Back in the Berra

Hey gang,

I'm back in Canberra and it's chillier than when I left. Check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbbPkpzAipI

So fucking cool. What a legend Hutchence was. Yeah so update of the year - I finally have the internet at home. It's been a bit weird for me to be internet-less seeing as I had the internet before it was even called the internet. Anyway here I am and I'm here to stay.

So Broken Hill turned out to be the major highlight of the tour. I was blown away. Never before have I been so surprised by the generosity of others. I expected Broken Hill to be a rough-shod town full of crazy derros and shit kids. Nothing was further from the truth. The kids were an absolute pleasure to teach - so nice and receptive to our mathsy wisdom, and the people were lovely and really interested in our line of work. By the Friday of the week we spent there neither of us had had an awful lot of time to go out and experience the town. A few nights previously I'd been able to walk over an old mine lock and examine a hill that was mined to death, and we'd been to the town centre but that's it. That day we went and saw Broken Hill High's year 7 students. It's pretty funny. They just wanted to go home. The show was at 2pm. Mental Note: Beware of shows booked at 2pm on Friday. maybe I should get that tattooed on my forehead. I should have said most of the kids in Broken Hill were a pleasure. But who can blame them? I remember the feeling on a Friday afternoon when I was their age. After the show, the head science teacher was chatting with us about our time here. Well, after we'd packed up, he ended up taking us on a tour of the mines around the town when he found out we hadn't seen too much in the area. It was really good of him to take his time to do that. His name was Ross Clark.

That night we were down the pub and got talking to the owners. They'd bought the pub the previous day. It was cool to see how excited they were and the connection they obviously already had with the customers. One of the new owners was a long-time resident. They'd been successful in buying the pub because the last owner knew they would keep it going as it was and not knock it down. The name of the pub is the South Australian and it's been there for about a hundred years. They ordered pizza and gave us some. We needed dinner - it worked well. A family came in with a young daughter whose school we'd been to. She was acting all star-struck which I always think is hilarious. Anyway Nicole spoke to the mum while I received life-advice from the dad that one only gets in pubs over beer. When the time came for us to move on to the next pub, one of the pub owners offered to take us in her car. Well, after dropping our bikes off back at the accommodation she did just that; she picked us up and took her to the next pub. I was dumbfounded. Let's not forget that this is the second time that day that we'd been picked up from our accommodation by someone we'd just met who was taking time to help us out. The next pub was okay, but nothing much write about. A bunch of drunk 18-year-olds got into a punch up. Woot..

Next day we went to Ross Clark's place for a cup of tea and to check out his world-class mineral collection. We only wanted to stay for half an hour. Two hours later and we're still there. It was just amazing. I'll put up some photos - including a naturally occurring dodecahedron. Can't get much more maths squad than that. Ross even gave us some zinc, lead, and silver ore; and a sample of gypsum. After that we headed out to the daydream mine and had a look around a very old mine that was dug entirely by hand. Then to the Silverton Pub where Mad Max II was filmed, among about 100 other Aussie movies. The young daughter of the owners recognised us from a show and we took a few photos, but had to leave quickly to head up to Mundi Mundi lookout for an amazing sunset experience. Up there, a family rocked up and started building a fire. We were allowed to stand with them because their daughter recognised us as well. They even gave us sparklers and marshmallows. Wicked! Well that was cool and we got some good photos of us, the sunset, and the maths-mobile in the foreground. Then it was back to Silverton pub where I got some beers and Nicole decided to be driver. We stayed for a long while and a stew was made in a camp oven over the indoor fireplace. So we got fed...again! It was delicious too. What a top weekend. On Sunday we then had to leave but I left feeling really positive. Everyone there was so much nicer than they had to be. I'll go back to Broken Hill one day.

Anyway I've written for long enough. This entry just feels like a dull listing of events. Hope it doesn't read that way! Cheers to any who read this.

Signing off...

Pleasant Pheasant Farmer's Farm and Broken Hill

We arrived in Broken Hill on Sunday night and were pleasantly surprised with the accommodation that I had booked. Thanks Bettina from the Science Circus for putting me onto that one. It's like a real house! That's something special when you're used to living in fibro cabins. The cabins are good - but this is great.

We haven't had a chance to do much sightseeing as of yet, and now it's completely pissing down right in the middle of a drought and while I've got my clothes on the line! Spose they need the rain... :)

Broken Hill's got everything that a sizeable town should and I wonder how much effort and energy goes in to providing all of these facilities all the way out here. I like the look of the town - it's unusual. There is a huge wall of a hill that I think may be man-made from the mines that dominates the scenery, on top of which sits a small and trendy looking restaurant. I'll have to put a photo up because it's pretty striking.

Well, we just came from the small Victorian town of Swan Hill in which I spent a good slab of time feverishly playing Dynasty Warriors 4 - Empires on the PS2. Thanks Rich for introducing another addictive game into my life when you know that i have a problem. So after bankruptcy and a divorce i managed to finally finish that and actually go out on the town and look around. After much (verbal) probing of the locals, we discovered that the sum total of worthwhile tourist attractions was a giant cod situated near the middle of town. Here is a photo of me and the cod enjoying each other's company. We then ventured out of town to a nearby pheasant farm last friday. As we pulled up a sign instructed us to beep our horn and out came Farmer Kevin with huge smile and all the time in the world to show us around and answer all of our pheasant-related questions. I'm pleased to say that we came up with a suprising amount of such questions, particularly when we saw one pheasant who was sick of being female and as such was slowly becoming a man-pheasant. Interesting. There were also heaps of other birds and a walk-in aviary. I met a 75 year-old cockatoo and a wide array of pretty pheasants - some with tail feathers that can grow up to 2 metres long. Who would've thought that the pheasant farm would be so interesting? We ended up sitting down with Kevin at the end of the tour for an in-depth conversation about social issues such as global warming, fast food, and people who drive to the gym and then go on treadmills and exercise cycles. He was a cool guy; really open minded and welcoming. In fact, we struck up such a rapport with the old chap that as we were leaving, he gave us a frozen pheasant to cook up for dinner some night. Sensational! Well the next night after the pheasant had defrosted, I played a few rounds of poker against it before cooking it up and eating it. It's pretty nice; kind of like chicken but more tasty and stringier. Anyway here is a photo of said game of poker right before the pheasant won a hand in which my watch, motorbike, and the 15 dollars that you can see were up for grabs. Never mind - I got mine in the end. More about Broken Hill soon.

Maths in Mildura

Well here's my first post for this here blog thingy. I've always wanted to start one of these but do I have interesting things to post? Well stay tuned because we're both about to find out.

I'm currently in Mildura with the ever cool Tenix Questacon Maths Squad in order to excite kiddies about maths. We arrived yesterday after a tiring 10-hour drive during which I slept for a bout 5 of them.

So we did two schools today, something that Jamos calls a 'stun-and-run' effort. I didn't have such a problem with it. I think it went fairly well. Jamos says that it feels cheap and nasty and that we should ideally stay at one school for the whole day. I can see his point to an extent and he agrees with me that there's just not always enough students at a given school. He's got some pretty strong views about how the program should be run and I suppose that's inevitable when you've been working hard to build something for the past 6 years.

The first show was flat and the kids were uninspired by our antics. Following that, the next show we did at another school was heaps better and by the time the workshop came around at about 2:20 I felt like I was on fire.

I was tempted to say something about how it was just the heating being up too high or some such and that's really what you get when you hang out in this group for too much time. I gotta say, there's enough bad puns being bandied around for anyone's taste.

Previously I've been to the Hunter Valley in NSW and Sth Gippsland and Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. I noticed that the proportion of indigenous kids in this area is much higher than in others I've toured to. I don't quite know why but I always look to these kids more, really hoping that they're understanding what we're doing or enjoying their time. It's because we hear so much about how much trouble they're all in. It feels fantastic when you see them getting into it.

Sometimes the squad travels to indigenous communities. I've never been on such a tour and I wonder if I'll ever get to go on one. I have strong hopes to one day experience that side of Australia.

Anyway, later...