This one is from Gardner Island, just off Davis Station, Antarctica:

Enjoy…

[yes, I'm having a lazy week, driving...]

Today is the big night scenario – I sure need the practice, since I messed up my patient yesterday. Or, at least, failed to pin down what was going on. He might have survived…

Never mind. Failure is our great teacher.

So, by the end of Friday I predict I will be exhausted, and trying quite hard to retain all this information stuffed into our heads. At this point, it looks like I’m off climbing for a week on Saturday – so I’ll have plenty of time to lie in the tent and catch up.

Ahh, arapiles. Land of rock, tent time, and guitars by the fire.

Tasmanian politics entered a new era last week with the resignation of the premier, Paul Lennon. To all of us, both new, temporary and old tasmanians who aspire to something other than a dated view of ‘progress’, this is a good thing. In almost the same week, ANZ bank showed some courage and neglected to fund the Gunn’s pulp mill project. Good news on most fronts, then. Despite the Australian federal government’s continuing approval of a project that appears to be Yet Another Expensive White Elephant.

A birthday party saw Bel and I driving across Tasmania and back, to Low Head. Our first trip up the east tamar valley, past the site of the proposed mill and several other magnificent pieces of industrial wonderland. You would ask, on first impression: ‘whats the big deal about the pulp mill? Surely one more industrial plant here won’t make much impact!’. However – the big issues here are the ones you won’t see, unless you venture sufficiently far off the beaten track into the strip-mines of Tasmania’s forests. I’d recommend a tour of the Florentine and Styx valleys should you ever head south to Tasmania. You should also take a look up some side roads off of the main drag to Fortescue bay, and check out the wood mining operations around Ben Lomond.

These are all areas that will come under increasing pressure, should the pulp mill go ahead. And with them, the associated problems of encroaching on an ever-smaller amount of ‘wild space’. The forests, and the creatures in them, have no place else to go. And once removed, may never return.

To finish on a happier note, the birthday party was great! Slightly hung over, we crept back to Hobart… and now? back to work – pushing back the frontiers of science!

That, and I’ve been busy working and lacking a home internet connection. So – what’s going on? A bit more marathon mountain biking – Pete and I entered the Kellevie 24 hour race as a team of two, and managed to come second by a lap and a half! Not bad, since we were racing a gun shop team. Needless to say, Rosie the bike is now in need of a new drivetrain after all that long distance racing. Every second lap in the 24 hr race, I stopped to repair my chain. I guess it comes with the territory.

I’ve managed a bit of climbing, and even got Bel up to the organ pipes – massive dolerite cliffs up above Hobart – for a play. Its been good. And I built a chin up bar to make up for lack of going to climbing gyms.

So life is full, and its autumn, the best season of all. Actually, all the seasons are the best season of all – so there’s no losing out there, huh?

I don’t have any political comments to make at the moment – I’m really not sure what is going on! I better go read the news…

Happy trails!

The last couple of weeks were filled with a whirlwind trip around Victoria, visiting Bel’s family and my brother. And catching trout in the Mitta river, and a lo of eating and greeting, and falling in love with the Australian alps all over again. Hmm… snowwwww….

Coming back to tassie it was straight into a trip to Frenchman’s cap! Kinda nice to get paid for an awesome bushwalk with A-list clients. Yeeha! I took the camera/GPS system for a test drive and realised I need a better system. Ah well. Some photos will dribble out soon.

However, its unlikely I’ll ever try to do frenchmans in 3 days again. Well, not guiding. Maybe with a lighter pack!

In other news? Well, repercussions from the tahune race continue – my helmet is broken, so now I know why I felt extra-dodgy after the race. Hmmm. Will try again without crashes and injuries…

catch ya!

Oh, and which 99% climate scientists belong to, of course.

‘Global warming’ is a kind of unfortunate catch phrase, that can be deconstructed far too easily. For example, you can point at East Antarctica, which isn’t really warming at all. However, a few thousand kilometres away, the Antarctic Peninsula is getting quite a bit warmer – at least since we’ve been measuring. The real story is more complex – as discussed in this National Geographic article. Some warming, some cooling…

Anyway, here’s a decent rebuttal of TGGWS. Have a read, form an opinion.

Whichever way you cut the climate cake, the bottom line is that us homo sapiens are rapidly trashing this little planet. The good news is that we can do something about it pretty easily. Do you *really* need that new [insert product here]? Can you walk there instead of driving?

Simple stuff, really.