Ice Baby

Probably the best presentation at this conference, and one of the best I’ve heard for some time was from the dynamic Dan Neely from the Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office. Given that he used music (Vanilla Ice) as a hook, I was hooked. He talked about how they are reconfiguring emergency management to be community […]

Hangin’ with the nerds (in the coolest town)

I’m in Wellington, Aoteroa for the joint Bushfire Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre and AFAC annual conference. Wellington is one of my favourite places, only confirmed further by having great weather, and my fold up bike with me to explore a bit more than what my feet will allow me. One of the exciting things […]

As the stars fall-guest blogger Emily Richardson

A book review of As Stars Fall by Christine Nieman I think this is a good book. The writer, Christine Nieman, did a great job writing about emotions in as the stars fall. Although it was good, I think it is definitely for older kids. There is some drug use, and may be advanced for kids […]

Not lost. Mostly.

I am a geographer. It is a bold statement. Particularly when you are filling out your tax return, and are asked for occupation, and there is no “geographer” in the list of hundreds of jobs. In the tax office’s eyes, I don’t exist. Still on the birth certificates of my children, I am listed as […]

Sculthorpe

The great Australian composer, indeed one of the world’s great contemporary composers, Peter Sculthorpe this week passed from this world to the next. Sculthorpe was a prolific giant in the Australian music scene, with an ability to place a western classical music tradition within both the Australian landscape as well as the south east Asian […]

#RedCross100

Red Cross in Australia is 100! It has been an interesting journey for an organisation that is a little bit different to others. It has been recognised by at least one author as the first disaster management organisation in Australia. When you think about it, we do precede fire services and emergency services as they […]

Warning

I went along to the launch of Sophie Cunningham’s Warning, a great non-fiction narrative about Cyclone Tracy, which destroyed Darwin in 1974. I’ve been a fan of Sophie’s writing since her novel Geography was released. The sense of weather at it densest and sometimes extreme pervades her writing. The descriptions of summer storms in Sydney […]

Schools

The last thing you expect as a teacher when you take a school group to the local aquatic centre, is that a 6.3 earthquake throws everyone, including a couple of thousand tonnes of water, up in the air and back down again. According to Carol Mutch, an Associate Professor at the University of Auckland, this […]

Big Yellow Taxi

Riding to work, my route takes in the magnificent Bay trail. Coming through St Kilda this morning, an empty large concrete slab caught my eye. The iconic century old Stokehouse Restaurant burnt down earlier in the year. The word iconic is important here. It wasn’t a particularly architecturally worthy building (according to the architects). It […]

The other side

What has been missing from the coverage of MH17 has been the impact on the Ukranians. THe way it has been depicted until I saw this article in the New Daily was that it was a solely western tragedy perpetrated by an evil “other”. The Ukranians to date have been depicted drunken callous marauding looters […]