Wow was it already all the way back on the 1st of Jan that I posted my last blog entry. I think I forgot to mention something relatively important in that blog post: Happy new year! That said, I’m likely saying that to nobody, but if anyone stumbles on it then I’ve insured myself against accusations of not knowing that the new year started seven days ago.
I’m back in ye olde Melbourne now, which is good and bad. It’s good because I can start getting stuck into some constructive stuff before uni starts again (although much of the constructive stuff mentioned will pertain to uni). It’s bad because every time I come back to Melbourne I realise how much it actually sucks and how much I’d really like to move to a smaller city, especially a northern one. What’s with regional universities and their total lack of a linguistics department? Admittedly I’ve only checked two universities: Charles Darwin University, and James Cook University. Maybe it’s something to do with universities which are named after the full names of individuals (Monash escapes the clause, because it’s not the Sir John Monash University). In any case, the universities which service the cities I wouldn’t mind moving to – Townsville, Darwin and possibly Cairns – have no linguistics department to speak of, besides Townsville having some form of speech pathology course. Certainly no avenues for PhD study. Damned small cities. It’s also frustrating from an academic standpoint because the Northern Territory and Far North QLD are the areas that are most at risk from language endangerment so some facilities to conduct research up north would be much appreciated!
On that note, I might move on and continue my synopsis of what I did in Townsville and what I thought, although from what I’ve written so far you probably gather that I did like Townsville a lot. Personally I’m not sure what it is, me liking Townsville or hating Melbourne…
Townsville Part 2
So, as I said in my last post, I had my week of house-sitting which was probably my most active time in terms of doing what I would love to do a lot more in the tropics, which is take photos. I’d probably choose a less obvious environment than the botanical gardens if I lived up there, but you take what you can get when you’re on holidays!
Over 5 days the house filled up pretty quickly. First, my brother’s partner and my niece arrived back in Townsville from Darwin, which was fine – that just brought us back to normal. A couple of days after that, my brother arrived back from work in Karratha (and attempted to sleep most of the day, thwarted by my niece). The next day, my sister arrived (on Monday the 22nd) and then the Christmas rush began.
Although I don’t drink, much alcohol was imbibed in by all those over 18 on both Christmas and New Years (the intervening time was much less interesting than busy, although we did visit Paluma whicwnsvillerh was good, albeit raining torrentially). The nightmare of my sister’s knee (more details: Twitter) began on the morning of New Year’s day and continues still, although the possibility of it needing surgery is passed.
I know I’ve said very little about what I actually did in Townsville, and that’s because on the whole it wasn’t really that much. Mostly, catching up with family and hanging out enjoying the weather. I’ve never been one for holidays with itineraries which run as long as your arm, so that works for me. The best thing on a holiday is good company. A nice venue like Townsville doesn’t hurt either!
