Sydney’s Original Weather Calendar

When James Cook visited Australia in 1770, he found a good continent at the bottom of the planet. The vast land was good for settlement and more so farming. That’s why by 1787, the first fleet of ships sailed from England to Australia. By 1788, the first European settlement was established in Australia. With it came European knowledge, lifestyles, and everything.

But the aboriginal people have been living in Australia for more than 60,000 years. They had their own life and culture, which was largely ignored. The culture we have today in Sydney is influenced by European culture. One of the things that are too common to even think about is the weather calendar.

But did you know that the original Sydney weather calendar is with the aboriginal people? Well, I know you are now trying to guess how it looked like. I was also equally surprised by my friend Frances Bodkin, an aboriginal woman I respect a great deal.

Bodkin has been working hard to make Sydneysiders understands other frameworks in this region and not just the protestant work ethic used today. In her book, D’harawal Seasons and Climate Cycles, she introduces us to aboriginal people’s weather calendar. Forget about the summer, autumn, winter and spring, that’s European weather calendar.

Even today, some of the aboriginals live in a different and a bit sophisticated Sydney. The introduction of her books reads as follows: “we were intelligent people”. She then goes ahead to say that the aboriginal community had a complex system of protecting the knowledge from being lost. Considering they were illiterate, and survived thousands of years, we can’t dispute it.

D'harawal Seasons and Climate Cycles book

In the aboriginal climatic calendar, Bodkin’s book starts by explaining a typical day. To her community, a day started with the Kookaburra laughing or Gugagara’ djanaba. It ends in the silence of the night, also called Nguwing’kapo in aboriginal language.

For the seasons, a cycle for the Sydney aboriginals started around September and October. This season is called Ngoonungi. At this time, winter or the cold season is ending, and it’s getting water. What follows is the Gooray’ murrai season (October – January), which is a warm and wet season. This is part of the spring and summer in the European calendar.

The third season is Gadulung Marool (January and February), which was hot and dry. This is again part of the summer in the European calendar. It is also called the time of Kangaroo. What’s interesting by this period is that most people in Sydney eat a lot of bbq. In fact, it’s part of the bbq season. But for the Sydney aboriginals, they were not eating meat or fish during this season.

Aboriginals making fire during cold season

What follows is another long season called Bana’ murrai’yung (March, April and May). It’s a wet and cold season or what we call autumn in Australia. During this time, people would move from the highlands to the coastal areas to avoid the cold season or winter.

This season is followed by Turagarah Tuli, which is characterised by cold, frosty and short days. The sixth and last season of the aboriginal weather calendar is the Tugarah Gunya’ marri, which was cold and winder. So, the aboriginal community in Sydney had a total of six seasons.

But that was not all thing that the book covers about the season. According to Bodkin’s book, there was a bigger cycle at the top that ran for 12 years. It would sometime shift the small seasons and overall weather pattern. The larger cycle was also used to determine aboriginal people age. A grown person would go up to 6 of these bigger seasons.

This is just one weather calendar by one community. So, you can imagine how many permutations of original weather calendars we have in Australia. The bottom line is that there is a lot to learn from the aboriginals in Sydney and Australia-wide.

Blog, Life

life

December 20, 2020

A Mid-Lane Speedo Crisis

If you ask most men about their swimming experience, there is no doubt that Speedos will be part of the stories. It’s one of the most intimidation experience for men. Just imagine being almost naked in front of people for the first time. And that’s the story I want to tell about myself.

I had a serious accident, and part of the recovery recommendation was to do a lot of swimming. So, after thorough thinking, I decided to take up squad swimming. But I had no idea of what was waiting for me ahead. For the first few sessions, I used to wear my palm-tree-covered long togs despite almost every donning Speedos.

What kind of fun would a grownup find swimming almost naked? I used to ask myself. But the moment finally caught up with me. I had already driven for 40 minutes to attend my swimming sessions as usual. But upon arriving, I discovered that I had forgotten my boardie at home. Well, I couldn’t figure out what to do apart from just sitting the session.

So, I went to the bleachers where to watch people having fun swimming. But a thought came in the mind of back in days when in primary school. I had put on budgie smugglers in 50 meters of backstroke at a swimming carnivore. I immediately darted to the pool shop for “Speedos”.

“Got any speed?” I asked the lady behind the counter. The answer was negative, but she referred me to my swim coach for some spares. My coach led to a cardboard box where he pulled an old thing from the box. He told me it belonged to an old fella and thus I can use it. To be honest, I felt like this piece of material belonged to the rag bin. But I had nothing to wear, and I desperately needed to swim.

With an old piece of Speedo, I took back to the change room and put them on. My first impression is that they don’t look great on me. With a stretched front and thin worn back, these Speedos was not definitely meant for my size. But I had to swim, though. So, how do I move from the change room to the pool in this? Well, Easy.

I just wrapped a towel around my waist and walked to the pool. I was still shy. So, I waited until other swimmers were down to the other end of the pool. In a flash, a tossed by towel and bombed into the water and started swimming. It was a nice experience, but I felt that it could be nicer had I put on the right size and better-quality Speedos. That’s how I wore speedos at the age of 41.

Few days after this experience, I bought my own Speedo, but they looked tiny. That was not what I expected. But I was impressed by how well they fit. I showed them to my wife, who couldn’t believe it. Well, my kids were not really impressed by my new shopping either.

For my daughter, she was in a complete shock while my 15-year-old son told off. Just like me at the pool, he didn’t understand why a full-grown man would wear Speedos.

At first, I promised myself that I would only wear my Speedos during quad training. But today, I wear them at people’s pools, boats, and beach and always feel tempted to wear them at home.

So, what did I learn? Just be you and ignore everyone, including your family. You will like your transitioning to speedos. You can’t ignore it for long because very soon, it will catch up with you do. The Speedo experience is magical as you will feel lighter in water than ever before.

Blog, Fashion

life

November 23, 2020

Ancient Koalas Had the Pick of Not-so-tough Nosh

For most Aussies, Koala is one of the wild animals that receive a lot of love. These gentle creatures are widely found in Australia’s Eucalyptus forests. But how much do you know about koalas? Do you know that the ancient koalas were a little bit different from the modern species? Well, scientists have an interesting finding for these animals.

According to recent research, scientists have discovered how koalas lived millions of years ago. To be specific, this group of scientists retrieved information of the ancient koala that lived about 24 million years ago.

The koala fossil for this research was collected in the past quarter of the century. Most of them come from popular Riversleigh fields. This is one of the World heritage-listed fossil sites in Australia. It’s located in Lawn Hill National park.

The scientific paper, which was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, was authored by a team of scientists, including researchers from the CSIRO and the University of NSW. One of the findings is that the modern koala has maintained most of the behaviours of the ancient koala. That’s because of the little change of the body structure.

According to one of the leading scientists, Mike Archer, professor of biological, earth, and environmental science at the University of NSW, the finding showed that there is probably no other time in the history of Australia there was a huge population of Koalas than today. This was seen from the small number of the specimen that the team found.

Professor Archer says that the rarity of the ancient Koala fossils is the reason why it has taken too long to analyse these creatures. Out of over 40,000 specimens that the team was able to collect from the site, only six of them were koala. This indicates that compared to other animals in Australia, koalas were very few.

One of the interesting findings of this research paper is the relationship between koalas and wombats. Just like today, the ancient species of the two animals show striking similarities. But some differences stood out between the modern and ancient koala species.

From the fossils of the extinct koala, it shows that these koalas were small in size. That’s when compared to modern species. The extinct types may have been a third or quarter smaller. This information can tell a lot about the life of the koala. It could also explain why they have grown larger over the years. That’s one of the major differences noted.

Apart from size, the journal highlighted is the cranial structures used for vocalisation. Whereas modern koalas are very vocal, the ancient species were not. The modern grown male koala loud bellows can be heard even 800m away. According to Professor Archer, their bellows could hardly be heard compared to the modern species.

The jaws and teeth are another major difference between the two species. It shows that what the extinct koalas were eating differently from modern varieties. What was interesting to note is the ancient fossil teeth. They were not eating tough leaves such as those from gum trees.

One last thing the scientific paper was able to bring out is the eucalypts in Australia forests. With the difference in koala teeth, it’s a sign that there were no gum trees in ancient Australia. But this needs further research. There are other factors that could have caused changes in koala eating habits.

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animals, life

October 10, 2020

Hazard Reduction: The Blame Game

Bushfires in Victoria provided a perfect platform for trading blames between various parties. In most cases, you’ll hear people, even the media, blaming the greenies for the catastrophic fire. This group of environmentalists has been against hazard reduction burns for controlling wildfires. That’s why they have been a perfect target for the pro-burn lobby and activist media.

But how true is this? Can the lack of hazard reduction be blamed on these fires? Is the blame directed to the right people? To help answer these questions, Professor Poongschtok did a piece covering wildfire blame games. He filtered lies traded by the pro-burn group, which is the loudest.

From his piece, Professor Poongschtok makes it clear that most of the fire blames are directed to authorities. They are first blamed for refused to take lessons from the aboriginal people. But these claims that ‘local knowledge’ could be useful in fighting Victoria fires are absolute nonsense. These claims are, on many occasions, propagated by people who are no experts in fire science. These are people looking for attention with nothing to offer in wildfire management.

He gave an example of people in the media who know nothing about fire giving ‘expert’ analysis. From media personalities who quote dubious sources to activists claiming to have easy solutions to these fires. You must have heard of a pro-burn UK based fire scientist, Germain Greer. He claims aboriginal knowledge in controlling bushfire. That’s disgusting to hear that from a foreigner. What does he know about Australia wildfire?

What most of these ‘experts’ in the media don’t understand are the dynamics in bushfire. Things change very fast and this could make hazard reduction ineffective. It’s impossible to use fuel reduction burning to control a bushfire when temperatures are in the mid-40s and a wind travelling at 100km per hour. That’s why the blaming of the agencies for the fires does not make sense.

In his piece, Professor Poongschtok asked people not to expect too much from the government. To him, the government would find it very difficult to do hazard reduction. It requires a lot of resources and very intricate plans. There are tough logistical preparations associated with it if you are to minimise damages. The impact created by this kind of burning would also be huge to the population. Note that the population would be exposed to months of constant palls of smoke. This is a health crisis that could spill out of control.

Another thing he mentioned in his work is pro-burn brigades going mute about the fuel reduction deaths. There will be a spike in deaths if we start hazard reduction burning. Studies have shown that during wildfires, a lot of people die in the affected areas. Most of these are associated with breathing complications caused by smoke. That’s a fact never mentioned in the media.

Another thing pro-burn lobbyist are not telling the population is the environmental damages due to burning. They will not tell us that vegetation traps the carbon dioxide. By burning the forest intentionally, more carbon dioxide is released to the environment. This means more global warming and worsening conditions in the future. So, it makes no sense to start a fire that makes the condition even worse.

The professor also looked at the issue of how aboriginal people used to control bushfire. According to him, no one understands how they dealt with these fires. What we have is a myth. No one recorded the fire-fighting techniques they used since European were not there. What we have on this topic is what Captain Cook observed as ‘huge smoke.’ But Europe never experienced the kind of bushfires we have. So, the ‘huge smoke’ could have been a small fire.

To debunk the myth of aboriginal people using hazard reduction, he quoted a study by Phil Zylstra. As a fire scientist, Zylstra study was commissioned by the Australian Alps Liaison Committee. This is after the ravaged Victoria in 2003. His is one of the studies that use scientific processes to Australian fires.

In his study, Zylstra went back 600 years to draw information about Alps fires. Surprisingly, he found that what pro-burn lobby groups cite as the aboriginal burning big practice may not have existed. The study shows aboriginal people didn’t burn the Alps frequently before Europeans arrived.

According to Zylstra’s study, the average fire frequencies between 41-55 years. Some areas show that they went up to 100 years without fire. The study debunks this myth of aboriginal people using burn-offs to control fire. But the frequency of fires increases with the arrival of Europeans. It averaged every five years before going up to every year.

So, hazard reduction may not provide a solution to bushfires as most people tend to think. The aboriginal people may not have used it before, as claimed by pro-burn lobby groups. That’s according to Phil Zylstra’s study. So, the “greenies are to blame” tag does not hold any water. People should also stop saying that authorities don’t listen to the locals. It makes no sense. Most people in the fire department are from the local community, hence debunking this argument.

He also mentioned that those shouting the loudest are not honest. Most of them are people who benefited from public land before. From farmers who hard their farms cut to established national parks to loggers. So, the blame game is by the people who benefitted from lands before and are now resentful. So, it’s all about self-interests and not for the good of nature and the general population.

Professor Poongschtok ends by acknowledging that the authorities are using the best tools available. With hazard reduction as one of these tools, it should only be used where it offers the greatest benefits. But not because there is a wildfire. He cautioned that the hauling of blames wouldn’t solve the wildfire problem damaging Australian flora and fauna.

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bushfire, environment, life

September 25, 2020

Hazard Reduction Burning: Ecological or Pathological?

It’s spring, and I now almost everyone in Australia have one thing ringing in their mind- bushfire. These fires have become too common as we approach summer. You don’t even need to be a rocket scientist to predict it. You already know summer comes with wildfires burning across the Australian Landscape.

What makes it worse is the sensational news broadcasted by the media when covering these fires. The question we need to ask is, how much of the media is factual? And how much of it is sensational? Well, Michael Clarke, an associate professor in the department of zoology at La Trobe University, published a paper on in the CSIRO journal covering these bushfires.

The paper interrogates the effectiveness of hazard reduction burning. The method has been used to control these fires for decades. He based the paper on two major questions – whether hazard reduction saves homes and the cost of native wildlife and plants.

According to Clarke’s observation, there a lot of precious wild that is lost through these fires. The sad thing is that all this burning is done to keep the homeowners happy. He says in his paper that the kind of destruction the burning does cannot compare to the saved homes.

Clarke says that all agencies tasked with land management in Australia need to come up with better fire management methods. Methods that do not cause irreversible damages to the native wildlife and habitat. But he noted that the fire management agencies could not handle these fires. In fact, he likened fighting bushfire to controlling cyclones. So, we cannot blame the authorities for the huge fires.

The use of hazard reduction is only meant to create a false sense of security for homeowners. According to Clarke, the nature damage remains undocumented as a result of burn-offs. That’s why more effective control methods that do not burn wildlife should be used. Otherwise, Australia wildlife biodiversity will go into extinction with every burn-off we light.

But the formulation of policies to fight wildfires remains the biggest challenge. For the longest time, Clarke says we’ve been directing more resources to areas that don’t matter. He cites events on Montague Island. Since the 2001 fire, there has been a circus going on every year for the protection of penguins from burning. The much-publicised protection the little penguin not necessary at all.

With boats, helicopters, and ambulances, they turn the small island into a spectacle. At the same time, thousands of wildlife are burning on mainland Australia with no help. The only ‘effective’ way to fight mainland fires are burn-offs using incendiary devices. We already know the kind of damage this method is doing to our wildlife. So, we need to have more resources deployed for mainland fires.

At the end of his paper, Clarke calls for the more scrutinisation of hazard reduction burning. After using it for decades, it has not shown any improvement in bushfire management. He cautioned that global warming is likely to make the condition even worse in the coming years.

Clarke recommended for more sophisticated discussions between the agencies involved in land management. He suggested for data-driven solutions starting with a systematic collection of bushfire data. That would be the best strategy to help reduce damages in the ecosystems. Otherwise, hazard reduction will remain a guesswork method. The wildlife will continue to extinct, and global will come back to haunt us.

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animals, bushfire, life

August 10, 2020

Pacific Islanders Sail 11,000km to Deliver Message of Ocean Protection

It’s worrying how the level of marine pollution is fast-growing every day. We can’t hide it anymore as the impact is clearly seen from the damages to our marine life. And of course, the most affected are the people living in small islands. These are people that depending on the ocean for survival.

The increasing pollution and dwindling seas life are some of the reasons why a group of Pacific Islanders sailed 11,000km to deliver the message of ocean protection to the World Parks Congress in Sydney. The long sail was organised by Tua Pittman, a resident of Rarotonga in the Cook Island. As a specialist in traditional navigation, Tua guided around 100 crew members on this voyage to Sydney.

According to Tua, the ocean means everything to the people of the Pacific Islands. From food to their way of life, they have depended on the oceans for thousands, if not millions of years. But with the growing pollution of the seas, their way of life is getting disrupted in a big way. The most unfortunate thing is that most of this pollution is coming from the outside world.

The use of the canoes in Sydney was symbolic. According to Tua, navigating canoes and the crew to the coast of Sydney for the World Park Congress was a symbolic gesture. They tried to show the leaders and politicians that for things to move, they must be ready to lead their people. That’s because they are the policymakers and implementers.

The 11,000km voyage began at the Cook Island on September 25 with a flotilla of four Vaka (canoes) built with a fibreglass hull and in traditional style. According to Tua, the idea was to show that the people from the islands have not changed their way of life. They still need the ocean to survive. The journey included several stopovers covering major islands. They passed through Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, and then Gold Coast before heading to Sydney.

The message that this group of sailors brought to the opening of the World Park Congress in Sydney. The aim of the message was to encourage marine conservation. They asked for the reduction of exploitation of marine life to improve the life of the islanders. The message lamented about the dwindling marine life because of overexploitation.

In part, the message said: “We no longer see the fish and other marine creatures in the size, diversity or plenty of the past.” The islanders also cited a lack of protection from the international fishing fleets. Most of these fleets ply their waters to exploit their resources. They also said that most of their natural marine heritage has also been damaged. In the message, they lamented their coral reefs, mangrove, and wetland disappearing because of pollution. That’s what the message said.

But this is not the first time that the issue of marine overexploitation has been raised. In the previous World Parks Congress, the same issue was raised, and little has been achieved. Back in 2003, the South Africa summit pass several resolutions on ocean conservation. One of the resolutions was to have 20-30% of no-take areas.

A team of world-leading marine scientists set out these resolutions. One of them is professor Callum Roberts from the University of York. But Professor Robert said this percentage was still small for better marine conservation. That’s why the Pacific Islanders were requesting for an increase in the no-take area from 30 to 33%. This would mean more conservation to marine life.

After haggling and negotiations among the World Parks Congress delegates made a resolution. One of them is increasing the ocean area to be put under protected areas by 2030. They also resolved that these areas should have strictly protected areas of at least 30%.

These measures would see a huge part of ocean life protected. But the application of these resolutions by the government is another thing altogether. Most of the governments have been reluctant to implement the previous resolutions. Even the few that have done it have implemented only a small percentage of the resolutions.

A good example is here in Australia. The federal government is claiming to protect 35% of the Aussies’ marine waters. But this is not true. Only 10% of this huge chunk of the Australian water is under protection. Note that most of the protected area is in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

So, it will be a huge challenge for Tua and his Pacific Islanders to enjoy the World Parks Congress resolutions. But their voyage was not in vain since they were able to grab global attention. We just hope that those in authority, leaders, and politicians, will put the needs of the people first.

Blog, Life, Travel

life, travel

Sydney’s Original Weather Calendar

A Mid-Lane Speedo Crisis

Ancient Koalas Had the Pick of Not-so-tough Nosh

Hazard Reduction: The Blame Game

Hazard Reduction Burning: Ecological or Pathological?

Pacific Islanders Sail 11,000km to Deliver Message of Ocean Protection

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Sydney’s Original Weather Calendar

A Mid-Lane Speedo Crisis

Ancient Koalas Had the Pick of Not-so-tough Nosh

Hazard Reduction: The Blame Game

Hazard Reduction Burning: Ecological or Pathological?

Pacific Islanders Sail 11,000km to Deliver Message of Ocean Protection

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