At College

Early morning view across one of the lakes at the University of Queensland


Giant pandanus along the path by the lakes

Finally, the move has been made. I am now in Brisbane.

The colleges are on the western perimeter of the lakes, which are just a part of a more extensive parkland which surrounds the south-west of the university as it bords the river. In the morning I walk amongst immense tropical trees to the ferry, with birds foraging: ibis, geese, moorhens, coots, corellas, a brush turkey and a willy-wagtail. In the evening they are settling down, with much noise, to roost. And as I take my swim in the pool under the darkening sky, the sound of screaming birds from the trees above the pool is remarkably soothing, and not unlike the evening shrill of cicadas on a Sydney summer evening.

So, however stressed I am by making this move, I have a wonderfully calming start and finish to each day. All I have to do is hang in.

Birds on the beach

Silver gull (Larus novaehollandiae)

I followed this gull along the beach, hoping he would fly, but mostly he just walked at a fairly steady pace ahead of me, giving me an entirely unattractive shot of him. Birds are not the most aesthetic of subjects (to me) except in flight, but this was my best shot.


Australian Raven (Corvus coronoides)
Three crows were feeding in the dune grasses, this morning on Whale Beach.
Again, it's not much of a photo, but I liked the background. It was an overcast morning, and the crows were clearly finding good pickings.

I have been working hard on a bibliography for the Ph.D. The software to help you with this has come a long way and I am really glad that I am forced to submit myself to the discipline of doing a literature review, and so was required to make life easier for myself by learning to use EndNote. (I was staggered to find that I could access the catalogues of libraries all around the world in pursuit of a book. The essential journals are available at any Uni, but particular books can be hard to find. Pulling down a reference from the National Library of Canada, and the London School of Economics was a bit of a thrill. Sadly, not all Australian universities permitted access to their catalogues.)