Science Down Under

Three weeks of being back in cold rainy Christchurch was enough! So we packed up and headed for warmer sunnier shores on the tropical Queensland coast of eastern Australia!

Sounds like vacation, but I was actually going for a large microbial ecology conference. SM accompanied me as my ever-faithful partner in crime. The city of Cairns lies at about 16 degrees South and has a delicious tropical climate. The conference was to go from Sunday 17 August until Friday 22 August. We arrived on Saturday 16 August in the early afternoon, and had time to expore Cairns on foot.

There was such an amazing range of tropical and temperate produce. I fell victim to the temptation of fresh cherries, outrageously priced at AUD 10 for a few hundred grams, but oh were they yummy.

The welcome banner for the conference, the 12th Meeting of the International Society for Microbial Ecology.

The fully packed plenary hall at the convention centre during the opening address and first plenary lecture. After the official business we were provided with entertainment consisting of a local Aboriginal dance/music performance which included didjeridoo and clapstick playing, dancing, storytelling, and audience participation (not me!).

I had the pleasure of "running into" old friends and colleagues from my days in Berkeley, Norway and the Netherlands. Here is a picture of me and my friend Jean-Michel Monier, who completed his PhD in the same lab in Berkeley where I did my MSc. He moved back to France after graduating in 2002 and is now working in Lyon on some very cool projects involving microbial biofuel cells.

What better way is there to get 1500 strangers to mingle and get acquainted with each other than to herd them into the same space and give them plenty of free alcohol and finger food? The nifty green rucksacks were part of the conference fee, thus everyone studiously made use of them. Notice the full moon in the background. It really was a lovely first night for the conference.

We were fortunate with the weather, as winter in Cairns means day temperatures around 22-28C with a lovely cooling ocean breeze. Rainy season summer temperatures reach 36-40C and bring with them about 90% humidity! How fortunate that Cairns is located on the coast, right? Wrong! All that beautiful ocean, all of which is patrolled by the occasional estuarine crocodile, making the coastal waters around Cairns inherently unsafe to swim in. To provide the populace with a place to cool their sweaty footies, the city has built a swimming lagoon right next to the beach. As far as the beaches go, the sediments are rather mucky, making their only inhabitants seagulls, pelicans, egrets, ibises and other birds in search of the wayward crab or stranded fish.