POSTGRADUATE NEWS November/December 2005
WELCOME
A warm welcome to Badr Alharbi, new PhD candidate who is conducting his research on "Dust Entrainment, Transport and Deposition in Saudi Arabia".
CONGRATULATIONS
- Wendy Stubbs who was awarded a Postgraduate Publication Award to work on" publishing articles based on her doctoral research. The scheme provides" support for students who wish to prepare some of their research for" publication while they wait for their examination results.
- Liam Brady for submitting his PhD thesis.
- Cassie Rowe's PhD thesis "A Holocene History of Vegetation Change in the" Western Torres Strait Region, Queensland, Australia" has been accepted.
- Sharron Pfueller and Xuan Zhu for securing the project entitled""Community values for the Murray River Reserves", that will be funded by" the CRC for Sustainable Tourism.
- Christian Kull and Priya Rangan, for their success in securing an ARC " Discovery Project Grant.
- Tim Denham, for his success in securing an ARC Discovery Project Grant.
- Stuart Boucher for winning the CG Stephens PhD Award in Soil Science for" the best PhD in any branch of Soil Science in Australia.
SGES CHRISTMAS LUNCHEON
The SGES Christmas luncheon has been set for Thursday 15 December, 12 noon at Tandoori Inn (same venue as last year due to popular demand). Please let Jean know if you plan to attend.
THIS IS THE LAST NEWSLETTER FOR 2005.
BEST WISHES FOR A HAPPY AND SAFE CHRISTMAS
FIELDWORK TRIP
TADHG O'LOINGSIGH
On this trip, David Dunkerley and I went for a one-week intensive tourof the Strzelecki Desert to maintain previously deployed weather stations and to install dust traps.
We left Melbourne early on the 27th September with the Troopie loaded to the hilt and towing our quad bike in the brand spanking new departmental off-road trailer. We made it to Broken Hill 900 kilometres away by late evening that same day and bedded down in a cabin at the famous Lakeview Caravan Park, where I'm sure many of you have stayed.
On the morning of the 28th, we loaded up with food at the Woolies and headed east towards Yunta, where we fuelled up and turned north towards the Strzelecki. That was the last we saw of bitumen for a week. About 150 kilometres later, between Curnamona and Frome Downs stations, we turned off to the West onto fence tracks and put the Troopie through its paces for about and hour before reaching the site where Nigel Tapper and I had installed a weather station last June. The site looked fine and the loggers had worked well. We deployed one of my dust traps and made our way back to the main track quickly to have time to set up camp before dark. Because of strong easterly winds, we ended up sleeping in an empty refrigeration truck container once I had finished taping down all loose, and therefore noisily flapping, metal items in the vicinity of the camp.
The next day, on the 29th, we headed further inland, passing Frome Downs station, skirting the northern shores of Lake Frome. Being low on fuel, we made a detour into the Flinders to Arkaroola before continuing our trip north to Moolawatana Station. There we touched base with the homestead and cut east to a place called Yandama Creek east of Lake Callabonna Sth, in the middle of a very dry, but still green Strzelecki Desert. Here again we deployed a dust trap before the day was out and camped.
On the 30th September, on our way back out from the guts of the Strzelecki, we set up a third dust trap on the eastern shores of Lake Callabonna Sth before visiting our second weather station closer to the Moolawatana homestead. This one had not worked as well because the wind had blown the solar panel sideways sometime in July. Some data was retrieved though.
After that, it was a straight line up the Moomba pipeline to access the western shores of Lake Callabonna itself with the intention of doing some transect sampling on the surface with the quad bike. On the morning of the 1st October, I set off on the quad at 7am and carried out a 15-kilometre transect diagonally across the lake floor to the NE and a 7 kilometre one straight east after refuelling. David was passing time" marking 1st Year essays with the assistance of hundreds of flies. I checked in on the hand-held radio every kilometre until I got out of range at kilometre 8. I held my breath that nothing would go wrong for the remaining 7 kilometres of the main transect, although I did have the satellite phone and an emergency radio beacon as back-up. Nonetheless, I didn't fancy that kind of walk home.
When the surface sampling was done, we headed further north on the Strzelecki Track and spent the next few days installing dust traps from the Moomba pipeline all the way west to the NSW border at Cameron Corner. To make things interesting, the bearings in one of the wheels of the brand new trailer shattered 20 kilometres from the closest station, Merty Merty. In true humble helpfulness that characterises all the residents of these desert stations, the folks at Merty came out and brought the trailer and its content, namely the quad, back to their station. The trailer is still there and will require a trip in November to pick it up.
On the 4th October, we made our way from Merty to Fowler's Gap and the next day, with 4,000 kilometres driven, 7 dust traps deployed, bags full of dust and missing a trailer, we found our way back to Melbourne.