Another two weeks in Melbourne

I'm at the Australian Synchrotron at the moment, having attived on Tuesday last week. Cue 5 days of experiments (Wed-Mon), then the annual user meeting (Mon-Wed) then another 5 days (Thurs-Tues), the latter of which is where I am now.

Our first experiments were looking at crystallisation of zinc oxide from sol gels using X-ray diffraction. Conceptually quite easy (especially compared to other experiments I've tried to do here), but not without its challenges. Most of the problems were sample related rather than beamline so that's ok - and we have thought of some ways to alleviate many of those if we come back a second time.

On our final day I was at the beamline at around 4:30 am, finishing off a temperature calibration and tidying up. From there it was straight into the city to go to the user meeting, after which a group of us decided to go to dinner, which was nice, but made for a very long day! I had a poster to present which was a bit of a rush job given the timing but hey.

The user meeting finished on Wednesday afternoon and I managed to get a ride with someone back to the synchrotron, where I met up with collaborators who had started preparing things for soft X-ray spectroscopy experiments the following day. This brings us to right now, day 2 of experiments with another weekend of work looming. I will be glad to get home!

Pics from Hobart

Here are some pics from my trip to Hobart in mid-October. The trip was for a badminton tournament, but there was also enough time for some sightseeing.

 Day 1, Salamanca Markets.

The next day we walked (a long way) to the Botanic Gardens.

 Later in the week the weather warmed up a lot and I had a whole afternoon to myself, so chose to hire a bike and head up Mt Wellington (4000').

 This is about as far as I got - about 3 km short of the top but the view was well worth it and so was the adrenaline rush heading back down!

 On the last day I went on a tour to Richmond...

 ... Tasman Peninsula...

 ... Port Arthur...

 ... Port Arthur...

 ... and a Tasmanian devil wildlife sanctuary...

... where they also had a birds of prey show. Bumped into some other ladies from my team there, one of them got to hold the tawny frogmouth.

I won't be going to another badminton tournament, but I wouldn't mind spending more time in Tasmania. It was quite laid back and just adds to my theory on the comparison between New Zealand and Australian cities:

Sydney = Auckland (big, bustly, not the capital but would like to be)

Melbourne = Wellington (arts centre, cafe culture)

Adelaide = Christchurch (gardens - and I only found out recently, they are actually sister cities)

Perth = Tauranga (laid back, nice beaches, place where people go to retire)

Hobart = Dunedin (southern-most, really laid back, friendly people, has a building that looks like a castle, Cadbury factory, both even have a Portobello Road)

Pics from Queen Charlotte

So I finally got around to sorting through my pictures. Here is a selection of shots from the Queen Charlotte Walkway (10-12 October).

There were a lot of shots like this!

Krista and Amanda on the track, day 2.

More nice views, although this pic is mainly to prove that I was there.