Tsunamis, nuclear disasters and more...

Been an interesting week. Things were winding down last friday afternoon, when we had a call from South Africa, one of our cow-orkers was watching the live news there and seeing the videos of the tsunami hitting Japan. So we logged into the live feed from Al Jazeera and watched in horror and fascination as things unfolded.

Since I live right on the beach, the possibilty of a tsunami is always something at the back of my mind. A year ago after the Chile quake, the beach was closed in anticipation, but only minor tidal surges were recorded on the Australia coast. Tsunamis are an interesting wave propagation problem and one can never be sure what will happen, though real time models can predict the results once sufficient data from ocean buoys is available. We were on tsunami alert in the meantime.

I got home and packed a few treasured items: photos, antiques and other memorambilia. The propagation time maps were already available - indicating the earliest time of arrival - which would be around 2 am. Then I headed up to Johns place (high up on a hill) to watch the ongoing development. After a few hours (and several glasses of wine) it became clear that the main energy of the tsunami was being directed outwards across the pacific, and not south towards us, so it was safe to go home.

The eventual arrival of tsunami waves in the USA (where a number of rubberneckers were washed away) and in Peru, where beachfront houses were hit - should be a wakeup call for those who take such events lightly. Peru is twice the distance from the epicenter as we are, yet they were hit by substantial surges. The propagation energy maps are fascinating in their own right - all sorts of diffraction patterns and shadows. It would be interesting to see such maps for potential events in other parts of the pacific - and get an idea of where a major event would be likely to impact Australia. Historical evidence indicates three major tsunamis have hit the east coast here over the last thousand or so years. Not exactly a likely situation, but still enough to indicate that in the event of a major earthquake you should at least take minimal precautions and be prepared to evacuate if necessary.

Well subsequent to the main disaster of earthquake and tsunami, things are only getting worse, with a major man-made catastrophe unfolding.

More later

Tree Frog Season

The rainy season has arrived and with it the tree frogs are making their presence known. They live in the downspouts and are in hibernation much of the year.

Perhaps in the natural world they live in hollow trees and caves, but since every house here has a bunch of downspouts, they have adapted easily to that environment.

Now the one difference is that they start to sing when it rains. "Sing" is probably too strong a word for it, they croak. Or whatever frogs do in your language. In Swedish they go

Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

as in the song Små grodorna, which the Swedes perform while dancing around the maypole.

Anyway, the tree frogs croak or kouack or whatever, but it gets severely amplified by their being resident in the downpipes. So rain here is inevitably accompanied by an orchestral chorus of treefrogs resonating from the downpipes. And once one frog sings, all frogs sing.

Its a noisy neighborhood.

Global Warming...

OK, so I have just been having drinks with some of the neighbors, one a retired chemical engineer. Inevitably, the topic turned to global warming and Copenhagen. Pretty much most of the company were skeptics, but trying to argue with people like that is a losing proposition, they have their views based on bias and faith and ignorance and little more. So this guy, retired engineer from QAL, basically says, how are you going to power the refinery without coal?:

So here is how you argue with morons like that.

Two centuries ago coal was a major export from Africa. Coal was an absolute essential to keep the plantations running, to keep Europe supplied with cotton and to keep the landed gentry and the mercantile industry functioning and in the wealthy lifestyle to which they'd become accustomed. As the plantation owners would argue "without coal, how would we ever operate... we have to keep on shipping coal or we will have to shut down. Our spinners and weavers and the clothing industry will shut down. Children will freeze to death because they won't be able to afford new clothes. It will be financial disaster on both sides of the Atlantic. Our whole town and associated industry is based on cheap coal and we just can't change that overnight. Besides, if you cut out the trade in coal, all the coal traders will be out of jobs, "

Arguing that it is necessary to keep burning coal to keep the coal trade and heavy industry running today is functionally equivalent to arguing that maintaining the slave trade was necessary to keep the slave traders of two centuries ago employed and the plantation owners in their opulent lifestyles.

Coastal wildlife...

So I have found one minor issue with living right on the coast. I mentioned Pauls run-in with a tree snake in his office, well I can top that with a coastal taipan in my bedroom.

My buddy John's son Andrew has a rubber snake that he has been known to leave lying in places where it can be found by impressionable who suffer from Ophidiophobia. So I'm tired and heading for bed and I look over at the bedstand and think "Andrew, you little %#&*^&, I wish you wouldn't leave that think lying around, some people don't find it that funny...". Then I think "hmmm, Andrew hasn't been here for a couple of weeks and I'm sure I would have noticed it before...". Then I realize it's a real snake.




It seems to have taken up residence on my bedstand. Now I have no particular problem with snakes, even highly venomous ones (I grew up with them in the back yard on the banks of the Yarra river in Melbourne), but having one in your bedroom is going a bit far.

So I enlist my next door neighbors help and we manage to get the thing out of the house. Seems like he has had similar problems in the past, we live right on the beach and there is a lot of undeveloped bushland next to us. We're hitting the hot, rainy season, and the things are getting active. Just why it decided to visit is unclear, probably looking for a nice dry spot.

I usually leave all the doors open at night when I'm home, I figure I'll have to be a bit careful now. And I often get up in the middle of the night and stagger round the house in the dark... from now on I'll be turning the lights on before I do anything.

And the thought just occurred to me that my bedside lamp is usually sitting just where the snake was - I took it away to use somewhere else a few days ago. The switch is on the power lead - I have this vivid mental image of groping around the dark for the switch and grabbing that instead!

On the beach.

So an eventful few months. Girls visiting from Sweden, a trip around China, and now moved to a place right on Tannum Sands beach. Last few days I've been doing dawn patrol surfing, with the sun coming up in the east, and small but well shaped waves.

More to come

And an even wilder one...

And that last post reminded me of my experience driving from Lanjigarh to Visakhapatnam late one night shortly before my departure from India.

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From the Travel Diaries: India Overland.


Close your eyes and picture this. A shopping mall, standard kind of stuff found anywhere in the (un)civilized world, say South Hills Village, Kin Kora or St Lukes, a long row of brightly lit storefronts, a mosaic of commerce, the establishments selling flashy clothes, computer games, flat screen TV's and phone cards, CD's, videos, barrows with candy, sunglasses and jewelery, icecreams and fast food and more candy. The usual evening crowd, milling around, wandering back and forth across the mall dividing the shops, buying fast food, generally hanging out for the evening. Its pretty crowded there. A mall. Not designed for vehicle traffic. So far, so good. Got that picture? Shops, population density, ambience generally?

It's early evening, just getting dark. The storefronts are brightly lit. Its dark overhead. Maybe we've had a power failure in the building. Just a narrow alley of shopfronts, bright lights blazing away, and darkness above. People. Shops. The usual stuff.

For some reason there are bicycles here as well. Lots of people on bicycles. Not just your typical mountain bike, in fact none of those. Three wheelers. The sort of things that you see old hippies making a living carrying peope sightseeing. A mall with bicycles.

Now lets add some cows. Yup, cows. A lot of cows. Dogs. Them too, lots of dogs. All mongrels. Indeterminate breed. The occasional goat and pig. So we have a shopping mall with domesticated livestock. And a few water buffalo as well. In this part of the world they count as domesticated livestock.

But what are these people doing? All the usual stuff, shopping, hanging out, eating takeaways. And at the edge of the road, there are some sqatting down going potty. We're not talking children here. Grownups. Right there on the mall. Then you notice that both sides of the mall in front of the shops are completely strewn with garbage. Old candy wrappers and discarded CD's. Mounds of unidentified trash.

It's raining. This is an open air mall. And the mall itsself is just a bit muddy. OK, it's very muddy, with deep potholes right in the middle of the mall, filled with muddy brown water. Trash everywhere. People defecating in front of the shops. We are about halfway there, focus on that mental image. A muddy, trashed shopping mall.



Now imagine driving down the middle of the mall at about 50mph. You have to toot your horn furiously to get the cows and people just to acknowledge your existence, let alone move out of the way.




But you aren't the only one driving at high speed up and down the mall. There are several other trucks and motorcycles and passenger cars as well. Since it's nighttime, then common sense dictates the use of headlights as well as the horn. There are several philosophies here.

(1) Leave your lights off entirely to save battery power.

(2) Leave your lights permenantly on high beam to make sure everyone
sees you coming.

(3) The best of both worlds. Leave your lights off until you see
someone coming, then blind them with highbeams.

Of course any of these approaches in isolation would be quite successful. If noone used lights, then night vision would adapt and you would see oncoming traffic. If everyone used lights, then you would at least be aware that there was oncoming traffic.

But in combination, especially combined with strategy (3), the result is fatal. The only redeeming feature is the horn, which if used regularly and with great enthusiasm, can more than make up for the lack of visual acuity. The pedestrians have learned to move out of the way at the sound of the horn.


And that my friends, about sums up driving at night through Indian villages.

A wild ride...

So I get into the office the other morning and find a gecko clinging to the base of the windscreen of my car. Its about a 25km drive on highway, so it must have been quite a ride.

Functionally equivalent to you or I clinging to the outside of a jumbo jet as it flies across the country!

Anyway, it didn't seem to have come to any harm, and given their ability to cling to walls and roofs I don't think it was ever in danger of being blown off. After about ten minutes it lost the glazed look on its face and scuttled away, and I hope it can make a new home here.

Gecko vs Spider...

Geckos are a normal resident in my cottage. Anyway, over the last few weeks there have been a lot of tiny ones around, must have just hatched. So there is one about an inch long, just a baby, that has taken up using the ceiling of my bedroom as a hunting ground. And there is a spider up there that it is out to get.

The spider is just a daddy-long-legs which I haven't bothered to sweep away. The problem for the gecko is that the spider is not on the ceiling, but on its web, suspended a couple of inches below. So the gecko can't get to the spider but it certainly knows its there. It roves back and forth just above the spider, trying to figure out how it can get to it. Once it grows a bit bigger, I'm sure it will live.

Talking about things eating bugs, I was around at my friends the other day and they have half a dozen resident tree frogs that come and sit on the window at night, drawn by the bugs which are drawn by the light from inside.

Anyway, this giant cockroach like thing blunders in and lands on the window. It's maybe 40mm long, but one of the tree frogs goes for it and manages to eat it, or at least get it into its mouth. Partway, there are still legs and things sticking out. The bug is about the size of the frogs head, and rather scaly and obviously not particularly easily eaten. Functionally it would be like you or me eating a whole armadillo. The frog chews away for a bit, but eventually gives up and spits the thing out.

Thats how we amuse ourselves here.

Publish Post

The rains came...

Its rainy season at the moment. Nine months of the year here it is fine and warm and clear blue skies, then for about three months we get hot humid weather. And for about two days of that time it is actually raining. But when it rains it rains. Heavily. We will get 50mm in an hour or two, 120mm in a day.

So during this time the small stream at the bottom of the hill is running, and it runs out onto the beach. And takes the beach away with it. So this

becomes this!

My, what a yummy mango...

I have a huge mango tree in my yard. Every year it produces several hundred fruit, of which I manage to eat at most a couple of dozen or so.

This is not for dislike of mangos or any other reason, the problem is that I share the mango tree (or its fruit) with at least four other species, all of which are far better adapted at accessing the contents than I am.

The tree is the year round home for a few million green tree ants. These are large ants, and they bite, quite painfully. Every branch of the the tree is covered with them, and they inhabit the ground around the tree as well. So actually climbing the tree is out of the question at any time of the year, and in particular during mango season.

The tree is very high, so that makes the fruit in the top half inaccessible. Using a bit of ingenuity, a windsurfer mast and some wire I have a rig that I can use to access fruit in the lower half of the tree, but the rest remains out of reach.

So during mango season the yummy fruit is there for the taking, and I will take a few from the lower branches. The rest feeds the birds and the bats.

Fruit bats. Flying foxes. Whatever you call them, they feast on ripe fruit during the summer. The bats have one constraint when dining on mango: they need about three meters of height to take off. Rather like parachuting, you need a bit of fall for the chute to open.

If they do end up on the ground, they have to find a nearby tree, and climb up high enough to launch. So if a tree is lower than this, they won't take the fruit. When you see a mango orchard, all the trees are short and trimmed that way. Fruit bats won't land on a bush because they'd never get back into the air.

My tree doenst have that problem, it's about 8m high, which is plenty of space for launching. So nighttime in summer, you hear the noisy creatures feasting away in the tree.

Round about dawn the bats retire to their castles or wherever (trees) and the birds take over. Rainbow lorikeets especially seem to enjoy a nice mango or two.

There are large mango trees all over town so there seems to be no shortage of fodder for the various fruit eaters. Probably keeps the mango growers happy having free and accessible food available elsewhere. Anyway, my tree keeps me well fed, and I don't begrudge the local wildlife the rest.

Of course during mango season you can buy the things for next to nothing anyway!

"My, what a yummy mango" was a line from a very old computer game. It eventually found its way into nethack, but I remember encountering it much earlier in a variant of adventure. There was a slime mold in there as well and if you ate that you got "My, what a yummy slime mold"