Last night I sat on the long golden beach watching the hoiho (yellow-eyed penguins) coming ashore. Today was a "day off" so I just spent three hours checking and resetting the rat traps along the coast. Nothing has ever been found. I saw a number of rare Fiordland crested penguins preparing to return to sea after moulting, also three dead hoiho. These were brought back to be analysed. Nest minding again tonight I think: it's busy here.

This is Sue, the kakapo I've been minding the past two nights. She is sitting on two eggs. I've never actually seen her, just the view on this tiny screen. I did meet Sinbad yesterday though. The days are long with four hours feeding out, two walking to and from nests, and then a night of interrupted sleep.

After stumbling along a muddy track in the dark for an hour, we found our tent and have just completed our first hour of nest minding. I heard booming on the track: deeper than my attempts but not dissimilar. Birdlife all around: kakapo, petrels, ruru, kaka, parakeets, cuckoos. Good night!

I arrived in driving rain, but the city has since dried off and warmed up. I checked out the tuatara at the museum (the largest one is 125 years old!) and headed out to Oreti Beach to wash and organise. On the way back, a sign promising fernbirds distracted me. I saw one and heard several from a short track (www.fernbirds.co.nz). Streets here have odd names like Nith, Don, Leet, Ythan, and Conon. I'm headed for Eye.

It's almost midnight and the water are crashing behind me. I'm sitting on one of the massive accretion boulders at Moeraki. Heading south again tomorrow. Must go — the tide's coming in.

It's funny, leaving a city. You're conscious of the fact that every face you see, you'll never see again. All those lives right there in front of you, but out of reach.

On the flight back I sat next to a woman from the Navy. She worked in Combat Systems, which is sonar, radar, and the like. She talked about listening to the whales singing.

Sydney is like a big wet dog breathing in your face. The air was heavy, wet, and hanging with smells you could call spicy or fetid, depending on your mood.

Mike and I were there for MXDU 2005, which was interesting: we got to meet in person a lot of people who had only ever been names before.

At The Rocks, an historic precinct at the foot of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, we watched ibises with long curved bills begging for scraps alongside the much smaller pigeons and gulls.

We also learned about the city's public transport system. They've really invested in infrastructure there, with buses, trains, light rail, monorail, ferries, and of course a massive bridge. We rode the underground trains regularly but never really came to understand the station layout. Often we'd look down a corridor, featureless save the exit signs diminishing in both directions to infinity, and wonder if we had been in the same place five times or five different identical places one time each. As trains departed the platforms, a rush of air would slide down the escalator tunnels rising from the platform, like the city inhaling. We tried to act nonchalant — actually Mike was better at this, claiming he never even noticed.

We took a harbour cruise with a tacky automated commentary and hilariously lame sound effects (every time the narrator said "horse" for example there would be some neighing and a clip-clop clip-clop...). The commentary kept descibing indescribably wealthy suburbs, and you could see by looking that it was all true, along with pointing out the nude beaches and sites of shark attacks. We concluded that a good slogan for Sydney Harbour might be, "Get naked; get eaten."

One night we missed the last train, so we walked from "Central" back to King's Cross. It was worth it just to see a bat silhouetted against the sky in Hyde Park. Apparently, they hang like woolly fruit in the Botanic Gardens. We passed a sign at the Met advertising a maritime exhibition and I recognised the white-capped mollymawks. And that reminded me of home.

On Saturday I was walking a dog along the Heathcote River. There had been a spill, with 10000L of diesel floating down the river. I kept the dog on leash as the ducks and ducklings were all sitting up on the banks looking forlorn. Finally I came upon a footbridge over the river, where some pollution control booms had been placed in the river and a man in an orange fluoro coat was monitoring the situation. The dog and I stood on the bridge watching the coloured rings of pollution passing beneath us, breathing in the poor river's stink.

Some mountain bikers came through, coasting onto the bridge and started cursing at the dog who was blocking them and requiring them to slow down. I offered that they should not be wankers. One of them dismounted and lunged toward me and started pushing me, demanding, "What did you call me?" And also offering in return to throw me in the river. I weighed up the facts that I couldn't let go of the leash, didn't have mobile phone insurance, and didn't want to smell like diesel, and decided I couldn't remember. The two of them continued to talk / shout at me for some time, but there wasn't a lot I could do except kindly invite them to fuck off. The did eventually, but they kept stopping and turning around and looking like they were considering coming back, but then yelling things instead, such as the classy line (which sounds a little pathetic on somebody heading for 40): "You're cruising for a bruising."

Strange how an innocent activity in the grassy suburbs can deteriorate in seconds into a violent confrontation. There's a thin layer of civilisation like a sugary glaze coating the chocolate realities of society: power, aggression, and violence.

Anyway so I didn't get much sleep Saturday night after that. But yesterday was far worse.

Yesterday, I was driving along my street at the legal 40km/h (it's a slow street) when I saw a little boy coasting down his driveway. He disappeared behind a parked SUV then barreled out onto the street in front of me to skid to a stop directly in front of the car. Since I'd seen him on the driveway already I had already stopped. But if I hadn't I figure I would have hit him. I should have said something to him, but I was speechless. I need tranquillisers.

This picture is posted from my phone. It's just a test.

Would it be a reasonable generalisation do you think to say that males bite while females lick?

In this country there are basically two options for networks: Telecom (CDMA) and Vodafone (GSM). The Vodafone phones are much cooler, while the Telecom offerings are decidedly lacking in sparkle. However, Telecom has better coverage (including a certain parrot-infested island) so I went with a Telecom phone.

It's a Nokia 3205, which seems to be relatively feature rich for a reasonable price. I still haven't figured out how to get the cover off to replace the ugly default, and the screen fades to black right when you're in the middle of thinking long and hard about something. One disappointment is that it doesn't really support email -- you can send SMS to an email address or you can use web forms. In comparison, the Sony Ericsson T630 is just a few dollars more and includes Bluetooth and proper POP (email) handling. But I do like the way Nokia build interfaces: they're very usable and intuitive, I find.

I'm adding mobile blogging support to this weblog by getting it to check a POP account at intervals for messages from the phone, stripping pictures from them and storing the pictures in a "pending" folder. (There's currently no support for simply posting by email, but I'll add that later.) I've added a thin-client posting form that only includes a title and body field with a select box so that you can add one of the pending photographs if you like. Since your username and password are embedded in the URL, you don't have to login — just store the long URL in your phone.

I really should stop adding features to this weblog app and roll the damn thing out, but the truth is I'm a little ashamed of the state of the code.

I can relate to animals. They don't judge me, try to figure me out, or tell me what a fool I am. They don't care: they just want scratched behind the ear. I can deliver that. Humans are much harder. I can't understand you and you can't understand me. No point spending any time on it. Unfortunately there are no animals here. Except for me. Woof.

This counts as my first "real" post from my phone btw. 

This post is coming at you from my new phone.

I am moving house at the weekend. I'm glad I don't have to waste any more time looking, but there's nothing to feel good about. I feel many different things at the moment: mostly sad, hurt, and lost. But they don't translate into posts as I don't have any right to feel anything like this, or anything at all.

I like to think I make a positive difference to the world, but that's just an illusion. I feel like an oxbow pond, a billabong, a loop in the river that's no longer on the path from mountain to sea.