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...