28 February 2008

Whatever happened to the Coorong?


For those of you with East-coast-centric school geography behind them, the Coorong is the massive lagoon at the end of the Murray River, just south of the where the river exits the sea, and the setting of "Storm Boy" - the novel and film written by Colin Thiele in the 70's.

But I digress. The Coorong is a national park, and is rich with bird and aquatic life. You know, an important breeding ground for birds and all that. I've been there several times, once on a Summer Holiday bird survey trip, and some other times for short camping trips.
Sure it has always dried up from time to time in summer, but it's been dry for quite a while. The picture above is the Coorong taken two weeks ago. The recent flooding and rains in the Darling/Murray River catchments has all flown into relatively empty dams (ie some of Adelaide's drinking water is sourced from a large dam downstream) and has been taken up by irrigation allocations that Qld, NSW and Victoria aren't really reducing as much as they should.

In fact, the river has stopped flowing for a while now (again, drought plus irrigation overuse), which has lead to sand banking up at the Murray mouth, and Lake Alexandrina (below left, with dust storm), a deeper lake to the North of The Coorong, is drier than anyone remembers.

Someone I know is doing sampling and surveying down this way and has made many trips to the region recently. On one trip, there were lots of dead, stinky fish lying on the dried up ground.
Very depressing, and I'm hoping that our climate change and water Minister - who is South Australian - will do the right thing by our poor, backward-flowing river system. Let's wait and see, shall we?








23 February 2008

Update from the ranch...

It seems we are not to have the quiet life anymore.

We've just emerged from a few weeks of lurgy-ville - a cough that E-chan had that got progressively worse, until I got food poisoning (and E-chan did a bit but not as badly as he only had a few bites of my lunch that day), and wham bam! all 3 of us came down with the full blown cough-and-phlegm fest all at once. [Haven't I written this 3 or 4 times before!?]. As usual when you're a bit down, you worry about everything - job, rental and housing prices, the way the world is going.

Thankfully, after a week or two of what felt like swimming in mud, things are more or less normal. Still need more sleep, but even work seems tolerable. Am ready to get back into the pool for laps tomorrow!

E-chan is going great guns after a few weeks of adjusting to going back to child-care (whilst having above cold). One thing I didn't realise is that carer:child ratios are really small at the start of the year - the 2-2.5 year olds go off to pre-school (more like kindy) from January each year, and those who have birthdays later in the year get to enjoy one carer to 2 children instead of 3-4. After a few weeks of wondering where some of his little classmates have gone, then watching them through the fence in the bigger kid's playground, E-chan seems to have decided he likes going to care again. He's made friends with a little girl called Ruby, and they read books together and shared teddies. He's enjoying being more mobile and articulate than some of the newer, younger babies.

His vocabulary is ever expanding, and sometimes we can have little conversations that, while a tad one-sided, I feel he understands. He's sleeping really well too. We now read to him a bit (after putting on PJ's and brushing teeth - or is that chewing toothbrush and sucking off paste?), then cuddles and into bed with a night night. He complains for a few minutes, but goes off to sleep and we rarely hear from him again until morning.

We get lovely frontal koala hugs - legs clining around our middle, arms curled around our neck, and he even says "please" when prompted. Must keep up the manners training - who knows? one day it might even come unprompted. When we can we try to have dinner as a family at around 6pm - he loves it when I serve up his food in front of him at the table then serve the same for myself. Has resulted in him eating steamed green vegetables where before he wouldn't touch them, probably because he sees us eat them.

Ciao and hope you are all well, and sorry for the "update" style post. Will try to write something more interesting when I think of it...

07 February 2008

Detachment

Does anyone else from time to time find themselves in their regular social settings - work, hobbies, mothers groups, whatever, and feel a bit detatched from it all? I'm not talking about when I'm with good, old friends. Just those further out on your inner circle.

Every now and again, I find myself thinking "what am I doing here with these people?". Thinking: it's time I got out and tried making friends elsewhere, because I've known these people superficially for a couple of years now, and we're not getting any closer as friends.

Anyhow, that's happening to me a bit lately. I'm not saying I'm about to chop a whole lot of superficial friends and associates out of my life, just because we're not best buds. But I am feeling a bit detatched from it all. I think it's something to do with thinking (just inklings really) about changing jobs, house, size of family, things like that. All these things at once, nothing fixed, but lots of permutations and combinations to think through, and not everyone can fit through with you to the next stage of your life. But I've found at times that you end up staying friends with the people you least expect...

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By the way, got a job application in on Tues. Not sure I'd take it if I got it, but anyway...