Once again this year I was bestowed the honour of attending dawn service and marching with my Grandfather, in the annual Anzac Day parade. Gramps served in New Guinea in World War II as part of the 13th Field Battalion. This photo shows my Gramps, My Dad, My Brother Andrew and myself just after the march.




My dad also participates in the March, having completed army service as a surveyor in New Guinea in the late 60's.

I've already said plenty about this experience in previous years, so I don't really have that much too add this year, with the exception of a little note I received on the day from the RSL. I won't expand on it here, its a topic for another day on Waxing Cynical.

Completely changing the subject, William can now crawl at an alarmingly quick rate, and can also climb and stand up against almost any vertical surface. After weeks of crawling backwards,he got on a bit of a development roll so to speak, learning to crawl forwards and climb up on things the same day. It certainly adds a different dimension to parenting, when your baby doesn't stay where you put them.


The thing is, it sneaks up on you. I know that once, when I dressed William, it was a case of delicately maneuvering his arms into the tiny sleeves of his shirt. Now it is a game of Greco-Roman wrestling, requiring all my adult strength to hold him still to get clothes on the little guy, and I honestly can't remember when the transition was. It seems like one minute I'm in the hospital gently changing his little nappy while he lays there and cries, and the next I am trying to change his nappy quickly before he rolls over and crawls away at 100 miles and hour.

Karen turned 30 last weekend, Easter Saturday in fact. She has an official party coming up next Friday, but last weekend, since a few of us were hanging around in Clare anyway, we decided to have a bit of a non official celebration.

The restaraunt at Neagles Rock, where the Gringo works, seemed like a likely venue for such a dinner. It wasn't actually open, but we don't let little details like that stop us, not when we know a couple of chefs....


So we set a table for 8, sent the chefs to the kitchen, and had a good night. It was just like a dinner party, except the dining room was bigger and the dishwashers were faster.

The food, as usual was bloody superb, and there was enough to feed 16 of us. Karen had a good time trying to decipher the common theme of her many gifts. It was a sneaky puzzle, and I'm not going to go into details in case I want to use it on one of you guys one day.

Other than dinner, Easter in Clare was on the whole pretty relaxing, we did a lot of sitting around and sipping beverages. Lea and Jon were staying in the most amazing B&B, and here is a shot I snapped showing the view from the back verandah of the place they were staying. It shows the Clare Valley in all of its Autumn Glory.

I've been up to the plains of despair this week, and to a part of them that I hadn't yet been to, which was exciting in its own little way. Anyway, rather than a lengthy explanation, here is a map.

The scenery out here is quite a bit different to a lot of the P.O.D, in that there is not a sand dune in sight. The terrain consists of vast gibber plains, indispersed with giant mesas, which are essentially ancient mountains worn down flat by millions of years. I haven't researched that last fact actually, so if a geologist wants to correct me, go ahead, I can't be buggered googling it myself.
Aside from having a two day paid 4 wheel driving holiday, the reason for heading out this way was to have a look at a pipeline I designed. One of the great things about being an engineer is that you get to build big things, and there is nothing quite like the satisfaction of standing and admiring an installation that you were responsible for. You get to leave your mark on the world in a way few other professions do.

So here it is, sure its not the Harbour Bridge, but....


It is actually more of an engineering feat than it looks, because it is actually 8km long and, as most people know, steel expands in the heat. Normally pipelines are buried so its not a problem, but due to all the rock out this way burial isn't an option. So the trick of course is to design it such that it doesn't turn into a big wiggly snake in the heat. How do you do that? Well, I'm glad you asked.

An expansion loop is the answer. You put these little kinks in the pipe every know and then to take up the expansion. This pipeline has 4, which the naysayers were saying wasn't going to be enough. As you can see from the photo above, the pipeline is still pretty straight. Not to be smug, but sometimes its great to be right.

Hooray! After weeks of frustration for the poor little guy, William finally crawled today! Time for some child proofing of the house this weekend

However, for every parenting ying, there is an equal and opposite yang, and that is that he has also developed another new skill, which is waking up in the middle of the night. We have had about 7 nights in a row where he has woken up for one reason or another, which is an alarming trend. Last night was midnight and 5 am - lets see what time we get to trudge around the house tonight.