2005

Dear Friends,

This has been another busy year for both of us as our respective organisations grow and develop. Our links with the old country continue to diminish and our hearts and minds concentrate on being Aussies.

As mentioned is the close of last year's letter we spent a most enjoyable few weeks in Tasmania over the festive season and beyond. We quickly adjusted to the pleasingly cooler climate that we remember of old. Apart from one spell of gloomy and rainy days the sun shone and allowed us to enjoy the Sydney-Hobart yachts, the coincident new food and wine festival, trips to the Huon and Tahune, Lake Gordon, the lavender farm and the Janz winery, to name just some of the highlights. We delighted in the East Coast and discovered new, beautiful spots just south of Orford where we stayed by the river. It was also really great to meet up with at least some of our old friends.

During our Spring and Autumn we enjoyed several long weekend visits to our north, west and south west. About 100 km north of Bundaberg, our visit to Agnes Water, near the historic Town of 1770 where Cook careened his ship, was memorable, although the pace of resort development goes on unabated. Another interesting trip was to the mineral fossicking area around Glen Innes. The council have constructed impressive stone circles, not unlike Stone Henge, where the Scottish clans in Australia now hold their annual gathering. We stayed in a beautiful old building now a B&B operated by one of the Leyland Brothers and his wife. Both starred in a long-running 4WD adventure series on Australian TV. It was fascinating to hear tales of their treks all over Australia and the history of the Glen Innes region.

Along with most parts of Australia we seem to be constantly exposed to extremes of weather. After about 5 years of severe drought the weather is turning wetter again, much more like it was when we first came to the Gold Coast 16 years ago. On the 30 June we had the most severe rain we have experienced in Queensland. The automatic weather station on our Boobegan Creek lock (see photo andrainfall data) recorded 406 mm of rain in 24 hours (about 16 inches). As you can see the 4 m high lock and weir were submerged - fortunately there was no flooding of our villas but our central clubhouse storage level and gym were inundated. Just a couple of km north in Carrara they had 510 mm of rain, the record for the whole area. Margot's engineering colleagues at the Council estimated it was a 1 in 1000 year event!

This year has been a traumatic time for me at Bond. In May our Council made a decision to close our Faculty of IT because of significant falls in IT student numbers. Being a private university this is our only income. Our Dean departed as the decision was announced and we were re-constituted as a School of IT within the Business Faculty. There followed an uneasy transition semester as details of the 'merger' were worked through and our teaching rationalised. The latter is still in progress. Fortunately I managed to be appointed Associate Dean, Research for the new faculty retaining a position I had held in IT. Bond as a whole is at last starting to take research more seriously and putting in more resources centrally, particularly into research project administration and support. The Research Quality Framework exercise of the Federal Government based on similar initiatives in the UK and NZ seems likely to shake up how public universities undertake research. At least Bond will have some independence of action in the research area.

Margot continues with a heavy workload in her strategic planning and facilities management roles at the Council. At times there is so much pressure that her thoughts have turned to retirement on more than one occasion. Her managers and peers are desperately wanting her to stay on. We shall see how things pan out in the coming year. She certainly finds her family history research relieves the pressure as she enjoys this enormously. Her family history web site gives details of about 9,000 of our relatives. However, her local working database now contains about 14,000 people, so a major upload will be necessary in the new year.

I still run a collection of servers from home that used to house our web sites amongst other services, including these Christmas letter pages. However, a major drawback is having to switch them off when away for extended periods, such as our Tasmania trip last Christmas. I have therefore transferred all our sites to hosted servers, mainly in the US. This inexpensive option seems to be the way to go in the future, although just as I edit this page the Brinkster service hosting it is suffering a series of problems. Hopefully this will be fixed when you come to read this.

I have been able to start publishing in an area I have been interested in for some time - electronic learning. In October I presented a paper at the E-Learn 2005 conference in Vancouver. Although not the warmest month in Canada, Margot came to and we had an enjoyable 12-day break. Of course, Vancouver reminded us greatly of our few months in Seattle back in 1999, and we dug out our warm clothing from that visit. Seeing the familiar Washington volcanoes from the air brought back happy memories. We managed a number of trips around greater Vancouver before the conference, and liked it so much we are determined to return again in the summer time.

After only a vaguely successful year with a Creative Zen I have succumbed to a genuine iPod with an attractive new Nano which truly is a joy to hold in the hand. Now my car and train travelling times and other 'dead' moments are filled with audio books and intriguing podcasts with only an occasional burst of music. At least the students feel I'm a little closer to their generation!

Not only the rain but the heat and humidity have returned with a vengeance. After such a great trip last year we are repeating our trip to Tasmania in search of a couple of cooler weeks. This time we are sampling the delights of a mini-cruise from Sydney to Devonport. We hope that you have an enjoyable festive season, and send you our very best wishes for a happy and prosperous new year.

Margot and Michael

Our Anniversary, Orford, December 2004

Margot's Birthday, Orford, January 2005

1000-year Rain swamps our Boobegan Creek weir and lock, June 2005

Burrard Inlet, Vancouver from The Harbour Centre