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It is with the realisation of hindsight that the less formal events on my Darwin adventure mostly involved non-human animals in some way. As part of the ACFS proceedings, we visited the Aquascene Fish Feeding Sanctuary, where multiple fish species (mainly Diamond Scale Mullet, Milkfish, and Catfish) visit the shoreline at high-tide for hand-feeding; good fun for kids of all ages. The following night Lara, Adrian M., and I went to the Adelaide River Rodeo and for two of us it was our first rodeo. Not exactly high-brow culture, the bull-riding was what one could expect and multiple fights broke out at the end of the show. After that crowd dispersed the remaining people enjoyed a polished performance by the live band Dr. Elephant, who played a variety of (mostly) 1980s popular songs.
The following day was King's Birthday. I took the opportunity to visit the Adelaide River War Cemetery, which has the graves of over four hundred individuals from the armed forces, merchant navy, etc who lost their lives in the Timor and Northern Australian regions, including the bombing of Darwin. I visited every grave, noting that some of the fallen were as young as 17 and several were marked "Unknown"; the visceral cost of war. After this, Lara and I went to Shu Li's Donkey Sanctuary, our third attempt to visit this location. We shared a lovely lunch with a few ACFS people, met the donkeys, and finally (quite exhausted from the day's events) made our way back to Darwin town.
The following day I made my way out to visit the HPC Support officer at the Menzies School of Health Research, Mariana Barnes, whose name comes with quite a skillset in bioinformatics and research in malaria. Unsurprisingly, their system is a lot smaller and specialist than that at UniMelb but, as our lengthy conversation revealed, unsurprisingly there are similar software and user challenges. Finally, my last day in Darwin was relaxing in the company of Lara as she built a new castle for her rabbit, Cocoa, who seemed very pleased with the initial result; I suggested the name "Cocoa Cabana", which seems very appropriate. Anyway, I have now returned to Melbourne after taking the midnight flight and experiencing some amusement of the change of climate. It will take a couple of days to recover from this "holiday"!
The following day was King's Birthday. I took the opportunity to visit the Adelaide River War Cemetery, which has the graves of over four hundred individuals from the armed forces, merchant navy, etc who lost their lives in the Timor and Northern Australian regions, including the bombing of Darwin. I visited every grave, noting that some of the fallen were as young as 17 and several were marked "Unknown"; the visceral cost of war. After this, Lara and I went to Shu Li's Donkey Sanctuary, our third attempt to visit this location. We shared a lovely lunch with a few ACFS people, met the donkeys, and finally (quite exhausted from the day's events) made our way back to Darwin town.
The following day I made my way out to visit the HPC Support officer at the Menzies School of Health Research, Mariana Barnes, whose name comes with quite a skillset in bioinformatics and research in malaria. Unsurprisingly, their system is a lot smaller and specialist than that at UniMelb but, as our lengthy conversation revealed, unsurprisingly there are similar software and user challenges. Finally, my last day in Darwin was relaxing in the company of Lara as she built a new castle for her rabbit, Cocoa, who seemed very pleased with the initial result; I suggested the name "Cocoa Cabana", which seems very appropriate. Anyway, I have now returned to Melbourne after taking the midnight flight and experiencing some amusement of the change of climate. It will take a couple of days to recover from this "holiday"!
