Having not reached its annual average for rainfall for over 12 years, Lamington National Park is looking surprisingly good. Most everything is still green, and the waterfalls actually have water in them. Notwithstanding, we still desperately need more rain, considering the fact that Brisbane has a little bit more than one year’s worth of water left in its reserves.

Our wish came true not long ago when, in the space of 5 days, we got more rain than we did in January, February, March, and April combined. Monday we got 33mm, Tuesday 27mm, Wednesday 164mm, Thursday 17mm, and Friday 31mm.

Noosa up north got 840mm in 48 hours and promptly flooded.

Don’t get me wrong: we’re still a looooong way from meeting the 1607mm average for this year, but this is certainly a step in the right direction.

Now for the funny part! SO! Due to the enormous rainfall that we received, O’Reilly’s 4×4 bus tours suffered just a smidgeon. I know that you can sense a good story coming along, but bear with me, for, as everyone knows, all good stories must first be prefaced with a little background info.

O’Reilly’s has a contract with a Japanese tour agency called TPO under which we take their group (every day) up to a lookout called “Balancing Rock.” Essentially, since they mostly only speak Japanese, we are just renting them the use of a bus and driver to get them up there and back; they have their own tour guide who accompanies them.

Well, the day that it rained 164mm, TPO got taken up to Balancing Rock. Due to a variety of factors not the least of which was the monstrous amount of rainfall, the bus wound up halfway sliding off the road (which, incidentally, runs along a narrow ridgeline between two very steep cliffs) and leaning up against an acacia tree.

So envision, if you would, a giant green bus full of 26 Japanese tourists slowly sliding, sliding… sliiiiiding off the side of a cliff. Can you imagine the deafening roar of all the cameras? It wouldn’t be that difficult for me to believe that all of the tourists scrambling to the downhill side of the bus to get better shots of their impending doom somehow contributed to the bus’s sliding off the road as far as it did.

At any rate, we wound up sending another bus up to retrieve the driver and his shell-shocked tourists only to almost get THAT bus stuck! And all we could do after that was wait for the rain to let up and the ground to dry so that we could try to winch the bus off the side of the mountain.

It’s still up there, by the way.

And we’ve given the lookout a new name. It’s now called “Balancing Bus.”

Check out the photos.

So there’s a little preface to the following story. Some “preliminary exposition,” if you would?

O’Reilly’s has just hired a bunch of new people. I will spare you the “preliminary exposition” requisite for THAT. At any rate, given the fact that O’Reilly’s has been around since, oh, 1926, it is sufficient to say that some of the buildings are slightly, um, Paleolithic. Consequently, the old staff accommodations are currently being quarantined – I mean, er, demolished! – in order to make room for new ones. Something a little more Cenozoic, perhaps?

At any rate, this demoralization – I mean demolishment! – necessitated that several of the staff people (including me) be relocated to alternate accommodations. Essentially, all the gentlemen from my department (Activities) were asked to vacate their current residences and move into a barracks that is owned by the Queensland Sparks and Wildfire Circus – er, I mean, the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. These barracks are just across the road from the guesthouse and have been used occasionally throughout the eons as housing for things like Australopithecus afarensis and (more recently) forest rangers.

For Tané and Duncan, two of my colleagues, this was a major step forward, considering their previous lodging. My prior accommodation was certainly more modern than the barracks are and included such splendid amenities as a private washer and dryer, shower, kitchenette, queen-sized bed, and toilet. Along with said amenities, however, came things like noisy neighbours. And along with noisy neighbours came (a) a lack of wildlife and (b) a lack of sleep. So there I was, tired and COMPLETELY surrounded by no critters. Suffice to say, I made the change quite amenably.

So now that you know WHY I moved, allow me to recount to you the particulars of said move! Let’s just say that there hadn’t been anybody living in the barracks since Australia was still part of Gondwana. And there were many, many spiderwebs to be dealt with. In the process of cleaning my new room, I killed three of these and one of these.

But my new house is amazing! Since I no longer live on the second floor, I have two exterior doors, one of which opens up into a private, fenced garden that is home to at least six species of birds and two species of orchids, just to name a couple things. Oh, and the barracks have drawers and closets, too! (I’d been living out of my suitcase until now due to a lack of furniture in my apartment.) AND! Since the staff village is approximately 200 metres away, I no longer care whether or not the residents of that locale continue shrieking like strung-out banshees and playing loud music at all hours of the night. It’s great!

So, all that to say that I moved. And though my new house is slightly older, I really consider it to be a step up.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to operate those two sticks that they told me constituted the central heating…

Good article from Newsweek about American Army conduct in Iraq… in 1943.

Hey all!  Sorry it’s been so long since my last (substantial) post.  Been kinda busy, ok?

Anyway, as you can see from my itinerary, things have been happening down here.  I now have either progressed, regressed, or digressed to the point that the management is no longer babysitting me on walks, etc.  The fools!  HA!

The weather here has been amazing lately!  Of course, it would be considered very cold by Aussie standards, but by Oregonian standards it’s downright balmy, baby!  Of course, the best part about the weather warming up (aside from the increased likelihood of getting a tan and watching other people get tans…) is the fact that a lot of the birds that go north in the wintertime are coming back. 

So now, I shall officially get on my Soap Box Of The Day.  And what, fair reader, would said Soap Box Of The Day be?  Allow me to frighten, er, enlighten you! 

It is time for the United States to start using the metric system.  No more of this gallons/pounds/miles/feet nonsense.  I am confident that my father will agree with me on this topic for the following reason alone: every unit of measurement in the metric system (volume, distance, weight, etc.) is interconnected using the decimal system.  For example, one litre of water weighs one kilogram and displaces 1000 cubic centimetres.  Therefore, one cubic centimetre of water weighs one gram.  By contrast, while one gallon of water theoretically weighs a convenient 10 pounds, that is the only sane measurement, as it displaces 277.42 cubic inches.  Therefore, one cubic inch of water weighs… 0.57674284478408189748395933962944 ounces.  Oh, and while we’re at it, isn’t it easier to remember that there are 1000 metres in a kilometre as opposed to 5280 feet (or 1760 yards) in a mile?  I’m shaking…

AND ANOTHER THING!  (Hopefully all you Peter Sellers fans out there got that not-so-subtle reference…)  What is up with Fahrenheit!??!?!?  Not only is the word itself ridiculously hard to spell, but Dr. Fahrenheit was such a putz that he couldn’t even generate temperatures below zero (Fahrenheit, that is) in the laboratory!  Heck, all you’d have to do is bottle some of the February air from Bend, Oregon to generate temps lower than zero!  Anyway, Dr. Fahrenheit’s colossal ineptitude notwithstanding, how many of you actually know what the freezing and boiling temps of water are (again, in Fahrenheit, please!)?  I’m deliberately withholding those numbers just to see what percentage of my readers actually know.  And Wikipedia is off limits for this one, y’all.  Celsius, on the other hand, is quite simple: zero degrees is freezing, and 100 degrees is boiling.  Not only that, but it ties in exactly with the absolute temperature (or Kelvin) system. 

So which system does our great country rely on?  You guessed it!  The irrational one!  But wait, because there’s more!  In the most stunning acknowledgment of the imperial system’s inadequacy, all medication measurement and scientific measurements use the metric system!  And the military does, too!  And if THAT’S not enough, not even sporting events are immune to the yard/metre discrepancy!  Take swimming, for instance.  While high schools compete at district, state, and national levels in metres, they typically train in yards.  Oh, and Master’s Swimming?  They compete in yards.  At the state level, that is.  Nationals are in metres. 

Anyway, that’s my Soap Box Of The Day.  Any suggestions for my next tirade?  Comment away!

0545- Get up.  Whoa, groggy.

0546- Shower. Ooooh, yeah!

0600- Put on work uniform, which consists of a Columbia Omni-Dry long-sleeved shirt and matching zip-off pants.  And boots.  And sometimes, gaiters.  Oh, and underwear…

0630- Get sultanas and nuts together for morning bird walk while guzzling a cuppa tea.

0645- Bird walk!

0800- Morning bird feeding (I feed the birds in a feeding area that abuts a picture window in the dining room, then I walk back inside and explain to the guests what they’re seeing.)

0830- Brekkie for me.

0900- Lead the morning guided rainforest walk.

1230- Return to Guesthouse for a quick lunch.

1300- Afternoon bird feeding (same as morning).

1330- Prepare for either a) afternoon walk or b) afternoon adventure activity (which would be either the Flying Fox zipline or the Giant Swing).

1400- Lead whatever it was that I prepared for.

1600- Return to the Goosehouse.  Er, I mean the Guesthouse.

1615- Assume control (I like that expression!) of the Discovery Centre.  In other words, I get chained to a desk until…

1730- Close the DC and get ready for dinner.  Unless, of course, I’m doing the Glow worm walk, which starts at

1745- Glowies!  Until around

1915- Return to the Ghosthouse.  I mean the Guesthouse!!!