It's Hot in the Red Centre

That's how they spell 'center' of here ya'll --> centre.

Anywho, best friend Dougie Phresh Albright came and visited us. Unfortunately, he too had flight problems and got stranded in Sydney because Qantas is dumb. He finally arrived and the Frobii parents, me, Hyatt and Doug all traveled to Dookie for a tour of the farms and dinner. I have no pictures of that, sorry.

Hyatt's parents departed and Hyatt, Dougie Phresh and I flew to Alice Springs for the roadtrip of a lifetime - p.s. we almost missed our flight, barely got our bags checked with about 1 minute to spare.

Unfortunately, Doug's luggage didn't make it but Qantas (who suck) gave him this nice pack of pajamas.

Arrival at the Alice Springs airport - happy and not yet really hot.

We HAD to play golf on another continent - it was awesome. Doug helped me with my long game

Our caddy who finally learned how to NOT drive on the greens.

After a short time in Alice we headed towards King's Canyon - via this road. Five hours of no pavement with Hyatt driving. I'll hold my tongue.

Wild horses aka brumbys were everywhere

Some of the beautiful secenery at King's Canyon

The initial climb at King's Canyon - very steep. Doug and I wanted to die.

Looking out over the vast Red Centre

He tried to pick me up for this picture - both Doug and I yelled 'No! What are you doing?!'

A little entertainment and gambling - nothing like bidding with

tea and sugar packets (Doug won btw).

Gorgeous sunset

First night at Alice Spring resort - the chefs.

K-S-U alumni in front of Ayers Rock/Uluru

It's a big freakin' rock in the middle of nowhere, literally.

Very dark red rock during sunset with some loser guy in my shot.

After an amazing time at Uluru (we climbed it, yea!) we headed to Coober Pedy where there is an abundance of opal mines and underground hotels but there is a shortage of water.

The entrance to our hotel - underground.

Hallway in underground hotel

Our cozy little room - we stayed pretty cool but the air got kind of stale since there's no windows.

Left Coober Pedy and it's 40 degree heat (that's 110 F) and went to the Barossa Valley, where we did some damage at Penfold's Winery. I discovered I really, really like dessert wine.

So that was our trip in a nutshell - it was RIDICULOUSLY hot the entire trip although it did rain occasionally. I took a ton of pictures of Uluru and King's Canyon so if you want to see them, look me up on thefacebook. Also, we visited a farm the last few days but Hyatt is going to blog about that (get excited)!

Until Hyatt blogs,

~ Buzzard ~

First Wedded Thanksgiving

Yesterday was our first Thanksgiving as a married couple - I guess you could say it was eventful, while definitely memorable.

We spent this entire week helping with a research project at Dookie that dealt with nutrition and physiology in pigs. This is what we did on Thanksgiving:

We took blood samples from 32 pigs every 5 minutes for 6 hours. It was mind-numbing at times but most of our Australian friends were there so that was fun.

For Thankgiving dinner, there was no turkey, stuffing or mashed potatoes. However, after a few sad looks and a pouty lip, I got Hyatt to drive to town and get me some charchoal chicken, chips and gravy. Roasted poultry with gravy; can't go wrong. Dinner with friends and Hyatt was a pretty nice Thanksgiving after all.

You're probably wondering what I"m thankful for (a lot) but I wrote it on another blog so please read here if you're interested in all the blessings I'm thankful for this year.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. To my family: I can't wait to see you all in less than three weeks for the Ohio gang and five weeks for the Kansas gang. Love you all!

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~

Packing off to Perth

Hyatt was asked to speak at a swine conference in Perth which is in Western Australia. See visual below.

That may not seem like a long ways but it's actually about 2100 miles - which is almost the equivalent of driving from LA,CA to NY,NY.

We're flying, incidentally.

By the time you read this (depending on when you log on to get caught up on our exciting lives), we'll either be enroute to the airporto or in the air on the way to Perth. Don't worry, the blog will continue to supply you with roughly 3-5 minutes of entertainment while we're gone.

While in Perth we plan to go whale watching (I love whales), visit the Maritime Museum and probably go to Rottnest Island. Pictures will be provided later, duh. We're also going to visit some hog farms and a cattle station to get our ag on while we're there. I'll try to snap a picture of Hyatt while he's being all important and stuff. It should prove to be an exciting trip.

Stay tuned for more exciting FroBuzz adventures!

Until tomorrow,

~ Brandi ~

Hyatt milked a sheep

Yep - check it out.

Awesome as, eh.

As part of a project for another graduate student at Melbourne Uni, we milked sheep. Well, actually Hyatt milked sheep and I recorded times, etc. It was enthralling and entertaining, all at the same time.

So there's your laugh for the day. You. are. welcome.





Until next time

~ Buzzard ~

p.s. - if you're thinking I put this on here because I've worked 38 hours in 3 days and had nothing else much to talk about because I'm exhausted......

you're correct.



Going On A Walkabout

A few days ago, while being bored between pig feeding and weighing, Hyatt wanted to go for a walk. I'm game for a walkabout in the Australian wilderness. My only concern was the potential presence of these:

brown snake = dead.ly.

Before we got out of the ute (remember what a ute is?) I asked Hyatt if he had his phone in case we encountered the aforeshown dead.ly. brown snake of Australia.

 

Answer. No. Cripes.

 

**I'm not scared of snakes - I'm scared of dying from a snakebite. Those are two completely different things. **

We proceeded to venture into the outback anyways because we were hoping to catch sight of some our favorite Australian animals - kangaroos, kookaburras and koalas. Like that?

 

We quietly walked through a forest/bush area (as quiet as we could be considering I was shooing invisible snakes away and hissing at Hyatt to slow down) when I spotted this:

See that? That's some sort of poop. Kangaroo poop, we hoped. Even though it's rather dry.

Continuing on we found this:

Clearly kangaroo track. Look at how they could be made from the jumping motion. **We have no idea if these are really tracks but they look kind of like them so we called it a win**

I found my favorite Australian bird hanging out in a tree nearby. I love his call.

While continuing to walk somewhat quietly through the bush - we saw more of this:

This looks waaaaaaay fresher and we must be getting close to something.

Next thing we know - jackpot.

If you look closely in the upper third of the picture, right in the center - that's a kangaroo bounding away.

And this guy is a wallaby - notice how he's darker and carries himself lower than kangaroos?

I found one more interesting specimen in the bush...

He hates it when I get camera happy.

All in all, the walkabout was successful. Sighted two of my fave Aussie animals. No snakes. No snakebites. Great day :)

See you tomorrow,

~ Buzzard ~



Battlewounds from Pork

Hyatt's trial is almost done. I have just finished washing off the sweat, pig crap, sheep crap, dirt and blood from a 12 hour day of livestock work. Yes, I said blood.

We loaded pigs this evening. I had a run-in with a nasty boar. This was the result.

Look at ma face!

While it's safe to say that the boar definitely won the battle after throwing the sorting board back at my face (literally), I can most assuredly claim I won the war. I'll be still be alive in 12 hours and he, well.....

I think I'd look good in a Bruce Willis movie.

Hyatt told me, "Guys dig scars."

Grrrrrrrrrreat.

You may notice that I am wearing my "I dig the pig" shirt from the Ohio Pork Producer's Council.

I am not, currently, digging the pig.

More tomorrow (but less blood),

~ Buzzard ~

Holy Canola!

It's springtime here. Lots of baby animals running around. Also lots of crops looking bright green and in some cases, yellow.

Yellow, one of my fave features of the rainbow, is everywhere here. Australia produces a heap of canola, which is used to make cooking oil, among other things.

So while Hyatt was feeding some pigs, I snuck away to snap some pictures of the beautiful stuff. Tell me what you think!

It's so bright it makes everything else look like a black/white photo.

Church near Dookie

And these are obviously not canola fields but how cute are they?!

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Until next time,

~ Buzzard ~

Good and Bad

Bad news: car still not fixed

Good news: we went to the Grampians (small mountain-ish range 4 hours from Melbourne) and they were super awesome neato! Hiking in the country, controlled burning of some forests, wildlife and lunch in a small town. It was a busy day (a long one too the trip was 7am to 8 pm) but well worth the views!

The 'waterfall' - hadn't run dry but it wasn't gushing!

Aboriginal art

Cheers,

~ FroBuzz ~

Visit to Dookie

The town's name is Dookie and it's one of the ag campuses associated with the Uni. We got up super early on Sunday morning (6:30) and drove 2 1/2 hours to the Dookie campus sheep and dairy units. Fahri was doing some heat stress evaluations in dairy cattle on Sunday afternoon and Monday and Tuesday were to be devoted to a project evaluating heat stress in sheep.

We got a tour of the Dookie campus - it's out in the country and really pretty. Even saw some kangaroos - but we didn't have the good camera so no pictures, sorry. I can tell you that they are HUGE and will knock you on your butt if you mess with them. The kangaroos here are eastern grey kangaroos - apparently there are 3 or 4 different kinds (red, grey, east, west etc). While at Dookie they hooked us up with some nice dorms which included single bedrooms (Hyatt made me pull my bed into his room. how sweet) and CABLE. We watched ridiculous amounts of Big Bang Theory on Sunday night.

After Fahri finished his cattle work we had a barbee picnic (barbee means BBQ).  Meat only. Not kidding - we had chicken, lamb, kangaroo (I didn't try it but Hyatt said it was ok) and beef. It was all extremely, extremely delicious. I'm  not sure I've ever eaten that much meat in one sitting in my life.

Monday and Tuesday called for a lot of sheep handling work. Hyatt and I were helping evaluate the effect of heat stress on glucose challenged sheep being fed chromium diets. Hyatt helped cannulate the sheep so we could draw blood samples (btw, for you science-y people, cannulate and catheterize are synonymous here). We drew blood samples all day Monday and Tuesday morning - it was really nice for us to be around animals and out in the country again after so much time in the city.

We met some more graduate students and research assistants - all of which were very nice. New friend Vicky promises to take us out on the town sometime next week. We both need a fun night and a few drinks :)

Cheers,
~ FroBuzz ~