4/28/14 Made it to Australia!

All the 2014 Wildland Fire Study Tour participants survived the
14.5 hour flight and here are waiting for the last flight to Canberra.

Well, we all made it to LAX from across the country to catch our flight to Sydney! The 14.5 hour flight was really, really long but we all survived with varying amounts of sleep.  We skipped Sunday and arrived Monday morning the 28th and then waited a few hours for our next flight to Canberra.

We were picked up in Canberra by our hosts one (whose name escapes me due to lack of sleep) was the head of their equivalent of the NWCG,  Andrew who will be our tour guide for the rest of the trip, and Neil Cooper (whose job escapes me now).

That's Neil to the right, on the right, talking with our fearless leader Jason Steinmetz on the bus that took us to the Australian National University where we stayed the first day.


To the right is our first view of Australia as we flew out of Sydney.  Those weird shapes are the way the prop showed up on the phone camera!  Very fall like here, all the trees gold and red.  But a very nice 60 or 65 degrees.

Not to much to report.  We got to our rooms about 12 noon Oz time.  The rest of the day we spent trying not to fall asleep.  We walked around outside, went to see some museums, walked around the beautiful lake that is the center of Canberra and tried to stay awake till dinner at 5:30 so we could get in sync with the time zone. Got to know some of our fellow fire peeps.  Juan is from Mexico, Jalisco to be exact, and is like an FMO for the equivalent of a state agency, since Jalisco is like one of our states.  I believe he called it the State Forestry Commission?

During our walk we saw some, well bizarre architecture like this little brick and steel structure to the left.  Not sure what that was all about.  Perhaps it was art!   And the building to the right.  Those are large planters of some sort hanging off the sides of the building.

Otherwise, just some minor adjustments.  Only some people's phones work. Not mine.  Had to learn how to operate the room heat and lights (you have to put your room key in the thermostat mechanism on the wall! Never would have figured that out. Got our first "biscuits" on the plane - cookies which I'm sure many of you know. So not much hard news to report as we are just focusing on arriving and staying awake at the moment. But everyone has been very nice, and its beautiful.  Looking forward to tomorrows ride up into the Brindabelles (SP?) the mountains to look at a fuels treatment and some other efforts.  So more when we find wifi again.