Postal, politics, building

Another note about the postal system: tiny mailboxes with notices "No Junk Mail." Turns out that most junk mail is delivered at the door by private delivery. Generally if you've got a sign up that so "No junk," you get none. But if some is dropped off at the door, it comes with a little note telling you when they'll be back to pick it up if you don't want it - just leave it outside the door and the delivery guy takes it away. (Except, the guy never showed up in my case, and the catalogue is still sitting there 2 days later).

Australian parliament is currently in the midst of a vociferous debate on a carbon tax proposed by the Labor Government. Last night was "Question Time," a somewhat louder, more acrimonious, nastier version of Britain's "Prime Minister's Questions." It gets extensive coverage and replays on radio and TV. The Speaker of the House tried to valiantly to keep order: the final score was 18 representatives ejected for an hour each, and one kicked out for 24 hours! At one point, the Speaker said to Julia Gillard (the prime minister): (roughly) "It is time now for the Prime Minister to sit down, and to stay seated, and to not arise again until your turn to do so. I shall also remind the Prime Minister that her task is to answer the question, not to answer any question which she cares to answer!" Watching on TV, one notes that will the prime minister or other government ministers are answering questions, Tony Abbott the opposition leader, is variously making faces, rude gestures, slouching, looking disgusted, and (rather amazingly) doing a good imitation of "Rocky - the Denver Nuggets mascot" stirring up the vocal opposition. All quite amazing.

BTW, voting in Australia is compulsory. $20 fine if you don't vote. If you don't pay the fine, they'll take you to court and you can be fined $56 plus court costs. They do things like sending people around to the hospital to collect ballots from the inpatients. And, I gather that there are polling places everywhere, so easy to vote (including in the hospital for those working that day).

Seems like most of the houses here have no basements - not too surprising since these steep ridges have basement rocks right up under the surface soil - major explosives to dig a basement.

Geologically, the Tamar River valley (with Lonnie at the upper end) is a graben - a geology feature with 2 parallel fault systems, and the terrain in the middle displaced downward. So, these steep hills are running up the wall of the graben right up the fault line (and my house is perched on the fault). Steady there, baby.

I walked home from the hospital by a different route and looked up to see a number of very modern homes with big glass windows and decks looking out over the view of the city. But, they were where I expected to see the old brick houses with decorative cast iron across the street from my house. Investigating further, a number of these old homes have been expanded or remodeled into these modern rear exposures (not sure what a facade at the back of a house is), so the front is old traditional, and the rear looks like southern california. Neat.

Today walked up through "The Gorge" I side valley out of the main valley of the Tamar. Steep walls of igneous (dolorite) rock with lots of vegetation on it (and obviously climbed judging by the bolt ladders and chalked handholds). Very rocky bed down the middle that apparently was quite a raging torrent before the lake was dammed above the Gorge in the 1950's, reducing the water flows to a small fraction of former levels.