" and "where's this's". I happen to know a thing or two about the stars. The water was fabulous and the beaches superb.

The rest of the week was a series of lectures about isotopes and what one can do with them in rocks. There was a lot of talk about radiometric dating, which is every creation scientist's worst enemy, a tour through the extensive analytical facilities that ANU owns, and some information on new analytical techniques and so on.

One of the more elegant evenings was hosted by the Italian Embassy and there I met a couple, Pete and Teresa, who live in Canberra. We got to talking about Geelong's thumping of Port Adelaide in the Footy Grand Final last year and it ended in an invite to be toured around Canberra after the isotopes course ended. This tour turned out to be the juiciest bit: Pete took me around the mountains surrounding Canberra to see Mt Stromlo Observatory, which in 2003 was tragically destroyed in bush fires that swept through some of the surrounding communities. Five-hundred houses were burned and most of the telescopes were melted. There's been some reconstruction with the installation of a satellite laser range finding observatory (shown in picture above) and a few minor optical telescopes restored. The picture from the previous post is of Pete in the husk of what was a telescope building. He said that they had a Christmas party hosted by the university under that very telescope only a year or so before the fire went through and gutted the facility.

After that, Pete took me to the Tidbinbilla Tracking Station, which is one of the three main sites in NASA's Deep Space Network. The other two stations are in California and Spain with the set of three placed such that one is always facing the array of interplanetary satellites and probes currently exploring the solar system and universe on our behalf. These stations have large and sensitive transmitting/receiving dishes that NASA uses to contact and receive data from the likes of the Mars Rovers and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (to name two), to the Messenger spacecraft currently starting its observations of Mercury, to Voyager 2 (the one launched in the 70s), to Cassini around Saturn, and SOHO around the Sun. Pretty nifty technology there. They also have a great Visitor's Centre with a display of space relics, shuttle tiles, space suits, Moon relics, including the EKG readouts from the astronauts on Apollo 11, Mars Rover displays, satellite models, and a little coffee/gift shop. The picture to the left is of the big dish (74 m) which does a lot of sensitive and presumably high data rate communications. The picture on the right is of a smaller dish from the 60s that was actually the very dish that received the first few minutes of video transmission from the Moon during Apollo 11. The dish in Parkes, NSW later took over, but this one did the job when the Eagle landed and changed human perception of the Moon forevermore.

After all this spacey stuff, Pete took me to his place to pick up his wife and kid and we went into the city for lunch, more touring to the many vista locations around Canberra, and finally to the airport where I saw one of Virgin Blue's brand new Embraer E-170s come in to land. Canada has our embassy right next to one of the main access roads to Parliament House and you'll be pleased to know that the Maple Leaf is one of the few visible from Parliament House besides the Aussie flag atop the House. Below: the view from Mt Ainslie looking down ANZAC Parade with the Australian War Memorial in the foreground and Parliament House in the middle ground just across the lake; the Aussie flag flies over Parliament House.


I like Canberra. Many Aussies will think I'm nuts, but I really do. The War Memorial is there, national galleries, libraries, Parliament, and the embassies are all there. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly for a traveller, almost all of it is free. You don't need a car to completely circumnavigate the main part of the city in a day, the streets are safe, if a little quiet after 1700, and the whole place has this industrious , well organised sort of feel about it. I suppose it's also the government there that I like, too. Everyone makes a big deal about all the hot air that comes out of Parliament towns, but really, while we all like to think we hate government and that we can do without them, we can't and it's damn good that there are people out there willing to bluster, bother, and theatricalise the leadership of the country.

With that in mind, I should mention that I met, very briefly, Dr Brendon Nelson, the leader of the opposition, when I was walking through Melbourne the following weekend. I was in a the Crown Casino lobby on my way across the city when I saw this man that looked a lot like Brendon Nelson, but no one was noticing him or anything, which I thought was odd. But first, some current affairs: You may or may not have heard that Australia just formally apologised to the Stolen Generations. The Stolen Generations are Aborigines that were forcibly removed from their families under government policy right up until the 1970s. It was a program akin to the residential schools for Native Americans in Canada. While rightly rescuing many from the clutches of abuse and poverty, many also were wrongly torn from their families in a calculated plan earlier meant to breed out the Aborigines in a form of cultural genocide, but later meant to assimilate them into Australian society. Anyway, it didn't work and lots of people were displaced. Current PM Kevin Rudd made a very well considered apology from Parliament on the first day of sitting after the summer break, which was widely lauded by the Aboriginal community. Brendon Nelson made his parliamentary reply which was jeered, wrongly in my opinion, for reasons that are a bit mysterious. People turned their backs on him while he was speaking, booed so loudly that the broadcast was cut at some locations, and generally made ungracious fools of themselves for no good reason. It was with this in mind that I thought he could use a smile and some goodwill, so as he passed me, I thought, surely that's Brendon Nelson, which caused me to smile at him. It's would be like meeting Stephane Dion or Paul Martin or Joe Clark! How cool! He saw me doing this, stopped as he passed offered his hand, I shook it, said "Hi Mr Nelson!" and carried on. I should have said something about his speech, but I couldn't really think of anything worth while.


The same weekend, I met a fellow Canadian traveller fresh in from Fiji. Heidi and I spent a couple of days together touring around the city and I took her out to Mt Dandenong, which involved a massive train trip to the end of the Belgrave Line, consequently not very far from my supervisor's house out in the "mountains" east of Melbourne.

In Australia, one should always listen to the advice of locals. Knowledgeable camping ones will let you know that you should never sleep under a gum tree because gum trees spontaneously drop their limbs. Some of those limbs are several hundred kilos and no matter how much you spent on your tent, it will be crushed. Some of the warning posts around Mt Dandenong do the job in case there aren't any knowledgeable locals around to assist.

posted by Kyle @ 19:34