I came out of the train station yesterday, and was unlocking my bike when I caught the scent of burning paper. At least that was what my nose thought. It was a pleasant smell, but sometimes smells come through wrong. You can be smelling something and thinking to yourself, "that's candyfloss" but there is something about it doesn't sit right. It feels a little skewed, makes you a little dizzy. It's a bit like looking at one of those optical illusions where you have to focus past the plane of the image to see the 3 dimensional picture and your eyes feel like they straining to see something that you can't quite resolve. Suffice to say it wasn't burnt paper. It wasn't until the next morning I realised what the smell was. I was riding past a stand of tall eucalyptus. The morning air is usually fresh and relatively still, and it was full of the scent of these gum trees. But this isn't the astringent, nasal smell I would have associated with eucalyptus oil. In no way did this reminded me of blocked noses and steam baths. This was rich, warm and spicey. It had a food like quality, as though it were more like the smell of something you would drink warm from a flask. I've recently begun riding to the train station. The heat has moved out of the morning air and riding somewhere doesn't seem like such a chore. The mere thought of it earlier in the summer could bring on a sticky vaneer of sweat. The suburbs around me are very green, with a large number of cycle routes linking paths and cul-de-sacs. Riding through the pockets of scent emphasizes the effect of smells on mood. I'm not an advocate of aroma therapy. The whole "smell to get well" movement seems to me to be another example of smartly marketed placebo. However, come Monday, there is no denying the marked difference in my disposition after riding the bus, with it's associate cocktail of perfumes and colognes, compared with riding my bike and the warm aromatics of the gums.
Sunday 24 February 2008
Thursday 7 February 2008
Celebrations and speciation.
Australia day.
On the 26th of January, after a hot steamy Saturday, we followed our neighbours to the southern foreshore of the Swan river just in the curve of Waylen Bay
From there we got a somewhat distant but definitely panoramic view of the incredible fireworks display that Perth put on for Australia day. It went on for half an hour! Resources are concentrated on the Australia Day display, the New Year display having much less spent on it. Understandably so, when Sydney spends so much on it.
Australia Day is celebrated on the day in 1788 that Captain Arthur Phillip founded a British penal colony at Sydney Cove at Port Jackson, New South Wales, (thanks Wikipedia). Actually that article has some really interesting stuff to say about Australia Day, like the fact that some Aboriginals call it "Invasion Day". You can see their point!
Bio-diversity hotspot.
I've been listening recently to a lot of podcasts produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I learnt from one called "The Science Show" (another fine example of Aussie literalism), that Western Australia is a bio-diversity hot spot. Large areas of the bush are made up of a dense patchwork of different habitats. If you walk through them, they change every 100 or so yards. This is unusual since you usually find this in areas where habitats have been subject to a lot of stress. For example the rainforests where the comings and goings of the climate have alternately shrunk down the forest to isolated islands, (allowing for periods of speciation) and then expansion of those islands, so the species that were once common are now significantly different to be sexually incompatible. But Australia has been geologically and glacially dormant for thousands and thousands of years.
Apparently, the cause is the impoverished soils. There have been no new soils spewed out from volcanoes nor glacial till left behind by grinding glaciers. And weathering has exposed and eroded down deep mineral reserves in such concentrations as to make the soil positively poisonous. But plant life has been here so long, it has had time to adapt. And part of that adaptation strategy is, when you drop your seed, you drop it close to Mum! The chances are if you spread your babies far away, they will fail to compete with some other species that is already well and truly settled and adapted to that area. Best stick with the parent in the neighbourhood that they have already made their home in. Which results in this dense and very varied patchwork of diverse species!
So when you hear on the news next, that Australian men and woman are staying at home until their mid-thirties, you will appreciate that this is just what Aussie species have been doing for millenia, and is just an adaptation to some seriously harsh environments.
On the 26th of January, after a hot steamy Saturday, we followed our neighbours to the southern foreshore of the Swan river just in the curve of Waylen Bay
From there we got a somewhat distant but definitely panoramic view of the incredible fireworks display that Perth put on for Australia day. It went on for half an hour! Resources are concentrated on the Australia Day display, the New Year display having much less spent on it. Understandably so, when Sydney spends so much on it.
Australia Day is celebrated on the day in 1788 that Captain Arthur Phillip founded a British penal colony at Sydney Cove at Port Jackson, New South Wales, (thanks Wikipedia). Actually that article has some really interesting stuff to say about Australia Day, like the fact that some Aboriginals call it "Invasion Day". You can see their point!
Bio-diversity hotspot.
I've been listening recently to a lot of podcasts produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I learnt from one called "The Science Show" (another fine example of Aussie literalism), that Western Australia is a bio-diversity hot spot. Large areas of the bush are made up of a dense patchwork of different habitats. If you walk through them, they change every 100 or so yards. This is unusual since you usually find this in areas where habitats have been subject to a lot of stress. For example the rainforests where the comings and goings of the climate have alternately shrunk down the forest to isolated islands, (allowing for periods of speciation) and then expansion of those islands, so the species that were once common are now significantly different to be sexually incompatible. But Australia has been geologically and glacially dormant for thousands and thousands of years.
Apparently, the cause is the impoverished soils. There have been no new soils spewed out from volcanoes nor glacial till left behind by grinding glaciers. And weathering has exposed and eroded down deep mineral reserves in such concentrations as to make the soil positively poisonous. But plant life has been here so long, it has had time to adapt. And part of that adaptation strategy is, when you drop your seed, you drop it close to Mum! The chances are if you spread your babies far away, they will fail to compete with some other species that is already well and truly settled and adapted to that area. Best stick with the parent in the neighbourhood that they have already made their home in. Which results in this dense and very varied patchwork of diverse species!
So when you hear on the news next, that Australian men and woman are staying at home until their mid-thirties, you will appreciate that this is just what Aussie species have been doing for millenia, and is just an adaptation to some seriously harsh environments.
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