I’ve been meaning to write about my visit to the local university on the recent open day, Sunday 27th August. My primary objective was to find out whether I could do my OUA exams on the campus there. I also wanted to satisfy my curiousity about the place, which I’ve driven past countless times on the Warrego Highway and back roads.

It is a sprawling campus and seemed deserted as I drove up the access road shortly after midday. That was until I arrived at the carpark, which was full. I drove on and found another carpark which was almost full and practically needed four wheel drive to access (not quite). Within the perimeter of the main buildings there were people everywhere, of all ages. There was a huge slide and attractions for kids, information tents, displays, tractor-train tours, food stalls and live music.

I enjoyed learning about the history of the campus, and took some time to read the tourist info signs in front of the mess hall, the foundation building, the flagpole. I poked my head into the museum and perused the photographic displays of students past and present. I asked a couple of questions about various historical landmarks – idle curiousity which became embarrassing when it was apparent no-one on hand knew the answers!

Extricated myself from the museum and continued looking around at some of the displays. The environmental department display was interesting, a lot of posters on various issues – woody weed supression, protection of endangered species (the Bilby), classification of the dingo.

I had an interesting discussion with an honours student about echidnas – she was presenting her findings, including her sighting of the “echidna train” (the only reported sighting in Queensland) which occurs in mating season with a line of male echidnas following a female. I asked whether she knew anything of whistling noises made by echidnas: she said it seemed familiar, at the back of her mind she could recall hearing something about it but it had not been included in any formal studies. She gave me her contact details.

Finally I came to the academic advisers tent and I asked the question about exams for external students. The adviser misinterpreted my question, assumed I was an external student of the college and I did not persevere. There are other options for my exams.

As I drove past the college again a couple of days ago I was intrigued at the culture of an agricultural university, with its applied science of raising cattle, growing crops and managing the land.

We’ve had some lovely rain over the past week – amongst one of the driest years in memory, water restrictions all over the state.

Everything in my garden looks so clean and refreshed, and green. The grass.. well in the parts where grass still grows, it is green. Islands of green!

Everyone talks about the weather; even the general manager of the carrier who rang to talk to my boss the other day commented that we are better off on tank water than in Brisbane, where the water pressure has been turned right down and they are on level 4 restrictions!

My boss in northern NSW is getting lots of rain too.. they are on flood alert! Same thing happened last year (end of year clearance floods – when a lot of businesses in the CBD at Lismore got wiped out).

I hope oneday we will learn to manage our water resources better so that everyone has enough water, and no-one has more than they can cope with!

Jo and I went up to Toowoomba today, not planning to see a movie but it happened anyway! We went to a couple of shopping centres and found Father’s Day gifts for Dad.. then to stop Jo from buying out every book store we had a look to see what was on at the cinema (just kidding Jo!)

I saw the preview for Miami Vice a little while ago and thought it might be interesting. Was pleasantly surprised when Jo agreed to see it with me – not really the type of movie we usually go to see together.

I never really watched the TV series of Miami Vice back in the ’80s.. to tell the truth I didn’t much like the look of Don Johnson in his pastel suits and raybans!

But I enjoyed the movie; it had a gritty hard edge to it that gave it realism, along with the camera which took you right into the middle of the gun fights and action. The acting was good – Colin Farrell was interesting as “Sonny” Crockett.. on one hand he looked like a sleaze (probably the facial hair), on the other he had a rough and raw manner totally devoid of any fake charms.

I would have liked to get to know his character in greater depth, but I guess this is generally not accepted in an action movie! There was plenty of action, no glaring holes in the story and I enjoyed it.