Principality of Hutt River

So, a very little known fact about Australia is that there is another sovereign state contained within its borders - the Principality of Hutt River (PHR). It is a principality because it is ruled by a prince - His Royal Highness Prince Leonard I (pictured below on the currency and as a statue). PHR is approximately 75 square km, and the local population is currently somewhere around 20 (the actual number is very elusive), plus something like 13000-20000 citizens living abroad. PHR seceded from Australia in the 1970's after a wheat quota was instated by the Australian government on families farming wheat in the region. The families stood to lose a lot of money (as the wheat had already been planted when they were informed of the quota), and they protested by secession. It is a great story, and you can find more information on PHR here: www.huttriver.net. Here are some pictures from Hutt River. The woman I am standing with in the Post Office is Princess Shirley herself. They even stamped my passport!

I am so bad at this!

Okay, so I'm obviously not very good at keeping any type of journal. But, if there is still anyone paying attention, here are some more photos of Australia! These are from Kalbarri National Park - still in Western Australia. I saw more feral animals in this area than anywhere else on the trip - feral goats, pigs, fox, cat, rabbit, and a horse down by Greenhead. This beautiful country has been sorely mistreated! Even so, Kalbarri was one of my favorite places. Absolutely stunning.

Pinnacles - Western Australia

Okay, here goes...On the road trip in Western Australia, we drove from Perth to Pinnacles National Park. The pinnacles are a fairly rare geological formation, but that is about as far as my knowledge goes because there seems to be a lot of uncertainty as to how they are formed. To get there, we traveled along the Indian Ocean for a good portion of the trip, then were forced inland due to a lack of roads. The landscape is dominated by coastal heath, limestone cliffs and spectacular beaches, and kangaroos! We saw heaps of them, some with joeys, and emus as well. The kangaroo are so numerous that all the vehicles traveling along the highway have "roo-bars" mounted on the front to prevent damage to vehicles from repeated collisions. Some pictures from the Pinnacles below, emus crossing the road, and the roo-bar on Hurvey the Van.

Perth - Pt. Douglas - Tassie

Hi all! Okay - I've been very busy having a great time! I don't have too much time to post right now, but the trip to the Pinnacles and Kalbarri were fantastic! We did a beautiful hike in Kalbarri National Park (here's me at Nature's Window). We saw heaps of roos and emu, but alas no echidna. Kalbarri was truly amazing - a ton of birds, great hiking, and beautiful country. Here are more photos of this amazing park (including one of Hurvey, the very cool conversion van). More to come!

Happy Thanksgiving

Everything is great - I will posts pics asap - just wanted to let you know I'm having a great time and have been very busy! I attended a conference and had to give a talk, but that is over now and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I didn't miss the gluttony, but I did miss family and friends and college football! Cheers all. I'm thankful for my wonderful life and the chance to go on this life-changing trip. Love to everyone.

On the road again

I'm taking a little road trip with Pat and Len in their hippie-esque conversion van known as Hurvey - so, no posts for a week but then there should be some really good pictures! We are headed to the Pinnacles, Kalbari National Park, and then Greenhead to do a little field work with Joe. Check back at the end of next week!

Cheers!

A dingo ate my baby

Okay, so it's not a dingo. But you knew that was coming eventually, right?

It's a southern brown bandicoot, also known as a quenda. Pretty cute. I almost stepped on one today. They are friendly little creatures, and they are all over campus. It let me get close enough to touch it, but I didn't.



Photo by Tony Brown

Jarrah woodland

The Jarrah woodland is characterized by sandy soils with impressive granite outcroppings inserted in the woodland. There are grass trees and species of Banksia (the tree with funny looking flowers), and some beautiful wildflowers, including orchids.

When it rains, water collects in depressions found on the outcropping, which creates conditions suitable for unique ecosystems on a smaller scale. I think these were called "namas" (spelling?) by the Aborigines, and were used as sources of fresh water. They are characterized by lichens, mosses, and other specialized plants. Pretty cool, eh?

So far...

This place is great! The weather has been beautiful, the city is beautiful (especially Fremantle – a suburb of Perth on the Indian Ocean), and the people are wonderful. On Saturday, I ran along the coastal path that goes from Mosman Park (the suburb where I currently reside) to Cottelsloe. The beaches are stunning here, and there seem to be beautiful, international people everywhere you go. Pat took me along to a faculty dinner and I tried kangaroo – it was delicious! It is a dark red, lean meat. It tasted to me like an excellent steak. Yesterday Pat, her husband Len, and Joe, a colleague from Oregon State University who just relocated to Perth for a post-doc position, were nice enough to take me out birding in Jarrah woodland south of the city. It is an ecosystem endemic to Western Australia, and is filled with plants (and birds!) from whole families and even orders I’ve never seen. Being in the most isolated city in the world, it doesn’t take long to get out of Perth and into some nice, continuous tracts of native habitat. The birding was fantastic. The flies were not so fantastic. We stopped for a quick break in a cute little town called Jarrahland, and then headed back to the coast and stopped at Woodsmen Point to look for shorebirds. For the birders who are reading this, here is my species list so far:

Little pied cormorant

Pied cormorant

Australian pelican

Straw-necked ibis

Sacred ibis

Wood (maned) duck

Pacific black duck

Brown goshawk

Ruddy duck

Nankeen kestrel

Eurasian coot

Black-bellied plover

Greater sand plover

Red-capped plover (Dotterel)

Red-necked stint

Great knot

Ruddy turnstone

Pied oystercatcher

Silver gull

Fairy tern

Laughing dove

Galah

Rainbow lorikeet

Laughing kookaburra

Welcome swallow

Richard’s pipit

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike

White-winged triller

White-breasted Robin

Grey Shrike-thrush

Willy Wagtail

Splendid Fairy-wren (Wow!)

White-browed Scrubwren

Red Wattlebird

New Holland Honeyeater

White-cheeked Honeyeater

Western Spinebill

Striated Pardalote

House Sparrow

Magpie Lark

Woodswallow sp.

Australian Magpie

Australian Raven

Pictures to come soon. Love to all!

I'm in Perth!

Okay, I made it after 30 hours of traveling. I wasn't looking my best when Pat picked me up at the airport, but all in all it was pretty smooth traveling. I did have a hiccup at customs, because they saw my hiking boots in the X-ray machine and wanted to inspect them, so I had to pull ALL contents out of my backpack so the customs agent could literally dig through my hiking boots with a q-tip to make sure I wasn't bringing any nasty propagules into the country with me.

I'm staying with a lovely Portuguese lady named Cris, who generously offered to let me stay in her spare bedroom for a few days while I get myself organized. She is a plant ecologist who is working on her PhD at Murdoch University in Perth. The apartment is very nice and only about a block from the ocean.

So far, the place is great. The weather is unseasonably cool today, but it should warm up quickly. And, although I read all the converter/adapter instructions, double-checked all settings, and took all precautionary measures, I fried my hair iron when I plugged it in this morning anyway. I'm not sure where I went wrong, but I didn't need any coffee after that happened.

How do you turn this thing on....

Okay - I'm giving the blogging thing a shot. We'll see if I can keep up with it. For now, this will be a travel blog. I leave next Tuesday for Perth, Western Australia, to visit my advisor who has been there on sabbatical all year. After a conference at the end of the month, a friend and I will explore more of Australia. Yeah! I'm excited. Hopefully, there will be a lot of hiking, benign wildlife, and beer (I will get some work done too!) while I'm there, and only a couple of deadly insects. But I will miss these guys while I'm out and about.....

Check back soon!