Archive for the ‘At Home’ Category

On The Road – Alice Springs

written on July 25th, 2009 with no comments

My daughter has a friend over from Canada – staying with us for 2 months. We decided last year that when she came to Australia we’d basically trek around with her. So I signed up for some wireless broadband access and we started our adventure at Alice Springs. Given that it was going to take 2-3 days each way to drive there and back we decided to fly which takes around 3 hours.

I’m spending most of my time in the hotels we’re staying at – it’s pretty much a ‘working holiday’ while the girls go and see the sites. I did take one day off though to walk around Uluru (formally known as Ayers Rock). I’d only ever seen it on the television and in magazines so it was a real buzz to view the real thing. It’s every bit as spectacular as I expected it would be. The tour we went on was ‘Uluru/Kata Tjuta and Back In a Day‘ with Emu Run Tours and it was a great day all around. The guides were knowledgable, funny and helpful throughout the day which ended with a barbeque and champagne at the Uluru sunset viewing area. If you are planning on visiting Alice Springs and the surrounding area I can definitely recommend Emu Run Tours.

We stayed at a motel for 4 nights – the Swagmans Rest Motel. It was neat and clean and very comfortable. It’s also close enough to the CBD that you can walk there in around 15 minutes. We ate out one night at The Juicy Rump – which is a restaurant at Lasseters Casino. The steak was excellent and it’s a very popular eatery with a lot of atmosphere.

Wild Storm in Victoria

written on July 4th, 2009 with no comments

Last Monday we drove up to the Grampians (also known by its aboriginal name – Gariwerd), which is a mountain range here in Victoria. It’s well known for its spectacular rock formations and views. On the first day the weather was quite clear. We went on a walk to ‘The Pinnacle’. It’s a 2-3 hour walk that takes you through forest, a small canyon and then up to one of the highest points in the Grampians. Being a smoker and a programmer who spends most of his day at the keyboard, I have to say that I was totally knackered by the time we got to the top. :)

It was worth the pain though.

On the second day we drove around a couple of other well known site seeing places and then decided to drive up to another lookout before we headed home. On arrival at the lookout there was very light rain falling but not enough to really bother us. There was also some lightning and thunder which sounded fairly close, but not right over the top of where we were. We all agreed that we needed a toilet stop and as there was a toilet block conveniently positioned nearby we headed over there. Just after going inside the toilet the skys opened up and poured a deluge of heavy rain. It was really loud … and then the hail started. It was almost deafening on the tin roof of the toilet block.

Fortunately the heaviest part of the downpour didn’t last long, so we decided to head back to the car and say goodbye to the Grampians and Halls Gap.

As we began the first leg of the journey back which is about 45kms from Halls Gap to Ararat we noticed quite a lot of bark, small to medium sized branches and other debris from trees scattered along the road. This very quickly progressed to whole trees and very large branches that were, in some cases, blocking one lane of the road. I’d estimate that we saw around 25-30 trees that had blown over completely. We had to stop and wait a few times for the road to be cleared and passed 5 or 6 crews that were working with chain saws to clear the fallen trees. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen trees blown over of course but never so many along such a short stretch of  road.

When we got back to Ballarat I checked the news and apparently these strong winds had cut across a fairly wide area with one woman being killed by a falling tree and power cut to many rural areas. Halls Gap, where we had been staying, didn;t have its power restored until around 3PM the following day.

Next week we’re off to Uluru (Ayers Rock) for a few days and I don’t expect that we’ll see much rain :) .

First Post for 2009

written on January 21st, 2009 with no comments

Crikey! I can’t believe it’s been so long since I blogged. I could do a roundup of the past 2 months but it was mostly work, so I’ll skip that. I watched a replay of the inauguration today and I think my last post was about Barack Obama, so I’ll talk about that I think.

He really knows how to give a good speech and he didn’t disappoint. It’s going to be really interesting now to see it all pans out for him. I suspect he’s going to make some unpopular decisions over the coming months – well, unpopular to some people anyway. He really doesn’t have a choice. The USA economy is going to be in a slump for a while and it’s going to take some creative policy making to turn that around.

Iraq will be one of the contentious issues, but I do believe that the USA should have pulled out of there a long time ago. When Sadam’s regime was ousted the USA were heroes in Iraq. They were the white knights who came to the rescue of the Iraqi people. By staying over there for so long though, they became an ‘occupying force’ which has caused resentment from many of the Iraqis who originally supported the foreign troops.

Barack Obama mentioned two things in his speech that, at least to me, suggested that he isn’t afraid to be honest about some of the issues that have caused so many problems in the USA and the rest of the world. The first was ‘greed and irresponsibility on the part of some’. He is most likely referring to the company CEOs and directors that have taken obscene payments and bonuses, and the banks and other organisations that handed out billions of dollars in loans to people who were obviously unable to service those loans. It seems that when the going gets tough and the purse strings need to be pulled tight, the people who are siphoning the most money away are the last to get with the program.

The second statement that struck a chord was ‘The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works…’. Far too often, governments develop policies and plans and then fail to monitor or assess those plans until it’s too late. It’s just common sense and yet so many government programs fail dismally or blow out to many times their original cost.

Obviously the policies of the USA government aren’t going to affect me – well, not directly at least. I do feel a sense of relief though that the new president is young and full of hope and optimism for the coming years, whilst not trying to kid anyone that it will be a tough road over the next few years.

Wondering About My Domain?

written on September 29th, 2008 with no comments

Having a common last name has its down sides. I’ve looked at various times for a good domain for my blog but all of the obvious garysmith.* domains have been taken for years.

I was having another look recently and as usual domains like garysmith.com and garysmith.com.au were taken … garysmith.net was available for around $1400 (LOL) and even the domains with my middle initials were taken. So, not being a quitter, I decided to check for other domain suffixes. I was in luck. There is a top level domain (TLD) for the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands that is ‘.gs’. Perfect!

So that’s the very short story on how I ended up putting this blog up on garysmith.gs :)