Jazzoos news and views: February 2008

Monday 25 February 2008

Working in the Pilbara

Well hello again for my second (and most likely last) installment of the "Working in WA" series!! I am currently working at a "Fortesque Mining Group" (FMG) exploration mine site. The absic gist of it is this: FMG want to mine iron ore here, they set up an exploration camp where they drill in a grid pattern looking for the highest grade ore, they determine whether it is worth mining. If it is, an environmental consultant company like us (Coffey Environmental) are brought in to do a fauna assessment; basically to find out what is here!! We have been in the process of digging in almost 1,900 traps (20L bucket traps and 50cm deep pipe traps), often into hard rocky ground in 40 degree plus temperatures and >70% humidity, from 6.30am to 5pm or later!! Needless to say, chaffing is a big problem out here, but I will spare you all the details.

So for the last 13 days, we have been digging, digging, digging and within the next 4 or so days, we will be done. We ALMOST had to evacuate because it was looking like Cyclone Nicholas was going to pass right over us, but it luckily travelled further west, although we still got about 50mm of rain, cloudy days and wind for a number of days, which in red, clay-like soils is a bit of a pain. Once all of the traps are in, this survey we are undertaking will apparently be the largest faunal survey ever undertaken in Western Australia, and possibly the whole of Australia (may have mentioned this in the last post...). Over the last 4 days, I have actually been spending most of the morning hours doing bird surveys. So far, I have seen about 9 new species here including (for all those bird-nerds out there) Blue-winged Kookaburra, Spinifexbird, Painted Firetail, Little Button-quail, Grey-headed Honeyeater and Black-tailed Treecreeper..... For those interested, I have kept a COMPLETE list so I can share it in detail at a later date!!!

Please have a look at the new photo album that I have created a link to to see some cool pics of the Pilbara and various bits and pieces. Aside from the scenery and amazing animals, the accommodation here is pretty spectacular. There is a smorgasborg breakfast and dinner EVERY day, which generally involves REALLY good quality food, compared to the crappy college meals I put up with for years!!! For lunch, you can make sandwiches to take out with you as well as fresh fruit salads, packs of any sort of potato chips (as many as you like!!!), and for desert, apart from ample choices of cakes, there is an icecream freezer with all sorts of magnums, gaytimes, cornettos etc.... once again, all for the taking!!!! Basically, they look after you in exchange for you staying!!! Having said all the good things about here, I am ready to go home... Working this many hours for this long is too draining, and being away from Bec for 6 weeks now is too long. Since about the 23rd January, I have only had 4 days off, so I am physically and mentally drained.

I leave here next Monday 3rd March, have my buck's night with the boys over here on Thursday 6th March and fly back over east the next day with Glynn (as he is going to Sydney for a wedding). Then I finally get to see Bec and we can continue to organise wedding stuff!!!!

ANYWAY, enjoy the pics, I hope you enjoyed the blog, and I will talk/see you all soon!!!

Friday 1 February 2008

Working in WA!!

Hello everybody.....

It has been so long since I have messaged people. I am currently working for 8 weeks in WA as a consultant zoologist for an environmental consultant company (Coffey Environments). I have already worked in Laverton for 4 days and am currently working at Mt Gibson in the NE wheatbelt. We commute to the exploration minesite from Dallwallinu, a town 120km away. We wake in the morning at 4.30am, leave the accommodation by 5.15am and start work at 6.30am! We check 960 traps every morning; in woodland, sandplain and rocky hilltop habitats!! We have caught about 800 animals so far including about 15 - 20 dunnarts (small marsupial mice), with the rest made up of skinks, goannas, blind snakes, gekkos and true snakes (pythons and elapids).

I have attached a photo album of all the photos to date. I apologise if there are any double-ups, but I dont have much time to edit them as I am at a telecentre in Dallwallinu.

We have been here at Mt Gibson since the 22nd Jan and have worked every day (sometimes from 6.30am to 6.30pm) INCLUDING weekends AND Australia day public holiday!!! We leave here on the 7th February, I have 4 days off (including going to my mate Vinh's wedding) and then I leave for the Pilbara and work there for 4 weeks straight (once again, no breaks!!). We will be setting up a fauna trapping regime that will be the biggest ever undertaken in WA and potentially in Australia!!! It is in the Pilbara that I will be let loose on the birds of the region, and it will be my responsibility to collate a species list (with numbers) of all the birds on the proposed mine site!! I CANT WAIT!!! I also cant wait to actually get back to the east coast to see Bec, but the money that I earn here will help set us up!!!!

TAKE CARE EVERYBODY, AND CHECK OUT THE PICS!!!

Random fact...

The gravity of a black hole is so strong that it prohibits light from escaping the collapsing star that created it, so given that light can't escape, it is effectively dark, thus the name 'black hole'. There is a 'boundary' between the black hole and the non black hole called the event horizon. Now, in an idealised theoretical world, imagine a situation where an astronaut was floating toward this event horizon from an orbiting spacecraft while sending messages (light signal, beeps etc) back every second. To the astronaut, as he/she approached the black hole event horizon, and even as he/she crossed the event horizon (space and time don't officially exist beyond the event horizon, I think, but say for now it does), he/she would continue to observe, every second, a message being sent to the crew waiting on the spacecraft! HOWEVER, to the crew on the spacecraft, the length of time that passed between messages from the astronaut would slowly lengthen as the astronaut approached the event horizon. Once this event horizon was crossed, the spacecraft would no longer receive any messages, as the gravitational field is so strong that NOTHING can escape. So the important thing to get from this (apart from the absurdity of actually wanting to approach a black hole), is that not only is time affected by gravity, but time is relative to the observer. What seems like a long time to one person has the potential to be experienced differently by another. Experiments in the 1960s using caesium clocks (very, very accurate nuclear clocks) found that the slight difference in gravity at the top of a 30m high tower compared to the ground resulted in time running slightly slower at ground level. This is known as 'gravitational time dilation', although the amount of time we are talking about is in the order of nano-seconds (0.000000001 secs). This occurs as gravity has the effect of slowing time! Interestingly, this effect is significant enough that the Global Positioning System (used in GPS units and in-car navigation units) needs to correct for its effect on clocks aboard artificial satellites orbiting the Earth!!

What I'm reading...

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking (256pp. - 1988)

My dad had this book years and years ago, but I never got around to reading it. I saw it the other day in a Borders bookstore and decided to read it. It is the original 1988 edition, although since then there have been at least two other versions, including a 1996 version that includes a lot more figures to help explain the complex mathematical and physics concepts.

A Brief History of Time attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes, neutron stars, light cones and superstring theory to the nonspecialist reader. Its main goal is to give an overview of the subject but, unusual for a popular science book, it also attempts to explain some complex mathematics. Suprisingly, Stephen Hawking has an often comical way of writing, suprising given his amazingly superior intellect!

Half way through the book at the moment, and finding it hard to grasp some of the concepts; may require a couple of reads!!

What I'm listening to...

Tame Impala - EP (2008) - psychedelic/indie rock band from Perth (where all good bands originate), making it big in Australia!
The Presets - Apocalypso (2008)
Massive Attack - 100th Window (2003)
mmd_as - mmd_as (2009) - a collaborative electronica album showcasing mr_mark_dollin and Alex Strain. Download the album and info here
Radiohead - Kid A (2000)
Arvo Pärt - Arvo Pärt: A Portrait (2005) - Arvo Pärt is an Estonian composer (1935 - )that is heralded as pioneering the mystic minimalism style of classical music

Featured websites...

Litoria Consulting - This is the environmental consultant company that I work for as a Senior Ecologist. We're a specialised environmental consulting firm, with professional capabilities in the areas of environment, economics and planning; my specialty is fauna ecology, especially birds.

Nuts about Natives - promoting a small contract-based plant propagation business providing private, community, government and commercial agencies with superb native plants for everything from promoting the benefits of gardens with native plants to revegetation projects. Operates just south of Perth, and happens to be co-owned by my sister!

mmd - the official website for the music from artist and close friend Mark Dollin. Peruse through pages of interesting philosophical essays on his blog, while downloading and listening to hours of music described as everything from ambient pop to highly technical ambient soundscapes to quirky electronica!! Check it out!!

About me...

My name is Jarrad Cousin, although also go by jazzoo, buddhahead, helmet, dr jarrad, jizzdog, j-rad or jezza...

I am 32 years old, married with a young son, loving life and loving work! I am patriotically Western Australian, having lived the first 24 years of my life in Perth. I moved to Armidale NSW to undertake my PhD in 2003, and having completed that, I moved to Brisbane, where I worked at Griffith University as a post-doctoral research fellow in avian ecology, and am now Senior Ecologist at Litoria Consulting!