The pool is closed on Mondays, so my friend Doris suggested that she would show me the lakes. Of course, I thought a walk would be a healthy alternative to swimming laps, but Doris assured me it was too far and that she would secure a 4WD vehicle for our little jaunt. Since Doris is German, I knew we would leave promptly at 8 AM, as planned. It was a breezy, cool morning and in no time we were out of town, heading towards Broome. At the 20 K marker we turned towards the marshes on a barely distinguishable track. After slowly bumping over the hard-packed pindan, we suddenly came to a large expanse of water out in the middle of the bush.

The water was colored by the large purple water lilies and miniature white “frenzies.” Hundreds of ducks glided over the water, while off in the distance a pair of brolgas raucously engaged in what appeared to be a mating ritual, wings wildly flapping as they hopped about each other. White cranes perched in the eucalypts; ibis and egrets delicately picked their way through the water. The cacophony of birdsong was overwhelming. It was too much to absorb all at once; focusing the camera helped to focus my mind, even though I detest taking pictures. Doris, behind her camera on a tripod, told me to “just shoot; something will come out.” As I clicked away and listened to the birds I suddenly heard the distant drumbeat of hooves. We both looked across the lake but couldn’t see anything. Suddenly, a herd of brumbies galloped from the tall, brown grass and headed straight towards us. We remained still and let them come. They were clearly curious and totally unafraid of people. They stopped abruptly within a few meters of us. They were fat and sleek; as beautiful a bunch of horses as I have ever seen. The Uruguayan gauchos of my childhood would have been ever so eager to catch them. Suddenly, a loud neigh came from across the water. In unison, the horses lifted their heads, listened intently, and then, as one, galloped back to join the loner.

With Doris at the Lakes

Click picture above to see the brumbies!

Labels: Brumbies, lakes

Last week we rented a bunch of videos and one that i nabbed was the 1959 Cold War film On The Beach from the novel by Neville Shute. Vicki had mentioned that she had never seen the film, although she had read all of Shute's books. The film is about Australia, and focuses on a young couple- the young man is in the Navy. Shots of downtown Melbourne, dominated by bicycles and horse-drawn buggies gradually introduce the fact that a nuclear war has killed everyone in the Northern Hemisphere. Australia survives, but everyone is destined to perish in about six months when the radioactive dust in the atmosphere reaches the continent. In black and white, with Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire, the film is a classic about the response of people to the inevitability of their own extinction.

Saturday morning we arose early, as I had organized an "official RCS field trip and tutorial on 4-wheel-driving" for my students- i.e. a picnic to Lennard Gorge. This was a 184 Km jaunt up the Gibb River Road, the first time we had been up that highway. We took two vehicles having been warned that it is not uncommon for people to lose 2 or 3 tires to sharp rocks in the outback. Since one of the students has a vehicle that matches the RCS Nissan Patrol, we can "share spares" if need be. Michael and Owen made the supreme sacrifice of getting up early on a Saturday morning and putting off their studying for a day.

We got started a bit after 7 AM for the trip. The first 74 Km of the highway is "sealed" or paved, but this is using the term generously. About 20 Km out of Derby the paved part becomes one lane down the middle with 1/2 lane wide gravel shoulders on each side. One needs to keep a sharp lookout not only for cows, but for oncoming vehicles. Fortunately traffic is light- we saw only 21 other vehicles in an entire 400+ km trip.

First stop was the Lennard River crossing where we took a leg stretch, had a snack and admired the river bed with its smoothly worn stones. Shortly thereafter we found some emus on the road. Crossing the Napier Range, we encountered Queen Victoria's Head and could not resist making our own Queen Victoria strike a pose! [Click picture for enlargement]


After this the road rises up over the King Leopold range, with spectacular views of land that seemingly goes on forever, with no fences, no cell towers, or power or phone lines in view at all. There is no obvious sign of human habitation or even transit beyond the gravel road. This is the only time I can remember ever seeing such an unmarked landscape in my lifetime. For Vicki, its the first time she has seen anything like it since the pampas of Uruguay when she was 12.

Another hour and we turn off on a very rough 4WD track for the 8 km ride to the Lennard Gorge carpark. We pack up and put on hiking boots. Its a solid uphill kilometer walk to the top of the hill, then a rocky scramble down a stream bed of round red boulders to the top of the gorge. The Lennard river is roaring by now, and we climb down into the cool of the gorge and find we are the only ones here, with a deep green pool and beautiful waterfalls. By now we are very hot from the hike, so we change into bathers and climb down into the water. Its a great swim, against a stiff current, to the base of the waterfalls. We sit on the rocks under the falls, float on our backs and admire the eagles soaring overhead between the red rocks, and just enjoy the magic of the place. The rocks are so smooth, but hard granite shot through with white veins of quartz. This cleft in the Earth must have taken a million years to cut- especially since the river only runs during the wet.

We sunbathe on the rocks and eat our lunch. I review the 32 points to remember about driving a 4WD in 5 minutes and give the boys the handout: tutorial finished, and its time for another swim. This time Vicki peeks over a rock on the way into the river and finds herself face to face with a 2 foot goanna. It is unafraid, and lets us get a foot away. It opens its mouth, and I am close enough to see its tiny teeth and black tongue. Even sans glasses, I admire the speckled camouflage pattern of its scales.

2 PM and we have to leave this place. I have developed a great appreciation for the hundreds of thousands of miles of barbed-wire fence in the American landscape, if only because they allow us to drive at night without fearing for our lives if we encounter a cow. There are cows on the road all the time, and the last sunset hour, as we tiredly near Derby is an effort in concentration and frustration, as we have to stop frequently to clean bugs off the smeary windshield so we can keep a sharp eye peeled. But we only see one roo scamper past and are soon home safely. (Click the picture below to open the photo album:)

Lennard Gorge

Sunday we are so tired we sleep in till 9, but then clean the car and the house windows while we are at it. We walk out to the jetty- its King Tide Day, with tides up to 11.5 meters this week, the highest of the year. There is a celebration on the jetty with food stalls, art auction and booths. The local Aboriginal kids are climbing up on top of the ore-conveyor and jumping 8 to 10 meters into the swift, crocodile-inhabited currents around the jetty, laughing with delight; not an adult in sight.

But life is short, especially compared to the age of the Earth, the Deep Time it took to carve Lennard Gorge, to create the waterfalls. I reflect about On The Beach, which I believe is not so much an anti-war movie, as an existential commentary on all our shared fates. "What would you do if you knew your time was very limited?" Swimming in Lennard Gorge, I realize I am also On The Beach. We all are.

Vicki and I stumbled onto the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest, broadcast here on SBS on Sunday night. We hadn't planned to watch it, but had seen the documentary, Finland, Zero Points the night before, and our interest was piqued.

The most watched non-sports broadcast in the world, Eurovision has been an annual rite since 1956. In a nutshell, every European country (and some that are not like Israel) may send only 1 song/group/act to perform in the contest. After all the acts are done, each country may vote for the best act- but no country may vote for themselves.

What was fascinating was the wide variety, and sometimes surreal character of the contest. No boring cookie-cutter American Idol stuff here. Finland hosted this year due to the success of monster hard rock and roll group Lordi last year. (The winning country becomes host the next year.) And Lordi are literally "MONSTER" rock, dressed as demons that would make the meanest orcs in Lord of the Rings go crying for mummy. We especially loved the pyrotechnic effects, such as fireworks erupting from the ends of their guitars as they sang "Hard Rock, Hallelujah" to open the show.

The show continued with a variety of eclectic acts. The Boznia-Herzegovina act was ethereal, the Irish showed up with a predictable nasally out-of-tune Celtic singer backed up by drum and tin whistle (and ended up bottom of the list, where they belonged.) The Bulgarians did "The Ten Tenors" onstage, to great effect. The French were very odd and outre as predictable. The U.K. band Scooch performed a very campy "Flying the Flag" number which was fun.

In the end the voting came down to the Russians, Serbia, and Ukraine. The Russian girls did a very rude number which would have made Brittany Spears blush. Dressed in black they sang

Oh! Don't call me funny bunny
I'll blow your money money
I'll get you to my bad ass spinning for you
Oh! I'll make it easy honey
I'll take your money yummy
I've got my bitches standing up next to me

Truly the West has had a bad influence on Russia.

The Ukraine featured a drag group who looked as if they had fallen into the mills at the aluminum wrap factory. This act would have made millions in Miami Beach. It made the Sisters number in "The Birdcage" look positively straight. They were quite popular with the crowd and consistenly high in the voting.

But even before the voting began, both Vicki and I pegged the Serbian singer, Marija Šerifovic, as the best act of the night. This only 22 year old, plain-appearing woman has a beautiful, powerful voice which communicated the emotions of her torch song so wonderfully, that we felt her pain and grief acutely, even though it was in Serbian. When we looked up the lyric, it was no surprise to find lyrics matching the longing in her song:

MOLITVA (PRAYER)

Music by: Vladimir Graić
Lyrics by: S.M.Mare


I'm wide awake
An empty bed drives my dreams away
Life melts like ice

Disappears in the twinkling of an eye
I'm losing my mind,
Pushing reality out of sight
Our lips are touching softly
You're the one I believe blindly

I walk around like crazy
Falling in love frightens me
Days are like wounds
Countless and hard to get through

Prayer...
It burns my sore lips like a fire
Prayer...
Thy name is something I admire
Heaven knows just as well as I do
So many times I have cried over you
Heaven knows just as well as I do
I pray and live only for you

I can't lie to God
as I kneel down and pray
You're the love of my life
That's the only thing I can say

We held our breath during the voting, cheering for Marija to win. We were so happy for her and for Serbia.

This was 2 hours of plain fun, and I have to wonder why I've never seen it on American TV. A quick search of Google, TVGuide.com, and Yahoo.TV on U.S. sites shows no articles or schedule times. Maybe I'm wrong and it was shown on BBC-America or something- (leave a comment if you saw it on TV in America!)

But if you missed it, you can still see it due to the miracle of the Internet. You can see her amazing performance in Helsinki here. Or at least go to her website and hear Maria sing Molitva. You will enjoy it.

We are enjoying a special treat, the Weekend Australian this morning. We especially chuckle over Phillip Adams weekly column, one of the funniest (yet also scathingly sarcastic) being a few weeks ago- see http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21591643-12272,00.html for a rude but right on read. Like a modern Mark Twain, he is calling his country to heed the better angels of their natures in the area of tolerance and fair go.

This is interesting in comparison to an abstract that popped up in my PubMed medical literature surveillance robot for "Oceanic Ancestry Group"[MeSH] AND Aborigin*". An article from the British Journal of Social Psychology, [Volume 46, Number 1, March 2007, pp. 191-204(14) Authors: Leach, Colin Wayne; Iyer, Aarti; Pedersen, Anne (who are from PERTH) ] titled

Angry opposition to government redress: When the structurally advantaged perceive themselves as relatively deprived has the following abstract:

We examined (structurally advantaged) non-Aborigines' willingness for political action against government redress to (structurally disadvantaged) Aborigines in Australia. We found non-Aborigines opposed to government redress to be high in symbolic racism and to perceive their ingroup as deprived relative to Aborigines. However, only perceived relative deprivation was associated with feelings of group-based anger. In addition, consistent with relative deprivation and emotion theory, it was group-based anger that fully mediated a willingness for political action against government redress. Thus, the specific group-based emotion of anger explained why symbolic racism and relative deprivation promoted a willingness for political action against government redress to a structurally disadvantaged out-group. Theoretical and political implications are discussed.

In English, what these authors are saying is that inequality in Australia, the U.S. and other developed countries is perpetuated by inaccurate perceptions. The dominant (White) electorate wrongly believe that minorities do not share their values and have unfair advantages over them, even though the society is quite clearly structured in their [Whites'] favor. The authors then say:

"...we expect group-based anger to fully mediate a willingness for political action (symbolic racism -> group relative deprivation-> group-based anger-> action willingness)......

....the notion of inverted relative deprivation may help to explain the
continued appeal of political movements that are fiercely anti-government and antioutgroup.

In the last 15 years, parties such as One Nation in Australia, the British National Party in the UK, the National Front in France, neo-Nazis in Germany and Austria, and ‘white power’ movements in the United States, appear to have increased their numbers and influence by appealing to white people’s relative deprivation-based anger (see Fraser & Islam, 2000; Wrench & Solomos, 1993). All of these parties gained some support among disenfranchised members of the white majority by portraying their ingroup as relatively deprived to immigrants, asylum seekers or other structurally disadvantaged out-groups."

Which brings me to the lapel flower I bought this week. May 26th is National Sorry Day. Of the residents of Perth studied in the article above, over 68% did not believe the Australian government should indicate they are sorry for the past injustices inflicted on Aboriginal people. So it makes sense that the first step must be education and increased awareness of the facts of Australian history. Sorry Day is only 9 years old. Perhaps by wearing Sorry Day flowers and confronting the misinformation about fairness and deprivation, people on this oddly-shaped continent may begin to reconcile. Also something to think about next Martin Luther King day, when we are back home again. As Michael Shermer outlines in this months Skeptic column, ending self-deception is the beginning of wisdom.

0750 AM: We stayed up watching silly TV till late Friday, so this morning slept in until 8AM. But then we had to get up when the last "retic" (lawn irrigation) station switched on. This makes such a loud, vibrating noise beneath the bedroom, the raised floor of the house acting like a huge loudspeaker, that we are driven from the room.

0815-0930: Coffee and apricot muesli with passion fruit yogurt on the back veranda. It is cooling off a little at nights, although the days here are still peaking in the 92-98 F range. We sit on the back porch and listen to the birdsong, which has changed as new migrant birds come into this tropical area for winter. The unseen dawn choristers in the garden are very loud and sing continuously until about 9 am when they suddenly all cease. The frangipani in the back yard are still blooming vigorously, and their fragrance fills the morning.

0930-1100: Vicki got an email from our daughters to call them. We talk for about an hour. She bought a phone card at the newsagent in town which runs $0.0502 per minute for calls to the U.S. It is probably cheaper for us to call family in the U.S. than it is for them to call each other. Vicki's brother Bill is visiting Leah on Long Island, and Liz has come down to attend her sister's Masters Violin Recital. Leah will graduate with her Masters in violin performance next week. We are very proud of her, and sorry we can't be there. We talk about their plans for summer work. Its obvious the three of them are having a great time together.

1100-1200 AM: The pool opens. We swim, I do a kilometer of laps, Vicki churns out 1.5 klicks. It is a beautiful sunny day, and we manage to get done just as the children start to fill up the pool. We agree we enjoy watching the black kites, and butterflies drift overhead while we backstroke.

1200-1300 PM: Showers and dress. Vicki has a snack; apple and peanut butter on bread. I have a few pieces of Whittaker's chocolate- "Special Dark" and "Cashew". We have been looking for Rum Raisin but have not been able to find it in Australia.

~1300-1500 PM: Errands in town. I go down to the Tourist Information center to find some maps and info about driving up the Gibb River road. I'm interested in places to drive out and do some day hikes and picnics, now that the weather is improving. I get information about some local gorges, only 2 hours drive away up the gravel road, and also a good place to swim. "There are Crocodile Warning signs there" the woman says, "but everyone swims there anyway". "When was the last time someone was eaten there?" I ask, and to my amazement, she turns to the older woman at the Center and repeats my question! "I can't remember any, but a boy did report seeing a crocodile there last month. But no one's been eaten".

I go to the Blockbuster, which in Derby has quite a nice selection. I rent an Australian romantic comedy, a sci fi movie, a classic ("On The Beach"), and "Garden State". Vicki is bound to like at least 1 out of the 4. A stop at the Newsagency and I nab the Weekend Australian- something to read on the veranda on a Sunday morning. And then a run out to Woolies, where I am on a search and destroy mission for Magnum ice cream bars. They are out of the really good ones- the chocolate ice cream covered by chocolate bars. (Today's blog is brought to you by CHOCOLATE- you can see why I have to swim a klick a day!) I settle for a box of 6 mini-bars. Woolworth's is not too crowded, except for the liquor store which is doing a booming Saturday afternoon business. As I leave, a flock of rainbow lorikeets are flying over the parking lot, making a racket. On the way home, I notice a flock of about 30 black ibis on the footie oval. These birds probe the grass with their long bills- they are huge and identical to the ibis seen in Egyptian art.

3PM and its time for a little read and a nap. I am taking a break from reading Australiana and Aboriginal literature, and relaxing with Robert Charles Wilson's Darwinia. We nap for about an hour in the heat of the afternoon. Its hitting the high 90's but we are trying not to run the "AirCon" now that its less humid. We give up and turn it on for an hour when it becomes stifling.

5 PM: We are both starving after our swimming. At Woolies I've nabbed some Chevap (Serbian sausages) which we threw on the grill with onions, red peppers and potatoes. Supper on the veranda and we stuff these ingredients into Pitas with cabbage/carrot cole slaw. Yum.

6:30 PM and we watch SBS World News. This has become an evening habit as we can not get a daily newspaper here. The papers have to be shipped up from Perth and they are a day late at the minimum, and there is no home delivery. SBS is the "alternative" government-funded station, which shows the most eclectic programming I have seen. Its a mixture of old movies, great news programs, documentaries, Aboriginal programs such as "Going Bush" and "Living Black", and hour-long foreign language news (in Italian, Chinese, French, German, Greek, and a smattering of Eastern European countries). Their radio broadcasts cover 68 languages, but we only get three radio stations in Derby: 6DBY which is local within 30 Km. of town, and is mostly country, oldies, and on weekends footie games; ABC-AM Local Radio, and a station from Port Hedland called Spirit which doesn't always come in. 6DBY does have the National Indigenous Radio Network, which often has an interesting view of the national and local Australian news and politics, and is worth listening to.

7:30 PM and I'm checking email and blogging a bit. We watch TV here a few evenings a week- guilty pleasures like Desperate Housewives, McLeod's Daughters, Heroes. I am disappointed that I've not found any Australian produced programs that have captured my interest. (The number one program here, on Channel 9 is Home and Away, a soap opera in which the recent Logie winner, Kate Ritchie, has been playing her character for over 20 years, since she was 8 years old.)

8:30 PM Vicki is a fan of Inspector Lynley, a BBC crime program based on the Elizabeth George novels. He is a hunk, and he drives a nice car. England looks very cold. They have foggy salt marshes where we have hot, dusty mudflats.

10:30 and off to bed. For the first time we keep all the aircon off and open the windows, even leaving the overhead fan off. This is cool and comfortable for sleeping, but we listen to the myriad canine population of Derby howling all night long. Sometimes being half-deaf has its advantages. Oh well, I have cleverly reprogrammed the #6 retic setting for 8PM in the evenings, so we are able to sleep late on Sundays from now on...

This picture is not in Australia. That's the problem. We recently saw an article on the SBS news about a new solar power tower, in Seville, Spain. We are constantly hearing on the news here that Australian citizens produce more greenhouse emissions per capita than any people on Earth. So it is interesting to hear the Australian government come out with a new budget which emphasizes carbon sequestration for coal plants (essentially pumping the CO2 from the smokestacks back into the ground). John Howard has also floated the idea of widening the use of nuclear power.

This in a country where, at least up here in northern latitudes, it is still hitting 98 degrees daily at the end of autumn. This sunburned country would be a natural place to use and develop solar power in a big way. One article quotes a leading scientist who states that "the amount of solar energy that hits Australia alone in one summer day alone is about half the total global annual energy demand." Yet this same scientist, who has worked on solar power for 30 years, left Australia for the U.S. in January of this year.

The vast majority of people here seem to me to be taking global warming seriously. I hope the mood has become more accepting back home in the U.S. At a time when both our countries should be concerned about both energy independence and maintaining the environment for our children and grandchildren, we should all be writing our legislators and demanding that more R&D and subsidy money go into solar power (and wind and energy conservation).

And how does this impact indigenous people? A report from the U.S. Worldwatch institute details how the Lakota people are using solar power to cut down the degradation of their reservation and conserve money. Generating electricity from their own lands also fits cultural ties to the land as the source of life. Many Aboriginal remote communities, such as Kandiwell, rely on solar power because they are off the grid. A few have built larger power stations. But perhaps this would be an industry that would be non-polluting, friendly to the land, and a source of jobs and income for Aboriginal people, with a little kick-start from the powers-that-be in Australia?

But what really got me thinking was an article discussing the difficulty of finding really ancient Aboriginal archaeological sites. You see, the problem is that 40,000 years ago, before the last ice age, when Aboriginal people likely first came to Australia, the sea levels were 20-100 meters lower than they are today. That means all the coastal sites, where the First Australians likely settled are now deep underwater.

If the climate scientists are correct and the ocean rises another 25-50 meters in the next century due to global warming, all of Derby and many miles of the beautiful coastline I posted photos of (in the Kandiwell folder) will be submersed. And this would include a lot of traditional lands for Aboriginal people all over Australia.

For a more critical review about solar power in Australia, read this article as well.

Last week we spent in Broome, for the annual Formative Assessment in Rural Training, or FARTS as Professor Campbell likes to call them. This being "tourist season" in Broome, kind of like winter in Florida, accomodation was hard to come by, so the Rural Clinical School ended up putting us into the pricey Cable Beach Club Resort, across the road from Cable Beach.

Cable Beach is rated the #2 beach in all of Australia, the continent with the best beaches on the planet. (#1 is Esperance according to the poll, but its rather cold there now in late autumn.) There are 10 meter tides, which means at low tide, I had to walk about 1/4 mile over the wet surface from the dunes to the water's edge. This was great as the fine sand was patterned with wonderful radial geometries made by 1 inch long crabs, interspersed with long random snail trails laid down by tiny welks. The turquoise Indian ocean was very warm and seemed much saltier than the Gulf in Florida. It was rather a shock to stay at this resort for 4 nights after living so long in dusty, mudflatted Derby. We also felt a bit guilty about the cost, when we are surrounded, both in Broome and Derby by those who have so much less. A conscience is a terrible thing.

The 4 days included two exam days, and two workshop days. My students were pooled with the 8 students from Broome, and the 7 from Karratha and Port Hedland, for a total of 18. Monday was devoted to OSCE's, or "Observed Structured Clinical Examinations". We faculty ran 6 stations, and each student had to complete them all. Each station was 15 minutes, and the student comes to the door of the room, reads a short precis, and then has to perform the task. Half of the stations had an actor, and the student is instructed to do a brief interview, and demonstrate a skill. For example, the student interviews a patient with fatigue, tiredness and 10 pound weight gain, then must explain the possible diagnoses, outline a plan to investigate, and interpret the thyroid tests given at the end. This type of exam tests skills that students will need in everyday office practice. My case was of a young pregnant woman, who (18 times) asked the "doctor" to explain what they "were feeling for when you push on my tummy, how will I know when something is wrong, when should I go to the hospital?" Listening to this 18 times makes for a long day.

Tuesday the students had a day long Paeds workshop, and we had a local Medical Coordinators meeting, debriefing from Monday, and putting finishing touches on our Wednesday workshops. Vicki and I took a beach walk north up to the "nudie beach" in the morning, and on the way back, crossing some rocks, I slipped and caught my ankle in a crack and fell hard, right on my face. It was fast and frightening, and I ended with a couple of gashes in my shins, but otherwise no major damage except to my dignity. (My daughter Liz when told about it summarized it in engineering terms as "high center of gravity + gawky = fall"). Tuesday evening the students and faculty all went out to dinner together.

The next day we ran 9 stations in rotation for "quick clinical workshops". I ran a double station, teaching pneumatic otoscopy and how to use the tympanometer. These are crucial skills in the Kimberly, where ear disease among children is rampant. (I have never seen so many draining ears from infected, perforated eardrums in such a short time in my entire career.) Other stations included knee and shoulder exams, some patients with heart murmurs, and a case of pediatric trauma. (Our dummy child got her foot bitten off by a crocodile before it drowned her- the students eventually learn to look under the bandage once they stabilize her.) These are great fun, and we mixed the students from different sites together to make it more interesting for them.

Thursday was the Long Case. This is an hour long exam where the student is asked to do a complete history and focused clinical exam on a real patient, while I watch and score. Each of us had 4 patients, which again makes for a long morning. We only let the patients be interviewed by 2 students, or they become stale and bored with their own stories. One of my patients had rheumatic heart disease, and the other had obvious lung disease, with a few twists. I found it interesting to see the variation in skill which each student had in approaching the patients. And at the end of both Long Cases and OSCEs, we also ask the patients to rate the doctors "bedside manner" and give them that feedback.

We quit Broome immediately after the Long Cases and drove back to Derby. Vicki and I enjoyed Broome and the students. I felt the social support was helpful to combat the isolation of living and working in such remote places. But ultimately were happy to come back home to our friendly, quiet little town.

Click the image below for pictures of the gardens, and also for StoneRage, a shop that imports wonderful art and furniture from Indonesia.

Broome_MayDay