See you in Oz?

Just about the final piece of the moving back jigsaw has fallen into place.

The shipper has e-mailed to confirm that our stuff will be delivered the day after we arrive. That couldn't be better timing, just one night camping and then we'll have the furniture and the rest of our belongings.

So after nearly six years this will be the last post on Life in Dubai.

The first post was January 20, 2006 and I've rabbited on in 1264 posts in total. I'm amazed, I had no idea when I started that it would go on and add up like that.

A sincere thanks for stopping by, for taking the time to read the posts and for the comments, I really appreciate it.

I'll leave this blog as it is because it's a report of daily life as one person saw it through a unique period of time in the development of Dubai.  I won't post here any more but I'll check back every so often to see if there are any new comments; I still get comments on posts from years back.

As in future I'll be in Australia that's where I'll move my blogging to. But I'll be visiting Dubai regularly, at least for a while, and I'm sure I'll have things to say about it. You'll find me at Life in Oz...& Dubai.


If you'd like to keep in touch, as I would with you, just click on this link:  Life in Oz...& Dubai..

STOP THIEF!

Back in Oz we have a nice orange tree which when I left had thirty or so oranges ripening nicely. I've been hoping they'd be perfect for eating when we get back.

We also have plenty of sulphur crested cockatoos flying about:

Photo. www.australiazoo.com.au

The connection is this e-mail our good friend and neighbour sent this morning:

Today, I have been watching from our patio a white cockatoo picking your oranges and flying away with them.  As you won't be back at Terrigal for a few weeks, is it OK if I pick them? ( instead of the cockatoo)

Whichever way, I'm not going to enjoy them.

Christmas lunch flew in...

A wild turkey on my back fence this morning.

I'm getting ready to come back to Dubai, flying out of Sydney on Friday afternoon and due in at the usual unearthly hour of the morning.

We've got a lot of flight cancellations because of volcanic ash in the air, mostly domestic but some international flights have been diverted or delayed apparently. They're saying it will clear within 48 hours so hopefully I'll get away on time.

Then and now

Yesterday...

 Today...

That's better!

I can't believe the weather we've been having. It's so un-Australian.

We're coming into winter so cooler temperatures are normal, but the wet certainly isn't par for the course.  

The last time I remember a period like this was way back in the mid-eighties.

But...today was sunny so I went for a walk. Blue sky. Crystal clear air. Sunshine.

I walked around the next bay to the one I live on...

That's how it should look, not wet and gray.

The forecast for tomorrow is sunshine all day. But then the clouds and showers are forecast for the rest of the week.

Bummer.

We have weather

Australia's the world's driest inhabited continent, and the drought over the plast decade is testament to that.

Not this year though.

We've just had the coldest May since 1970 and we have plenty of rain, 100mm since yesterday morning.

We're also getting things I haven't seen before. This morning I looked out of the lounge window to see this:



Two lost weeks

There hasn't been anything to report because I seem to have lost the last couple of weeks.
Dubai to Sydney door-to-door is a long and tiring journey so that takes some recovery time.

Then there's the six hour time difference that confuses the body clock for a good while.

Added to that a virus has had me flat on my back feeling awful for a few days.

But at least I was indoors in the warm.

We've had the wettest, windiest, coldest May days for a long time, so indoors was the place to be.

Tuesday we had severe weather warnings for the Sydney area and got winds of up to 110kph overnight.

They were southerlies - that's the cold ones down in this part of the globe. The weather bureau said it would reach a maximum of 14C but the winds would make it feel ten degrees colder.

I poked my nose out and it sure did feel like about four or five.

The coldest May day for eleven years they said.

The battered body is adjusting to that too, having just come from 42C in Dubai.

I'll just about get on top of it all when it'll be time to come back.

Give and take

I found a couple of news stories about money interesting, coming as they did at the same time.

In Oz the federal Treasurer Wayne Swan delivered the budget which included an increase in overseas aid to $4.8 billion.

At the same time Abu Dhabi announced that it was donating $30 million to our northern state of Queensland to build cyclone shelters, after the devastation caused by Cyclone Yasi.

`

And now for something completely different.

Something that's intrigued me for a long time has to do with racing camels here in the UAE.

Very big, camels.

Big, clumsy and weighing over half a tonne.

So why were the jockeys very small young boys, replaced when it was acknowledged that was an unacceptable practice by even smaller robot jockeys?

Photo life.com

This makes much more sense to me, as we do it in Australia, where we have huge herds of wild camels by the way, with a proper grown-up human jockey:

Photo Greg White

It's a rhetorical question, I'm sure there's no logical answer.

BTW, the pic is from Australia's richest camel race with A$30,000 in prize money (Dh110,000), held every July way, way, way out in the bush in far western Queensland. It's about 2,000 kilometres from the state capital Brisbane.

Just a bit of background, that gives an idea of the vastness and sparse population we enjoy in Oz. Boulia Shire covers a land area of 61,176sq kilometres and has a total Shire population of just 600 people. That's four times larger than Greater London, which has eight million people.

The town of Boulia has a population of 300 people and the other town in the Shire, Urandangie, has a population of 35.

So there's a lot of empty space.

It fills up a bit for the camel races, when about 2,000 people turn up.

And of course, it's empty apart from the 250,000 sheep and 75,000-plus cattle that are usually around the shire. The wool clip is approximately one million kilograms weight. Yep, a million kilograms.

They say the largest employer in Boulia is the Shire Council, the main role of which is the maintenance of the roads within the Shire.

I'd say there's not a lot else to look after really.

And on that camelian note I'm disappearing for a while. We're off to the UK in the morning for three weeks.  Not sure whether I'll be posting much for the duration.

Boulia Shire Council has a website - a very good one actually - that you might be interested to look at to get a glimpse of a very different lifestyle. It's here.   Info on the camel races is under 'Events'.

Listen to this

TV Channel 9 here in Oz has broadcast an amazing interview over her mobile phone with an Aussie woman trapped in her Christchurch office building after today's earthquake.

I've said many times before during major disasters that they're actually not one event but a jigsaw of individual, very personal stories.

This is another example of that.

She sounds calm but she must be terrified.

Listen here: "I'm trapped under a desk, I can't get out, it's dark, I'm bleeding, and I just don't what's going on out there".

Ánd by the way, it's a side of mobile phones, often so annoying and cause for complaint, that we don't think about.  Try to imagine the comfort of it to someone like this, trapped in the dark, not knowing what's out there, what's going on, what her situation really is. She at least has contact with a friendly voice, feels that she's not alone.



Another example of a very personal story that was part of a much larger jigsaw - and another showing the value and comfort of a mobile phone in these disastrous situations - that still raises the hair on the back of my neck whenever I listen to it was during the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria. It was a real time audio of one person trapped right in the middle of it, facing a terrifying death.


Rhiannon, only twenty years old, called radio station 3AW as the fires raced towards the house where she and a group had taken shelter.

Happy news, but then...

The day in this region started off on a happy note, with the simultaneous arrival in Sydney Harbour of the luxury ocean liners
Queen Mary 2 and the Queen Elizabeth.

It must have been some sight and I'd have liked to have seen it - too early for me to be there though, not being a morning person.

Photo: AP Sydney Morning Herald

The harbour was full of leisure boats to welcome the liners and the foreshores were full of people wanting to see and welcome the two monster ships.

A typical happy and pleasant morning in Sydney.

But then later in the morning we started getting news of a big earthquake in New Zealand, which hit Christchurch city centre at lunchtime. The worst possible time, the city centre full of workers, shoppers and sightseers.

It's still chaotic and news is being updated, and getting worse, by the minute. There are many dead, sixty-five so far confirmed, and inevitably there will be more casualties found as rescue teams search the rubble. Numerous people are reported trapped.

Photo: ninemsn.com.au

Buildings have collapsed, especially the historic old ones. The beautiful Christchurch Cathedral has been badly damaged, the spire has crashed into the street and there's rubble all around the building. 

Two crowded buses have been crushed by falling buildings as have cars with people in them.

Photo: Getty Images ninemsn.com.au

The city doesn't have enough ambulances to cope and residents from the outer suburbs are driving into the centre to help rescue people and take them to triage centres in their private vehicles. 

An eyewitness on radio as I'm typing is talking about being able to smell smoke from fires and having seen broken water mains flooding roads. He says the roads are corrugated and overall infrastructure damage is huge.

Cyclones, floods & fires

Mother Nature is dominating the news here in Oz, showing that we're a real land of extremes.

As I said yesterday, in Sydney we've had a record hot spell.

Overnight was as uncomfortable as predicted, it was still 30C at midnight and humidity up in the ninety percent area.

Then a southerly buster came through with a thunderstorm at 3pm today and at 5pm we were at 20C.

Up in far North Queensland they're counting the $billions of damage after Cyclone Yasi.

Photo:Dave Hunt AAP

 In Victoria they're battleing huge floods across a lot of the state, with extensive stock losses and damage.

Photo: Nadine Walker ninensm

And right now over in Western Australia out-of-control bushfires are raging through suburbs of Perth.

Photo: paulpichugin.com.au

The current situation is that 20 homes have been destroyed, mass evacuations are under way and firefighters are deperately trying to defend houses.


Monday Update

The Perth fires are still out of control, with 59 homes destroyed and 28 damaged.

Whingeing weather

I see Dubai's weather is rain, low temperatures, a shamal and sand storms.

Sydney has whingeing weather too. We're in day six of a heat wave and the whingeing hasn't stopped.

'Can't sleep' is the most common complaint, as we're having record high minimum overnight temperatures and new records for the number of consecutive hot nights.

It'll be the same tonight. The weather report just said it reached 43C today and most of the night will be around 30C.

Temps are measured in the shade of course, so with the sun blazing from our clear, blue, cloudless sky it's very hot. And as February is our most humid month it's quite uncomfortable too.

Several severe fire warnings have been issued and a large area of the state, including Greater Sydney, has a total fire ban in place. The Rural Fire Service has dealt with over a hundred bush and grass fires this week. They're spread around, with currently new fires being fought in the Blue Mountains to the west and here on the Central Coast to the north.

A cool change is forecast for tomorrow and by Monday the Met Bureau says "the daytime temperatures will be close to the overnight temperatures Sydneysiders have been suffering this past week".

I have a lot of running around to do next week so I'm quite pleased to hear that.

Cyclone Yasi

There are hundreds of photos in the media showing damage caused up in Far North Queensland by cyclone Yasi, but one in particular seems to me to sum up the power of the wind and rain.

Forty million dollars-worth of yachts and cruisers at Port Hinchinbrook piled up like a kid's toys.

Photo AFP

A-OK after Cyclone Yasi

Well, it was a category five cyclone, the same as Katrina which devastated New Orleans, but current reports are no deaths or serious injuries.

Cyclone Yasi veered south just before making landfall and instead of slamming directly into Cairns hit much smaller towns.

People who've been to Far North Queensland, usually to visit the Great Barrier Reef, Daintree Rainforest or the small islands, will know the small coastal towns of Mission Beach, Tulley, Innisfail, Cardwell, Ingham...all were hit badly.

Tulley, a small town with a population of about 3,500, is one of the worst hit with one in three houses destroyed or damaged. The town centre looks like this:

Photo:  John Wilson HeraldSun

There's a lot of damage and as flooding followed the winds it's not over yet.

Trees are down everywhere and one of the big industries up there, banana plantations, has lost 90% of the crop. Bananas are a $400 million industry and there's also been an estimated $500 million of sugar cane destroyed, so the damage bill is high.

Photo: Jamie Hanson HeraldSun

But so far there are no human casualties, although the emergency services still haven't been able to reach some smaller towns or isolated properties.

Even if they do find casualties it'll be a small toll compared to the size of the cyclone. Category Five is as bad as it gets.

The reason is that the Queensland government and emergency services did an excellent job of informing people what to expect, issuing evacuation orders, setting up evacuation centres, telling people what to do. Radio was used extensively - the ABC local radio network is used in emergencies like bushfires or cyclones as an information service.

Last evening I heard them telling anyone who hadn't yet evacuated that it was too late, they must not venture out but go to the safest room in their house etc etc.

Good stuff.  I usually criticize governments and bureaucrats but this time they got it right.

Thousands did as they were told and went to evacuation centres such as shopping malls. When they see the damage outside they'll be glad they did.

I've also been impressed with the Queensland Premier Anna Bligh. She seems to have been everywhere, she's all over the media giving people hard, up-to-the-minute information, something that normally is the last thing we get.  

There are plenty of interviews with people of course. I particularly liked the wry humour of the policeman asked before the cyclone hit by the Sydney Morning Herald how his family would be staying safe. "My wife must have got hold of a good long-range forecast - she cleared off with the kids two years ago" he said.

Wild weather again

A tiring journey, almost exactly 24 hours door-to-door when I arrived home at 11pm yesterday.

There's also a seven hour time difference to adjust to, so I'm all over the place at the moment. Can't sleep, can't do much else, so I thought I'd check in here for a few minutes.

I've just received an e-mail from a Dubai friend warning of storms on the way for the next couple of days. The weather's the main news here too.

Sydney is in the middle of a very warm spell, over 40C the last couple of days and today high thirties, and as February is our most humid month it's quite uncomfortable. We also had one of the highest-ever overnight low temps last night apparently, at 26.4C.

There are bushfires in a couple of Sydney suburbs, under control fortunately, and more than seventy though New South Wales.

The big news though is the massive Cyclone Yasi due to hit Far North Queensland in a few hours at 10pm. It's a catagory five cyclone, 500 kilometres wide and it's headed straight for the area where the two cities of Townsville and Cairns and several smaller population centres are located.

It's forecast that winds will be as high as 300kph and will last 24 hours. That's much worse than Cyclone Tracy which destroyed the Northern Territory capital of Darwin in 1974.

Murphy's Law comes into play yet again, because Cyclone Yasi's landfall will coincide with a high tide and a two metre storm surge is expected in Cairns city centre.  This on top of Queensland's floods that made world-wide news a couple of weeks ago, which still haven't fully receded.

Thousand of people have moved inland. They say 30,000 have gone and the Queensland Premier is urging more people to flee in the next few hours' 'window of opportunity' as she calls it.

She said: "I don't think Australia has ever seen a storm of this size, this intensity in an area as popular as this stretch of our coast...this is 24 hours of some of the most frightening weather that most people will ever have experienced." 

Many people are in evacuation centres in Cairns. In Townsville the winds are already severe and if people haven't left they're being told to secure their homes and stay put. To go out now is too dangerous, the emergency services say.

And a totally unconnected news story that's just hit the airwaves after a news conference a few minutes ago is that our most successful Olympian, swimmer Ian Thorpe, has announced that he's returning to swimming and plans to train in...Abu Dhabi.

Off to Oz

I'm heading back to Oz this afternoon for five weeks, due back in Dubai on March 9.

I'll keep in touch with what's going on by reading my usual list of blogs, and I'll try to post on here at least once in a while.

"Save my brother first"

I've said many times before when I've posted about major events that they're really a jigsaw of many small, individual, personal stories.

A tragic example is one such individual story that's part of the jigsaw of the Queensland floods event. The story of a true hero, only thirteen years old, and passers-by who risked their own lives trying to save strangers.

Warren McErlean watched the water on a street gauge in Toowoomba rise twenty centimetres in ten seconds as the inland 'tsunami' hit the town.

He saw a car with a family in it, thirteen year old Jordon Rice, his ten year old brother Blake and mother Donna, with water up to the number plate.

Warren tried to get to the car but by the time he'd walked twenty metres towards it the water was over its bonnet.

He roped himself to a pole and again tried to reach the car but was washed away. Another passer-by, known only as Chris, pulled him out, tied himself to the pole and managed to get to the car.

He grabbed Jordan, but the boy insisted that he save his younger brother first. Blake was carried to safety.

Chris went back to the car where he grabbed Jordan's hand but the rope snapped, the car flipped over and Jordan and Donna were swept away.


Jordan Rice. Hero.
Photo: Sydney Morning Herald

Warren was interviewed on Radio 2UE, and you can listen to his account of what happened here.

Land of extremes

This time of year I'm usually posting about bushfires causing death and destruction in Australia.

We do indeed have fires, in the west. Not far from Perth a deliberately lit fire has destroyed a dozen homes:


Photo: Alf Sorbello perthnow.com.au

There's a large area burnt out but fortunately no casualties reported.

The animals won't be as lucky, although people do their best to rescue them:

Photo: Alf Sorbello perthnow.com.au

But this 'fire season' the big news is the flood disaster hitting Queensland.

The news an hour ago was that thirteen people are dead and another forty three are missing...and the worst of the flood is yet to come.

Towns have been destroyed by flash flooding, with 'tsunamis' of six to eight metres coming out of nowhere and catching people by surprise.

One third of Ipswich, a suburb of Brisbane, is under water. Brisbane itself, our third largest city, is on high alert with many suburbs already flooded and mass evacuations from the city centre. The river runs through the centre of the city and is due to peak at 4am Brisbane time. Fortunately the predicted 5.4 metre peak has been revised to 5.2 metres. It's still a hell of a lot of water - measure it!

5.4 metres down to 5.2 doesn't sound a big difference but it means thousands of properties won't be flooded. The current reports are that 20,000 properties will be.

The area under water is larger than France & Germany combined and the flood waters are headed south into New South Wales so the north east of my home state is threatened.

People are being rescued from cars which have been washed away and from the roof of their homes...

Photo: Sky News. Town of Lockyer

Photo: Courier Mail. The town of Toowoomba

This shot from a television camera in a chopper shows a family on their sinking 4X4. The mother and son were rescued but sadly the father, a well-known local personality James Perry, is missing.

Photo: The Australian

The animals are affected too and people are doing their best to help them:

Men jumped in and battled to rescue this trapped horse, which was disoriented and couldn't find its way to the nearby high ground:

Photo: Network 10

The wild animals are in trouble of course, finding any high ground or something, anything, to cling on to, like this goanna:

Photo treehugger.com

And animals help each other in times of danger too.

This is one of the most amazing photos to come out of it so far. Armin Gerlach was visiting friends in the flood-hit town of Dalby when he spotted a brown snake (the world's second most venomous) giving a green frog a ride through the flood waters:

Photo: Armin Gerlach

King Parrot

Unimportant in the grand scheme of things I know, just a close encounter with a parrot, but I enjoyed it.

I walked into the lounge and sitting on the rail of our balcony was a King Parrot. They're gorgeous birds and it's the first time one has visited us.

By the time I found the camera and got it ready to shoot he flew off, so here's a shot of one from www.wiresnr.org. photo by Serena Hershon.