Day Trip to Melbourne

Just got back from my whirlwind Melbourne tour. Dad had been eyeing off a camper trailer for a little while and at 1:30pm on Monday, he floated the possibility of me picking it up from across the Strait. He finally made up his mind that we were getting the unit and that I was going. And that I was going to take the 8pm ferry from Devonport. So that was at about quarter past two. I was on the road by a quarter to three.

The trip to Devonport, and to Melbourne for that matter, was very uneventful - punctuated only by screenings of Ocean's 13 and The Flying Scotsman.

Having arrived in St Kilda at about 7:30, I had a bit of time to kill before The Music Place opened at 9. In the end, I managed to get myself a new mouthpiece for my little curved sop and a new box of reeds. So there went a couple of hundred bucks...

My directions to get to Frankston were from the ferry terminal, rather than from The Music Place, but I managed to get on the right track with the old "bear left on to St Kilda Rd. 1.6km. 2mins" whereis directions.

After getting the camper, I visited Nate Campbell. I called him when I was in Frankston. He said, "I live at 96 Kensington St, Kensington. That's like North-West Melbourne." Somehow I managed to find it with only those directions... and then get back to the boat rather early...

So, I was quite proud of my Melbourne navigation, considering that I didn't have any Melways or anything. (And the fact that I've managed to get myself lost in Hobart before.)

Fun times were had driving in Melbourne. My first time ever driving through the city in Melbourne was with a camper trailer on the back at peak hour.

On the boat, I randomly met up with a mate from engi. So we drank draughts all night long. And then there were the two Swiss tourists who we met. She had quite long legs... he was a banker.

And made it back to Hobart by a quarter to eleven on Wednesday morning.

Latest news and current affairs

Well, it's Friday. Another week will seamlessly flow into the next. And frankly, I'm happy with that.

Again, this week has featured running. I dare say a few more kms than most weeks, but generally at a slightly lower intensity. I had been struggling with the long rep work, so hopefully the couple of long runs I went on will help to build up the leg strength I need for those long reps.

Anyway, I have my first race since those athletics carnivals. I'm running the opening leg of a 4*100m relay, representing the umpires against various SFL footy teams. As much as I don't want to lose to them, there is a certain realisation that at school I was only ever about fourth or fifth fastest in my house - so I never made the 100m finals at the carnivals. And my training has hardly touched on anything useful for running 100m - other than a few warm up strides. So, nervous times.

In non-running news, I had a lovely birthday on Wednesday. It was all very relaxed. I've also been talking with various people on the job front. Nothing concrete there, but various things do seem to be firming up. But it remains to be seen exactly what the future holds. Thank goodness for God's hands.

We've been catching heaps of squid of late. They taste good. I went out on the boat with dad, and it was hard work trying to find a spot where there wasn't squid. Leaving Kingston Beach, we got over half way to O'Possum Bay before we found a squidless spot. Unfortunately, there weren't any other fish either. So we picked up about 30 squid that day, which makes for a fair bit of squid cleaning - which somehow I managed to avoid on the grounds that I was waiting for a phone call from Rio Tinto.

Anyway, looks like we won't be buying bait for a while...

Jobs and Autographs

Whilst having a bash down at the Calvin cricket nets, there were a few kids playing. They didn't have any gear, so I lent them some of mine. They asked if any of us played in a team. Everyone looked at me... "I played Kingborough third grade. I was pretty useless*." The kids were excited as anything and asked for my autograph. When it was revealed that I didn't have a pen on me, one of them ran home and grabbed a crayon and some paper...

So, I made their day, and signed their paper and their cricket bat. Probably not good long-term prospects, when they realise how terrible a cricketer I actually was/am...


*As far as being a useless cricketer, I have proof:
I was playing down at Kingston Beach for the Borough thirds. In the sheds, the captain gave us all an inspirational talk. "You each have a role. Each of you know what your role is..." There was a solid five minutes of it.

As we walked out on to the field I quietly said to the captain, "Streety, I'm not exactly sure what I'm in the team as. I mean, am I a bowler or a batsman?" To which he replied, "You're a third grade cricketer."

Anyway, enough cricketing antics...

Jobs, now where did we get to? Well, I had an interview with the Hydro today. They bought me lunch, so I'm not complaining one way or the other. They made it sound like they really want me, and are willing to get competitive to get me. I've applied to Roaring40s whose position was that there were several applicants and that I was the one who had to get competitive. Rio Tinto, well, they're in Perth/Pilbara and I have a phone interview at 4pm tomorrow with their senior engineer. I don't know if they have any other people that they're considering for the position.

Anyway, that's jobs. PhD may or may not get a gurnsey. Not sure.

What else is new? Hmmm. Still running. I always have enough energy for the short strides at the end, having run so slowly during the reps, much to the coach's disgust. They don't seem to understand that I can't run anything over about 400m at any pace, let alone rep those distances, but somehow, after trying, I can still do my strides at decent pace. Confusing.

So, if I'm talking about running, then not much must be happening... we did win our touch footy game last week 14-2, so that was pretty cool. And we only had 6 players. (There's 6 on the field at any one time.)

Um, it's my birthday on Wednesday. I'm almost an old fart. Anyway, the traditional drowning of the sorrows will occur on Friday 18th January. Meet at Bar Celona around 8:30 or so. Anyway, if you can come, and you want to come, you're more than welcome. If you can't come, you'd still be welcome, but hey, that's life. If you don't want to come... fine. I think that about covers it...

Flinders Island

I'm home after 6 days on Flinders. Here's a bit of a rundown:

Day 1: Seth, Alex and Tim picked me up a smidgen after 5am and we drove up to Lonnie to catch the 8am flight to Flinders. We flew on a 12-seat Cessna.

Having arrived on the island, John picked us up and took us back to his place where Owen and Andrew were finishing breakfast. We decided to hit the golf course and consequently spent the next few hours scrambling through thick bush. Our group of 7 zigzagged our way across the course finding lots of balls and losing almost as many.

That afternoon/evening we went out to Trousers Point and hit the water with snorkelling gear. Lack of weight belt made things a wee bit difficult. There weren't actually many good eating fish about - wrasse, banded morwong and the odd boarfish (boarfish are illegal to spear but taste good). But it was, nonetheless good to hit the water.

Andrew is a cooking genius and was heavily responsible for the bbq that we enjoyed that evening.

Day 2: We scaled Mt Strzelecki. It's about 750m high and we started at about 20m elevation. So quite a solid climb. I managed to conquer it in 65mins, a feat I was quite chuffed with. And the views were grand, overlooking the Furneax group, as well as giving us a view all the way to the Tasmanian mainland, some 20km away.

Again, that afternoon, we hit the water for a snorkel.

Day 3: It was a Sunday, so very few things were open. We had to go to the next town to find an open shop - where they charged us some $6 for a red capsicum... That afternoon we headed to a different beach/dive spot. This time the place was crawling with leatherjacket. Leatherjacket a good eating, but not great. Either way I speared a few of them and we managed to find a couple of size abalone.

Day 4: This was the highlight of the trip: a boat charter where we stopped at a couple of dive spots and did a spot of fishing and it coincided with New Year's Eve, so we had a seafood banquet followed by a few other shenanigans.

The first dive stop was at a ship wreck. Lots of chunky ship paraphernalia lay strewn through the water and on the rocks. Again, there were leatherjacket aplenty. The guy who took us out went down with SCUBA gear and picked up the biggest cray I've ever seen. The carapace was over 20cm long. You needed two hands to pick it up. The second dive spot was the place for abalone - we picked up 8 of them and there were plenty more to be had if we wanted them. We stopped for a fish and landed a some very nice size flathead. The flathead on Flinders are massive.

That evening we cooked up the seafood and feasted. John had the idea of replicating one of his science pracs after dinner: making Coke bottle rockets. A couple of minutes after midnight we had the rocket ready, complete with a bicycle flashlight and parachute. We gave it a couple of successful launches before settling down to watch the lightning storm as it approached. We lay on the grass for some time before we noticed some heavy water droplets falling on us occasionally. Quarter of an hour later, tucked up in bed, the heavens exploded releasing a phenomenal amount of water.

Day 5: We took out the coke bottle rocket, and rather than sending up flash light and torch, we sent up eggs - sending them about 40 - 50m into the air. Then the tennis ball got launched. Based on s=ut+0.5at^2, we calculated a height of about 60m, having allowed a bit for air resistance. Not a bad effort for a bit of compressed air and water.

That afternoon we went to the beach and attempted to play beach cricket. It was going swimmingly until the tide began to come in and engulf the pitch. Our tennis balls split as well, which didn't help our cause...

Day 6: The final day. We went up another mountain - a solid 45min climb up rather steep, rocky terrain. We came across a lovely big echidna and a not so lovely black snake - probably a tiger snake. There were so many flies at the top, but much to my relief, they seemed to congregate around people other than me. There were a few skinks and there are a fair few blue tongues over there too.

We managed to get ourselves packed up in time for the 5pm flight... quite happy with that effort.