Wednesday, July 29, 2009

 

How Do I Read This Clock?

Here's a different sort of clock that Scruffy and I found in a park in Perf. It is in the middle of a garden in Kings Park and the numbers and other bits of the clock, apart from the hands and drive, are made with flower beds. It looks pretty but small bears have a problem with it. The only way we can read the thing is to get up high and if there is no Oldie around to help then we just have to climb. In this case that means the fence and that was a bit dangerous because it was a windy day and Scruff kept being blown down into the bushes. Actually, the most interesting thing to me was the little house behind the clock. It looks just the right size for a family of bears and I know a story that says that small houses like this catch silly blonde girls when the bears are away. I wanted to see if we could trap one but Dad pointed out that we were one bear short; I knew we should have bought Sammisch with us.

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An Old Lighthouse

This used to be the lighthouse that marked the entrance to the port of Cleveland, just south of Brisbane. It was the second lighthouse there, built in 1864 to replace one that was the first lighthouse in Queensland. It is a tower built of timber and covered in weatherboards. In 1976 it was replaced by an automatic light on a tall concrete pole. I like the old sort of lighthouse like this one, where you needed lighthouse keepers to look after the tower and keep the light burning. The modern automatic ones just don't have the same feel about them. Besides, the new ones don't have big staircases for small bears to play on. Can you see the bear in the picture? Mum and I intend to visit every lighthouse that we can get to. So far we have been to 74 in Australia and the Oldies have seen 10 in the UK. Visiting lighthouses is fun because they are in interesting places, either wild, windy, rocky bits of coast or near harbours where there are lots of boats to watch.

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Trent's New Doglet

Bro Trent and his cobber Nathan have just brought a new critter into the family. Unlike the ones that Mum collects, critters like Scruffy and me, this one is fast-moving, sometimes noisy and alive (not that any of you would think that I'm not alive, would you?). The critter's name is Slinky and he is a minature Dachshund. He is only two months old. He is also a bit of a sooky-bub and cuddles up to anyone who will pick him up. I think that he is cute, but I keep well away from him because he hasn't learned yet that small bears are NOT here for small dogs to chew on. He looks really funny when he gets excited and tries to run. His short little legs won't go fast enough for him and he sort of bounces along. His favourite toy is Trent's feather duster and he creeps up and attacks it whenever he can get to it. I think it is hilarious to see Trent trying to use a duster with a small dog firmly attached. Anyhow, small animals may be OK but small bears make better pets. We don't make noise (usually), don't damage the furniture and don't make messes on the carpet.

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Monday, July 20, 2009

 

Ready to Party

Mid-winter mornings in Canberra, cold and foggy, always gets me remembering the warm and sunny places that I have been to. Fiji is probably my favourite because you get there in a big aeroplane and spend lots of the time on boats. Absolute favourite is cruising the islands with Captain Cook. Different places and people every day and fun most every night. Scruffy and I get to go to some of the parties and we always try to dress the part. Here we are, all ready to go to the Captain's Welcome dinner on our second cruise, draped in the special shell necklaces that are given to you when you board. Of course us bears can get ready quickly, but then we have to wait for the Oldies. I sometimes think that if there wasn't food involved we would have to wait forever for Dad.

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Mars Rover

One of the things that I really like in the visitors centre at the Tidbinbilla space complex is this full-sized model of a Mars rover. One of the most impressive space missions ever is still in progress, with two rovers like this (called Spirit and Opportunity) trundling across the surface of Mars testing the soil, analysing the rocks, measuring the weather and sending back lots of pictures. When they landed on Mars in January 2004, the rovers were only expected to last around 4 months but they have been in business for over 5 years now and still going strong. I think the most exciting things they have found are rocks and minerals that only form in water, so Mars must have been a lot wetter in the past. I think it would be great to be on Mars driving one of these little buggys. With a small bear at the controls they could zip around a lot faster, and let's face it, the life support system required for me is a lot simpler than you would need for people. Let's get more bears in space.

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Paddock Full of Pyramids

Time for another photo from the Oldies big trip, so here's one from Egypt. This is a place called Saqqara and the area around here has the oldest pyramids in Egypt. The one that looks like it has been built in layers is the first attempt at a real pyramid. It is the Step Pyramid, built for Pharoah Djoser in the 27th century BC.When it was new it was covered in polished white limestone, but today all the limestone has been pinched and only the stone core of the pyramid is left. Dad says it is actually the most impressive pyramid in Egypt. It is about 60 metres tall and has around 5 km of tunnels underneath it. The thing on the right that looks like a rubble pile is also the remains of a pyramid, the pyramid of Userkaf. It was built with a mud brick core so ever since the outside limestone blocks were stolen from it, it has been slowly eroding away. In the distance to the left of the Step Pyramid is the Pryamid of Unas, a very important one because it was in there that the first of the Pyramid Texts was discovered in 1881. Dad walked up onto a small hill at Saqqara (probably a broken-down pyramid) and could see 12 pyramids from there including the Red and the Bent Pyramids. The Oldies saw so much in Egypt and want to get back there as soon as they can. This time they better take me, because I spend far too much time on Google finding out what these photos are and want to see the real thing.

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Monday, July 13, 2009

 

DSCC43 Tidbinbilla, One of My Favourite Places

One of my favourite trips is out to the NASA Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla. This is about 50 km away from where we live. It is tucked away in a valley with hills between it and the Canberra suburbs so it is almost completely free of radio interference. That is very important because the radio telescopes (called dishes) here have to pick up very faint signals from all the spacecraft way out in the distant parts of the Solar System. The biggest dish is 70m diameter, the biggest in the southern hemisphere. It is used to talk to spacecraft that are in orbit around other planets, or on their way to them. It can even hear the signals from the Voyager spacecraft which are now so far away in the very outer fringes of the Solar System that the signal from them is hundreds of thousands of times less powerful than a watch battery. The smaller dishes are used to communicate with spacecraft in orbits close to Earth. Tidbinbilla has been tracking spacecraft, sending commands to them and receiving data from them since the late 1960s. Back in the days of the first Moon landings there were two other tracking stations in valleys near here at Honeysuckle Creek and Orroral Valley, but now all NASA tracking is done from Tidbinbilla. It is a lovely drive out to Tid, the visitors centre is full of interesting stuff telling the story of space exploration, and the Oldies say the Moonrock Cafe is pretty good too. Do visit DSCC43 when you are in Canberra.

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My New Car

Great excitement late last week. Our new car arrived. A brand-new Mazda 3. I have been following it on its way from the factory in Japan, using the program that shows you where the big ships are, and getting just a little bit impatient. Anyhow, we collected it on Thursday afternoon and spent the weekend trying it out. What a beauty. Both Mum and Dad love the way the car handles, lots of power and it really hugs the road. Mum especially likes the colour, the room, the storage areas, the sensible way the controls are arranged and (most importantly) the way that her iPod plugs into the sound system. But the most important thing, the thing that I love about this car, is that it has a place on the dashboard that is just made for small bears. The oldies think it is a space for the screens that show all the data that the trip computer tells them, but I know better. The shelf bit is just the right size for a small bear's backside and the cowling that shades the screen is just right to tuck my feet under for balance. I now have a place where I can sit facing forwards and see everything as we travel. Mazda really got the design of this one right.

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Thursday, July 09, 2009

 

Abra (without the Cadabra)

This little boat is called an Abra. It is a water-taxi that carries people across Dubai Creek. Before Dubai started its huge rebuilding program and built several bridges and a tunnel to take road traffic across the creek, these boats were the main transport between the suburbs of Deira and Bur Dubai. Abras are made of wood and have a small engine. The passengers sit on seats along the middle of the boat, 10 per side, facing outwards. These days the abra traffic is regulated and the docks have specific gates and passenger lanes, but back in the old days it was a case of "every abra for itself" and there were lots of collisions and lots of passengers bumped off into the creek. The oldies went on some of these boats while they were in Dubai and not even Dad fell off, even though he was moving about taking pictures of everything.

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Bear Among the Beads

One of the places we visited in Perf was a huge bead shop. It is called The Bead Company and it is in a suburb called Osbourne Park. The shop is huge (compared to small bears) and has walls and display cases absolutely jam-packed with beads and crystals of all types and colours. Mum spent a couple of hours there, stocking up on stuff that she can't get in Canberra. I spent my time climbing the shelves. A real indoor climbing wall, just the right size for me. I managed to get right to the top in several places and didn't knock even one jar off the shelf, although I scared one of the shop girls and she dropped one. Mum and I have been busy making things with the beads since we got back, I might show you some of them later.

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Saturday, July 04, 2009

 

A Sad Memorial

On their big trip through the UK, the Oldies visited lots of historic sites. This big stone cairn is a memorial on one of the saddest. It is at Culloden in Scotland, the place where the last battle between the Scottish supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the English was fought way back in 1746. The Scots were slaughtered. Their usual manner of fighting was to use ambushes and only to fight on ground of their choosing, but at Culloden they were lured into a suicidal attack on a well-prepared English position. The English had the advantage of numbers, supplies and artillery. The battleground is covered with smaller cairns marking the positions where different Scottish clans and English units fell. It is a somber, depressing place and the Oldies say you can feel the sadness there. Culloden was the last battle to be fought on British soil (the Battle of Britain doesn't count here as it was fought in the air). This small bear can't understand why people get so annoyed at other people who think differently to them that they have to go and kill each other. It is just so stupid. If small bears ruled the world it would be a much happier place.

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The Highest Spot on the Nullarbor?

This just may be the highest spot on the Nullarbor plain. It is a pile of big rocks in the centre of Cook, the railway town on the trans-Australia line. Scruffy and I found it when the Indian-Pacific stopped here for a while on the way to Perf. All the country you can see around Cook, for hundreds of miles actually, is absolutely flat, so I figure that climbing this rockpile puts us in the same class as Hillary and Tenzing, conquerors of the highest peak. The big bare sandy area around the rockpile is one of the main streets of Cook. It runs from the aerodrome to the hospital and when the hospital was in use the Flying Doctor could taxi his aeroplane right up to the hospital door. Although my rockpile is the highest peak, you can't actually see much from it. Some of the only trees in the whole of the Nullarbor have been planted around it. Anyhow, lizards, snakes and small bears all appreciate it because they can sit up there quietly and soak up sun while the rest of the trainload of tourists run around madly taking pictures.

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