Winter in June

In my last post I said I would try to post something once a month. That didn't obviously go so well as it’s now been two months, but I intend to do better in the future. In my own defense, I had a lot going on relating to requirements for my PhD in May that kept me pretty busy, and I am going to be giving a presentation at an aquatic animal health conference in the beginning of July that I'm still getting data for. Still, laziness did have a hand in there somewhere, and if I say I'm going to do something I really ought to do it. Anyway, here's what I've been up lately when I haven't been working at the University:


Climbing - In my last post I said I had just started trying an 8b+ route. Well I've done that now, and it didn't actually take me too much effort (about 8 tries this year and a couple tries back in 2010). Judging by the amount of effort it usually takes me to climb that grade (12-15 attempts give or take) it's probably easier than 8b+, but it's been about a year since I've done a climb of that difficulty and I don't have a  recent memory to compare it to so I don't really know. It's one of two climbs given that grade in Tasmania and is the hardest this state currently has to offer; unfortunate because I'm not particularly inspired to do the other one, making opportunities to challenge myself on hard routes a bit limited for the future. I will likely have to do more bouldering (plenty of hard stuff in that genera around) or turn my attention to some previously unclimbed lines and open projects (of which there are still a few). I did do a really nice 8a+ two or three weeks ago called Astro boy, and did a 7c+ and 8a yesterday that weren't too bad. All these routes have been out at what’s called the Star Factory in Freycinet National Park. Here are a few pictures I took of a couple Hobart guys (Grant and Will) that I've been climbing with out at the Factory. These first few are them warming up on probably one of the best 7a routes I’ve been on called antimatter:

here are a couple more of Grant sending Maxwell’s Demon (this is the 7c+ I did yesterday. Astro boy is about 15’ to the left),

And here is a photo of first Grant and then myself on a route called Entrée (the other route I did yesterday).

Trip to Port Lincoln, South Australia – This was a two week trip actually entirely work related. I’ve posted about the tuna ranching industry in Port Lincoln previously, and on this occasion I again went over to collect samples and run laboratory tests concerning bluefin physiology and immunology. Some really long work days, but I got a good deal done so hopefully the effort will pay off.



Scuba Diving on the East coast – Went out for a couple dives a few weekends ago with a local friend. We saw some pretty nice stuff, got some abalone and a cray (read lobster if your North American)  and then Leanne wanted to come too, so we went out again last weekend to one of the same spots and got a few more abalone (no cray this time). We had been told that the diving here was really nice, and I’d have to say it’s pretty good. That said, I’m not much of a sightseer in general so I was glad to incorporate some purposeful activities such as collecting abolony and cray hunting along with checking out this new environment. We saw some sharks, rays, a variety of reef fish, a weedy seadragon (type of seahorse), an octopus, and some interesting coral and sea vegetation. I don’t have an underwater camera, so here are a couple youtube videos that other people have posted that are a pretty good approximation of what we saw diving except I haven’t seen any cuttlefish.

Brewing beer – Definitely have been having a good time leaning and experimenting with the art of beer making. A few other guys have been coming over once a week and we’ve had some pretty good success so far. I’ve even ordered a miniature kegging system so hopefully soon we’ll be able to try our beer on draft too.



That’s about all I have for now. Until next time-