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Waiting for the wet season and progress at work

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When preparing to come to Lae last year I kept an eye on the weather app and it looked like there is no well-defined wet/dry seasonality here. It turns out that that is true of Lae on the coast but the further inland you go the more defined the seasons are. We are at 11 Mile on the Highlands Highway - 13 km as the Torresian Crow flies from the coast. We have definitely been in a dry phase since December but it should be reverting about now. Jenny is sad as the swimming pool here has been closed for a couple of weeks because the water supply to keep it fresh is too low. Every night lately we get thunderstorms building up and usually some rain but not enough yet. It will be interesting to see what happens to bird and insect life once the wet comes properly. Monthly average rainfall (mm) at Lae. We have had very little rainfall at 11 Mile since December. An exciting week at work as we received the first submissions to the PNG Journal of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries since it went do...
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A couple of bush walks and learning new skills at work

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Sunday 15th February we went for a walk with a group of expats and locals up the forested hill behind our village. The highlight of the afternoon was actually walking out our gate and into the world outside our electric fence. It felt like we had been liberated. It was a blazing hot afternoon and people fell away as we climbed higher - why would you not bring water? We walked through village gardens and greeted lots of our neighbours. I added a couple of Red-cheeked Parrot near the top of the hill and then a Brown Falcon near the heliport on the way back down. We agreed to do it again soon one morning - before it gets too hot. A nice view over the valley from the hill behind our village (Jenny's photo). At work my focus has turned to the two journals which are now open for submissions. Jenny and a colleague here have put together a story for the Harvest journal on Black Soldier Fly larvae for getting rid of plant waste and producing fertiliser and food for livestock in return. We h...
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In the bush finally and another training program delivered

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Sulphur-crested Cockatoos in PNG are mainly forest birds. We finally got into the bush! LaeAbout Tours sourced a vehicle and picked Jenny and me up (not quite as early as we would have liked) and off we went across the mighty Markham River to the village of Pile (pronounced 'peelay'). These are Labu people and own all the land between the river and the coast including some of the forested mountains we look at every day. Emma and her brother Noah are also Labu people so access was assured. We drove through the lowlands for a while then stopped and walked back along the road and up towards the Pele Waterfalls - 9 km in all. We didn't make the falls but enjoyed the walk through forest and village gardens with some good birds and lots of butterflies, dragonflies etc. Some interesting plant life as well. Although we were a good hour late starting the walk the bird activity was quite good for a while. In the late morning however all activity had ceased and I saw few birds for the...
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You win some - you lose some

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We’ve had a busy two weeks. At work I ran a training program over two days for staff on Spreadsheet Basics. I ended up with 11 participants and will probably run it again soon as there were others who expressed interest. It went really well.  The trouble with designing a training program is that until you have delivered it once you don’t know how long it will take or whether you have the content right. I asked Chat GPT to design me a 10 lesson basics course and it did a great job. I modified it a bit but probably 70% of the content and exercises were designed by AI. Jenny and I worked through the course several times to fine-tune it. The end result worked well. I had allocated two 3-hour sessions and the course fitted this well with a few exercises now moved to homework. The participants were at different levels so when some had finished a lesson they helped others. Jenny was my excellent assistant. I actually learned a few spreadsheet things in developing the training. So far I’v...
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Back in harness for 2026 after a Sunshine Coast holiday.

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Dec 21st saw us jetting off to the big island to our south. We arrived at Brisbane Airport, picked up a rental BYD Atto 3 EV and took the M1 up to Wurtulla on the Sunshine Coast. We had rented a nice house for the next two weeks in a quiet street adjacent to Currimundi Lake. After a couple of days on our own we were joined by Liz and Sophie, David and Toby on Christmas Day. The boys stayed a few days and the girls a week. We didn't do a lot as we were all tired at the end of the year but it was great to be together for the first time in quite a while.  Jenny, David and Liz chilling. Osprey Mistletoebird Red-backed Fairywren Little Corella The lack of daylight saving in Qld meant that the sun was up just before 0500 every morning and I took my coffee out the front to watch a great variety of birds along the lakeside park. A short walk towards the coast took us to Currimundi Lake Conservation Park - a small reserve of mostly coastal heathland. I popped in there most days and always a...
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International Volunteers Day and my first training session

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Friday 5th December was International Volunteers Day when the Australian Volunteers Program likes to showcase its activities around the globe. Jenny and I and NARI were asked to run an activity to represent the Lae volunteers this year so we came up with a program combining a few inspirational speeches, some group activities, a quiz and a free lunch. We attracted about 40 staff and others and I think it all went rather well. The speeches were (mostly) short, the activities were enthusiastically embraced, my quiz was a hit (especially the Rugby League questions) and the lunch prepared by the NARI hostel women was superb. Setting up - will anyone come? Dr Komolong launching proceedings. Volunteers Sam and Juliet writing inspirational messages on bunting. The quiz went well. Volunteer Duncan and Consul-General Brenton designing a poster. Following my survey of science staff members back in September I have been working on two training packages on scientific writing. These combined a coupl...
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