..but just maybe they might mellow a bit, can't hurt.

i just read that the ACT has decided to legalise personal cannabis use; one of the odd things here is that the ACT is the last state you'd expect to make such a move, with a demographic dominated by politicians and governmental agencies.

the other odd thing is that the legalisation means not much, apparently, as you could still be charged under commonwealth laws. oh the convolutions!

i've just returned from a four week road/bush/camping trip not quite halfway around australia.

the plan this time was pretty mininal: let's travel to and through central australia! (off the boring main roads where possible.)

the idea was that i'd go at least as far as alice springs following the outback way, and bail out there if i didn't enjoy the trip; otherwise to continue on to WA via the great central road, and back from there somehow, either via the australian bight or the far north. clearly not an exceptionally precise plan; more an example of making it up on the go.

as you can see on the map above i did reach WA eventually, then opted for looping via the far north and got to broome and the timor sea, thus covering both sunrise and sunset beaches.

read on for some musings from my travel diary and some photos.
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If you are like me, relying on good old MH/NMH and mh-e and exmh to do your mail, then you'll know that there are few decent solutions for synchronizing your MH boxes between computers.
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recently i spent almost six weeks in austria: with family, friends and a bit of work. it was a good trip but a little bitter-sweet, too.
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last year they printed 400 million 'new and improved' banknotes with a typo on them. nobody noticed for a few months, but then who cares about responsibility (or spelling).

i also suspect that there aren't that many companies outside the australian market that would proudly call their engine starter spray "start ya bastard" and market it for a target audience of 'frail people who are not strong enough to pull a start cord quickly enough'.

the last time i had to use a similar product must have been about 30 years ago, helping my dad to convince one of his his citroen gs/gsa to start...all of which were indeed bastards to get started.

apropos nothing: other australian things.

for my birthday i got a new(er) camera, a panasonic lumix dmc-gx85 with the standard kit 12-32mm lens; i hope that that upgrade gets me to produce More Better Pictures.

in the meantime i've also added a tele lens (14-140mm), which reminds my sister of the aardvark in the pink panther cartoons when it is at the the maximum zoom.

...is that there's lots of space.

we've got 25 million human inhabitants, but less than 500 000 live outside the coastal areas (the yellow area on this map from amazing maps)

you don't have to drive very far inland to get away from everybody.

for somebody like me who can stand humanity in small doses only that's a pretty good thing.

a bit over a week one of my 6 255w solar panels on the roof decided to develop an earth fault, the inverter sensed that and stopped power generation altogether.

an inspection indicated that all panels are on the way out, not just one. these 'znshine' panels are clearly not much good; they lasted just 8 years, and the warranty is pretty useless: '5 years for faults and defects' and '25 years for output degradation but only if that's your sole problem'...so for all practical purposes '5 years'. meh.

fortunately the solar sparkie that i talked to (who did a good job for my neighbours recently) offered some second-hand better quality for a very good price, and now there are 7 renesola 250w panels on my roof and i'm happy again.

keith and i spent last weekend on fraser island, setting up two of the new weather stations for fido:

these are located at orchid beach and at cathedral beach;

with four stations most of the eastern, ocean facing side of the island is now covered. two more stations on the western side (at kingfisher bay and wanggoolba) will follow in the next three months.

things worked out pretty well and we did find a few hours for sightseeing, too; here are a few photos.

to capture the size of some of the big trees i experimented with my phone to get a vertical panorama (up, up and lean baaaaaack), and while not perfect it doesn't look too bad :-)

...you disregard the docs saying 'this requires at least two people' and you figure out a hacky way to make it possibly all by your lonesome - even though you do have a friend or two who could have helped you. *sigh*
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for me A$970 paid for all of a three week, 4922km, camping/hiking/sightseeing/road-trip south along the great dividing range.

2/3 of that went for 420l of diesel (my car is reasonably economical even with the brake parachu^W^Wroof top tent in place), and the remainder covered (national park and other) camping fees, some grocery shopping and a few coffee and cake breaks. i mostly camped in cheap or free places and somehow i can't bring myself to eat out even when i'm on the road (at least when travelling solo), which should explain the low cost.

i've long wanted to see more of australia. being off work right now makes this the perfect opportunity to travel, except that the season is not ideal for visiting central oz (late summer/early fall is both hot and normally the rainy season); furthermore the current drought makes the inland regions a bit less appealing than usual (ie. many creeks and rivers are bone-dry, fire bans in many national parks and so on).

so i decided that i'd tag along the great dividing range towards the south, visiting most of the higher areas on the way - for the views, the hiking and a bit of cooler weather. the tentative plan also included visiting the victorian alps and possibly the great ocean road as well, but that part of the plan went up in smoke - lots of nasty bushfires in victoria, pretty much exactly where i wanted to go - so the eventual southernmost goal shifted to mt. kosciuszko, the highest hill in oz.

here is the whole trip as a single track; read on for photos and more details.
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well, this is australia so it's not edelweiß but flannel flowers. the leaves have exactly the same texture though! these were observed at yuraygir national park, on a hilly headland maybe 500m from the beach.

as you might tell from this i've been camping a bit; read on for some more photos and a bit of a report.
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not the least because conny gives me these cool gifts, like she did this christmas: a whole box of well-selected shirts from roadkill. most are even wearable in polite company :-)