Lord of the Weather

In a grizzly reminder that man is still at the mercy of the natural world, during the last two weeks Australia's southern states South Australia and Victoria experienced the worst heat conditions the country has ever seen.

Victoria sweltered for 4 consecutive days with temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius, with South Australia experiencing the heat over more than a week.
What's living in a a 43 degree temperature you'd ask, on a personal level it's like living inside an oven. You can feel your skin burn, your head ache, you breathe hot dry air, you lose so much moisture that you constantly feel dehydrated and restless. Nights are slightly less hot but not enough to get any shut-eye. Three consecutive days of that and you are at the end of your sanity.

At a metropolitan level, there arises other problems. Rail and tram lines expand way beyond their tolerance levels and buckle-up forcing the cancellation of public transport. The demand for electricity doubles over the capacity and causes blackouts, but worst of all Australia being the driest inhabited continent such conditions easily give way to massive bush fires.

The last few days have seen several storming fires raging across the state, taking many a people, animal and property with them. The death toll is over 100 and rising, with some townships completely reduced to ashes.

This includes the picture postcard town of Marysville I've blogged about here and here. I hear there's nothing standing in the whole town or its surrounds.

The Tessellaar Tulip Festival

The annual Tessellaar Tuip Festival held in Victoria is an event dedicated to celebrating the beautiful flower that has captured the imagination of many a poets, artists and laymen alike.
It's an excuse to put on a spectacular display of colours that just make you go "wow!"



Despite the fact that it's the spring time, the weather wasn't too kind and spoiled half the day with heavy rains and gusts which made things a bit difficult for us tulip admirers.


Rows and rows and rows of tulips


Red Hot beauties


Stepping out of the conventional image, a more modern look.


A little touch of Holland....the home of the tulip.


Some Dutch folk dances and music


A taste of Netherlands.....'poffertjes' small fluffy pancakes with a dab of butter, icing sugar and maple syrup. mmmmmm........


A mix of colours
Couldn't find the precious black tulip that caused so much trouble in Alexander Dumaas's "The Black Tulip". However it was easy to imagine the grand tulip festival mentioned in the book, the only difference being that here there were no candidates from Ceylon who were exibiting tulips, only admirers. Yes Dumaas was misinformed that tulips were grown in Ceylon!




A close-up with rain drops


Blues and purples


There were some others who were screaming out for attention.

The Mystical Dendenong Ranges and other stories

The Dandenong ranges are located just about an hours drive Eastwards from the City of Melbourne.

The area is a horticulturists paradise! Which does explain why there were so many plant nurseries, bonsai nurseries, gardens of all sorts and fertiliser vendors all over the place.

Mist.....thicker than the Beijing fog! This along with the winding mountain roads made driving a bit scary at times

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils

There were Lots of unknown flowers like this one, even in the winter.

A green flower, looks like a variety of Euphorbia.

More Unidentifiable flowers and plants

Huge Gum trees!! makes you feel kind of ............... small.

?? Not sure what this was all about

A Crimson Rosella

A Laughing Kookaburra. There were plenty of these around but none came so close as to get a good shot. Why is it called a Laughing Kookaburra you may ask, well in that case you haven't heard the Kookaburra's call. Unfortunately I couldn't catch one on video for your listening pleasure so you'll have to have a listen here.

I wish more birds would sing like that!!

There are some very interesting aboriginal stories built around the Kookaburra. On Saturday night I read that aborogines in the area had this story that the Kookaburra's loud call is a request to the sky people to light up the mighty fire that lightens up the world. And sure enough the next day I heard the Kookaburras going on about something before day-break, and what do you know before long the sun was up!

A puffed up Australian Magpie

Ruby! One of our very friendly hosts for the night

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......... a local lunch!

The William Ricketts Sanctuary

One of the renowned gardens & parks in this area. William Ricketts was a sculpture/ artist who was inspired by the spirituality among the aboriginal people.

It is said that the aboriginals have (more so had) a very close connection with mother nature, instead of fighting nature and overcoming it, the aboriginal people knew that the best way is to live with the nature in harmony.

This lead William Ricketts to do his bit to let the word spread. Therefore his sculptures depicted aboriginal figures blending in with the soil and the trees and the rest of mother earth.

A man with two lyer birds on his shoulders

Mother Earth

Thun Sithaka Raavaya

And to top off the great weekend, we got to listen to some intoxicatingly beautiful voices.

Dooooowili.................

This was not really in the Dandenong ranges, but it's not often that the diaspora get to listen to this kind of thing so didn't want to miss this!

The unforgettable Apple mala

Thun Sithaka Raavaya taking leave from the stage.

They didn't forget to sing all my favourites.........which was quite a lot!!

Being Project Manager

When you are in charge of receiving a specialized piece of equipment, doing the site preparation, installation, getting it up and running, and making sure it's doing what it's supposed to do, everything that can go wrong does go wrong! When you've thought through all the necessary precautions and think you've handled them all, you find there's something you missed! When you think that it cannot get any worse, it does! Finally when you think you've worked out all problems, you are proven completely and utterly wrong!!

I'm talking about this new piece of equipment that our research group decided to invest in. Yes it's a great investment specially for my research work. But so far I've been going out of my mind with trying to set it up!

It all started when the dispatch of the equipment was delayed by the manufacturer who's in the UK. Not my fault, but it's pretty annoying when you've got an oblivious agent who has got no idea what's happening, and a 9 hour time difference with the main company!

All the while I was doing the site preparation, like finding a suitable place (negotiating with people who are very possessive of their labs is not too easy either), thinking through the connections, and placing orders for the accessories and fittings, which also gets either delayed or ends up in someone else's mail box!!!(for some obscure reason)! and all the while I'm running around like a headless chicken trying to locate the parcel which had been delivered two days ago!!!

Anyhoo,, at long last the equipment comes in....hooray!! so we gather around and unpack everything, and with a lot of manpower lift up the 70kg unit up onto the trolley/stand that I designed and got custom made for this, only to find that it's sagging under the weight! grrr! I wrote it down in plain English that it needs to withstand at least 80kg!

Then we eagerly rummage through the rest of the package. Lots and lots of accessories, fittings and parts all in a number of boxes......but no instructions manual!!! oh yeah there was one with about 5 pages which said, open the package, locate the pump (as if a 20 kg vacuum pump is easy to miss!!), check whether everything is in order etc etc...........But no instructions as to how to set it up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unbelievable! They send us a highly specialised piece of equipment which is all disassembled and expect us to try and put everything together!!!???!!@!!

So I write to them and again the 9 hour time difference means I have to wait till the next day for a reply. And the next day I get a reply, with apologies about the shortcomings of the current instructions manual (shortcomings??!!*#&*!) and instructing me as to how some of the pieces fit together...and I said 'some' not all! so again I have to write to them specifically asking them about each and every connection, and I get a reply the next day. And the worst part is we need to set this up really fast, and test if it's working properly before we pay them! and we need to pay them within 30 days! already 2 days down for the missing instructions which wasn't even my fault to begin with!

Ok finally we get all the instructions that we need, and we go about putting it together, only to find that fittings don't fit, joints don't join and their tubes and hoses are not long enough!!!!!!!
Unbelievable!
So I start looking for vacuum hose suppliers, not very many around where I can get a fast delivery, but finally manage to find one and to my relief it's in stock (at least that's what I was told), so should be here in 2 days.
And I get the workshop person to grind, drill and modify the fittings to fit!

Then I find that there's a small issue I overlooked. I was planning to connect the gas tube of the equipment to the gas supply of an existing system, through a simple T connector. I measured the sizes of the tubes and both of them seem to be 6 mm (never rely on a broken vernier calliper!). Later on I realize that the existing system is from the US which means they use the imperial system so that tube is actually 6.35mm or in other words 1/4 inch! Doesn't really fit with the new UK equipment! Gggrrrhhh!!! Why can't the Americans use the metric system like everybody else does?? would make life that much easier for us poor souls!
But luckily the workshop guy managed to fix the problem but not before teasing me around with "oh, you are in big trouble here!".

And of course there were other subtleties that sent me running around looking for solutions, but I'll spare them here.

Ok, so now all the connections are done and everything seem to fit! But I still haven't received the vacuum hose that I ordered. Expecting another 'sent to the wrong person' escapade, I run around to check the mail centre of the university, only to find it never got here.
So I call up the supplier, who answers my question rather sheepishly "ehh...we kind of ran out of it.., so we had to wait for the next delivery" !!!!!??!!!!##$*?&**#&^!!???

Oh god! so now we are nearing the 15th day mark. Hopefully the hose will get delivered tomorrow morning, in which case 'hopefully' I will be able to get the thing up and running (fingers crossed!) but of course I wouldn't be surprised if some issue does turn up! I'm kind of sure that something will turn up......I have a gut feeling.......but of course I'm feeling paranoid!


Wish me luck!

Bruno's Sculpture Garden, Marysville

As promised here is a glimpse of the Sculpture Garden that we had the good fortune to pay a visit to.


Bruno is a Belgian expat with a talent at making sculptures that are a bit on the funny side. And just like his sculptures he too has an unusual sense of humour. Most of his sculptures are made out of Terra cotta along with some day-to-day accessories.

The fun part of it is exploring through his rather overgrown garden. There you get to meet various creatures and people in every nook and cranny, some hidden away among the bushes, some having a bath in the ponds and puddles and some up in the trees.


An alligator on the rocks


This one is a bit creepy... it's located such that it catches you off guard


The mouse man....take a closer look (below picture)


How many mice can you count?


Carved out of a tree


If you follow the sound of the music, it will lead you to this man


A handful of water


Pocahontas


The bird man


A Yogi


We started off the morning visiting this place, so needless to say the whole day was invigorating!

Shades of Autumn in Marysville, Victoria

The Victorian ACS conference was held last weekend in Marysville (that's about 2 hours drive from Melbourne city). So Yasas was to attend the conference and I was to tag along with him.

Expecting a remote country area I took along two books with me to keep me company. I was expecting to be stuck up inside a hotel room reading about Nanophotonics. Fortunately that was not to be. Nature was so unforgivingly beeeeauuuutiful that I spent both days outdoors.



The mountains.... the trees.... the mist.....



Yellow is now in fashion



A combination of colours



Look at the shades of colour!!!


An unusual mushroom



A serence duck pond


Cockatoos, looking for lunch under the bed of fallen leaves.


Parrots in colour

On the second day we formed a kind of wives' club, Several spouses of the conference attendees got together and did some walking.

We all enjoyed "The Sculpture Garden" which truly deserves a separate post. And then the 4km walk through the woods to see the Steavenson falls.



Waterfall in the middle of the woods