Coriolis effect

picked up a real humdinger of a did-you-know this weekend: the coriolis effect causes vines to grow anticlockwise up trees in the southern hemisphere, but clockwise up trees in the northern hemisphere. Who'd have thunk it? Does make me wonder about vines growing in forest bang on the equator, though.... interestingly, this entry in the wikipedia states that it's a fallacy that water goes down the plughole in different ways depending on which hemisphere you're on. Seems there more to this coriolis lark than I had originally thought.

Spent the saturday morning at Currumbin, where I managed to get up on my board on the face of a wave for the first time. Felt absolutely fantastic for the whole 1 second of that ride - damn those surf-schoolers who were right in my line of fire, causing me to lose it and fall off straight away :) Had a quick go on Nat's longboard, and found that I could get up on the face first time. I do want to stick at it with my mini-mal, but oh having a longboard would make life easy.... that's one for ebay, I think :)

we then headed inland to Murwhillumbah (great name) and the Mt Warning campsite. Nice place, very quiet, lots of natural bush (fnarr fnarr), kookaburras and open fires. Cheap too, at $16 for a campsite. We set up both tents and a tarp over the ground between them. Pleased with that, we're going to write up a wishlist for camping gear and pool resources with Nat and Al. Sunday we climbed the mountain. Fantastic rainforest on the lower flanks, really thick with tree ferns and shaded by absolutely huge forest canopy, including giant gum trees. Very difficult light for the SLR, but took a lot of photos anway (of course). The trusty SonyEricsson K750i also did an admirable job of doubling up as pocket snappy camera. But the 18-200mm on the EOS really came in handy when we spotted a mob of rock wallabies rustling the undergrowth nearby - got a lovely candid shot of one of the cute little guys popping his head up to check us out. Also got some good closeups of a genuine live snake - first one I've seen in Oz. We reckon it was a diamond python, so not dangerous to us unless threatened. Still, it was about 2 metres long, and was right alongside the path. All of the photos are here.

Work's been nuts for me, with lots of high profile hectic get-it-working-now jobs. Still, at least it passes the time :) My contract has been renewed for a further 3 months too, which is excellent. And Skye's hoping for some interesting work-related news, and possibly changes, soon... watch this space.