Maybe just keep on with this site?

I seem to have gotten a few messages encouraging me to carry on - I thought it was a little inappropriate now I'm not in Australia, but OK, why not? I'll try to log my movements anyway, hope they're not too boring!

January to early February saw another hectic work period in Uganda, including fieldwork in the extreme west of the country along the eastern shores of Lake Albert, near the Uganda - Congo boundary. Exciting geology and the group I was working with and advising finally managed to get down to the basics and sort out the stratigraphic mess that the regional geology has gotten itself into..... This was my third working visit and we seemed to make great progress - not least thanks to Martin Pickford - an old Ugandan hand who worked on the regional geology and fossils for a total of 26 field months from 1986 to 1992..... He was amazed by the changes in the area - villages which have mushroomed in size, producing urban sprawl along the lake shores - all a result of refugees fleeing from the neighbouring Congo, settling down in Uganda and not willing to return home.... Incredible poverty, overfishing of the lake (don't blame the lack of fish on climate change!!!!) and overgrazing of the land..... All very depressing, especially in view of the incredible beauty of the Alert Rift Vally and its natural surrundings.

We had to cut the trip short as I received sad news about my brother Bill's death - although much older than me and not very well, it was still a shock - I who grew up the youngest in the family am now the only one left of parents and brothers...... A few days home and then a quick trip to England to attend burial of his ashes and a family reunion - a pleasant although sad occasion in bitterly cold but clear mid-February northern England.....

Then just a few days later we were off on our next adventure - a 3 week "multicultural" tour of Vietnam, Angkor Wat and then a final few days' relaxation on a Thai beach..... more about that tomorrow.......

not ozz now, Uganda

I got to reminiscing about the Ozz trip as I read the British "Times" travel section on the flight from Brussels to Entebbe a few days ago - an article headlined "The adventure of your lifetime" listed "ten mould-breaking choices for 2010", with - just wait for it - Number 2, "long drive - the "Savannah Way, a road trip par excellence" Ah Ah - been there, done it, but would love to do it again! Maybe with other variations and sideroads, but yes, it was a truly amazing experience! I realised that recently I've been subconsciously planning the next Australian roadtrip - can't quite decide between just "going with the flow", taking whichever route car or camper relocations take me, or seriously striking out northwards to Cape York from Cairns - maybe both? Me alone on the first bit, then with Ros on the second - the Cape York adventure seems just to wonderful (and demanding?) to do on my own.....

Meanwhile, here I am in Entebbe, soaking in the equatorial sun which has just peeked out from the morning rain clouds, looking down on Lake Victoria from the terrace of the Lake Victoria Hotel - a one-time "colonial masters" property, just down the hill from the then British Governor's, now President Museveni's mansion, the hotel now being restored and expanded by a Libyan consortium headed of course by my old friend Colonel Ghadaffi (or one of his sons or daughters), I should and will say no more....

I lost the urge to write for a while after the amazing Ozz trip, and the work pressure was too much on my last visit here to Uganda from late November to mid-December, then Christmas just involved more and more snow and minus God-knows how many degrees - it was fun digging out the cars at first, but.....

but now Lynnea has encouraged me to start again, so we'll see... it might get me writing some maybe controversial thoughts about postcolonial Africa though, but OK as long as I keep personal details out of it all??

Back home in Norway, 59 40 N, 10 36 E

Saetre, Hurumlandet, Friday 20.11

Finally getting my act together after the 12,000 km overnight plane trip from Perth to Oslo via Singapore and Copenhagen, over 30 hours in all from Monday to Tuesday, door to door.

Daily routine still not stabilised and missing the sun and warmth of Australia in the just-above-freezing fog and rain of early winter Norway. And especially missing the outback, just wanting to do the Savannah Way again, next time more by 4-wheel drive off the main roads! Warm thoughts of all the places and experiences on an unforgettable road trip, with not a single bad day or regret - not one unpleasant person on the way either - the Australians are truly a generous, friendly, open and kind-hearted people! Only two bad short episodes - for me my my first experience of a wide-load roadtrain, which nearly creamed me and the Wicked van off very early in the trip, and for Ros her spidery fright in a Cape Range loo! Not bad for such a long trip!

Good to be home though, although our house by the sea doesn't quite look the same in the dour grey half-light of mid-November as it does in the enclosed picture, an aerial photo taken in early summer (ours is the mid-picture pale cream house with the black roof, newly cut grass slope looking quite piebald in front of it...)

Now getting ready for the next venture, leaving in 6 days' time for a working visit to Uganda, helping geologists there establish a working stratigraphical scheme for the surface and subsurface Neogene rocks of the Lake Albert Rift. We'll have meetings in Entebbe and a field inspection of the Lake Albert exposures - in westernmost Uganda on the border towards the DRC - that should be quite exciting - Watch this spot!

Perth, Sunday 15.11, 4157 km

Perth, 31 59 S, 115 48 E

And that's as far south as we'll get on this trip! Which in total, Cairns to Broome to Perth amounts to 8613 km..... And I'd just love to keep going, all the way around the coast back to Cairns, only another 8,000 or so..... Tonight we sleep in a proper bed kindly provided by friend and colleague Myra Keep from the University of Western Australia......

Cervantes, 14.11, 3867 km

Cervantes, 30 30 S, 115 04 E, 3867 km

Woke at dawn to huge flocks of galahs (the local pest, a lovely grey-pink cockatoo) screeching and cavorting in the tamarisk trees and overhead wires, great clowns as they hang upside down and hop around clumsily around the campsite water taps..... Then on to the morning ritual of feeding the pelicans on the beach just opposite the campsite, yet another circus as 6 pelicans fight with the gulls to catch the small fish being thrown by the gathered onlookers. After breakfast, yet more birds as we visit Rainbow Jungle, with the largest parrot and lorrikeet aviary in Australia, hundreds and hundreds of local and foreign birds in amazing varieties of colours. Then the sea-horse aquarium, a real touristy morning! Before heading off along the impressive coastal cliffs in the same old sandstone, with arches and natural bridges, all totally unspoiled by any form of human development.

Then ever southwards for over 300 km along or just behind the massive coastal dunes fringing the pristine beaches with the Indian Ocean’s waves crashing in. Here and there salt pans developed in the lagoons behind the dunes, one of them the famous “Pink Lagoon” , coloured crimson by some strange algae, contrasting with the blindingly white saltpan. Past the buildings of an historic convict colony from 1853 ( I knew Botany Bay – Sydney – was first settled as a convict colony in 1788, but didn’t realise they continued to transport convicts from Britain for so long – now find out they only stopped in 1868). All the time now we were passing into steadily more "civilised" countryside, now farms with grasslands, wheat and flax fields and no longer remote cattle stations. Then Geraldton - the first “real” town with over 20,000 population, that David has seen in the last 8,000 km and 5 weeks – a very strange feeling to be back in urban reality!

On through undisturbed heathland covering the coastal dunes and to Cervantes, with the Pinnacles National Park, arriving just before sunset, a perfect time as the thousands of up to 5m high pillars and needles and monoliths are highlighted by their long shadows in the moon-like landscape of the golden desert floor, accentuated by the white sand of the dunes behind them. Unworldly!!! Then back to a definitely urban camping site, the caravans built on to make little houses, with boats parked beside them and tractors to tow the boats over the beach to the sea besides them again... A good working class escape from Perth, contrasting with the millionaire holiday mansions just over the road.....

Our last camping night? Very cool as the temperature in the camper dropped to a chilly 16 degrees - how oh how will we manage Norway?

Kalbarri, Friday 13.11, 3438 km

Kalbarri, 27 43 S, 114 10 E

A last walk along the Denham beach collecting some of the many and varied shells, then on our way back down the peninsula we stopped at Eagle Bluff, a cliff overlooking the shallow bay with its shell-sand bottom and vast sea-grass meadows. From our viewpoint we could watch the sting-rays and sharks gliding in among the sea-grass, the sharks coming all the way up to the beach, no doubt smelling for unwary tourists’ toes – an impressive last farewell to this unique area!

On almost 400 km southwards to Kalbarri – via the Billabong Roadhouse (shades of “Waltzing Matilda” – the map telling us that we’re on the edge of civilisation, this is the last outback roadhouse, from now on it will mostly be normal towns with gas stations). We’re now in yet another National Park, this one famous for its Murchison River gorges, it’s rocky coastline and (in spring) its wildflowers – yes we’re so far south now that we’ve really left the tropics and here they have winter and summer, although the very short and mild winters are to be laughed at in our northern European terms. The landscape changed drastically as we drove south, trees getting higher, grass greener and more common until we were passing through rolling wooded grassland – almost like rural England, if you forgot that all the trees and plants are totally foreign to us! Then out on to the flat coastal heathlands around the river gorges – which in spring are ablaze with wildflowers, but we’re too late, although there are still some patches of pink, lilac and yellow here and there.

I’d read in advance that the gorges were cut into the Silurian Tumblagooda Sandstone 430 million years old, so was looking forward to coming “home” to my original research interests, though far removed from the Oslo Region and the Welsh Borderlands. But when we stopped at a lookout over one of the gorges it turned out that the rocks are now thought to be older at 450 to 480 million years, putting them back into the Ordovician. Interesting deltaic and tidal sandstones though, with lots of lovely sedimentary structures!

A cool breeze at sunset,the temperarure dropping to a chilly 19 degrees - we had to dig out warmer clothes to wear, the thought of Oslo in mid-November in 4 days time is quite alarming!

(We've been talking several times about the sheer size of Australia - I just checked on Google Earth and found that my little trip across the north from Cairns to broome, 4456 km, was actually 14 km longer than the distance from New York to Los Angeles, so there......)

Shark Bay, Thursday 12.11, 3030 km

Denham, 25 33 S, 113 33 E

The westernmost "town" on mainland Australia, population 1120, incredibly beautiful, with blindingly white shell sand beaches fringing the pale turquoise lagoonal waters of Shark Bay - which more than deserves its World Heritage Site status - probably the most impressive area on the whole trip - not because of the landscape of unrelenting scrub-covered rolling dunes and raised beaches on the peninsulas sticking out into the sea, but its bays, lagoons and marine life are out of this world.

We've seen the famous stromatolites of Hamelin Pond - rocky mounds formed by blue-green algae, one of the few and certainly the most impressive examples of now-living representatives of the first life-forms I saw in 3,500 million year old rocks further north; awe-inspiring in their simplicity and all they represent, bubbling out the oxygen just as their ancient ancestors did, when they were building up oxygen content in the primitive atmosphere long ago. Fascinating and inspiring to walk about the site with Bob Morris, present proprietor of Hamelin and totally interested in all aspects of life and evolution, quite a few laughs with him about my creation/evolution discussions earlier in the trip. Then on to view sharks, turtles, sea snakes and incredible numbers and kinds of fish at Ocean Park, an aquaculture centre just outside of Denham.

Denham itself, certainly the loveliest little town we've seen on the trip, sports an impressive World Heritage Information Centre and also the best caravan site we've stopped at. Then this morning crossing the peninsula to see the local dolphins being fed at Monkey Mia - another unforgettable experience.

Denham lies on the Peron Peninsula, which at its narrowest in the south is only 3.5 km wide. Like the rest of Australia, the original wildlife has been decimated by British colonists' introductions of foreign species like rabbits, goats, sheep, dogs and cats. CALM, the Dept of Conservation and Land Management (great acronym!) has started “Project Eden”, running an impressive electric fence (which even includes recordings of madly barking dogs when you approach it!) across the isthmus and then proceeding to kill of all foreign species north of the fence and re-introducing the original animals and plants – an enormous project, but it seems to be succeeding – Good on’ya!! As the ozzies would say....

We finished our stay in Denham at the “Old Pearler” Restaurant, a quaint little place built of cemented shell sand (looks like breeze/Leca blocks really!), Ros happy and enjoying her longed-for rock lobster (a giant crayfish) and David his fresh oysters and grilled catch of the day, followed by marsala and mango cheesecake, yummy! The best (and most expensive) of many good meals to date, but very cheap at the price compared to Norway.