"MO"VEMBER

Hi All,

In case you didn't realise, Richard is doing Movember, which is a fund-raising monthly growing of a moustache. You can view my progress (and donate if you wish) by clicking the link here

Movember (the month formerly known as November) is an annual charity event held during November. 

At the start of Movember guys register with a clean shaven face. The Movember participants, known as Mo Bros, have the remainder of the month to grow and groom their Mo, raising money along the way to benefit men's health - specifically prostate cancer and male depression.  

The above is a sample of my "MoGro" as of today, 28th Movember, 2008.

The Todd River Flows November 18, 2008

The Heavens certainly have opened up over the last little while and the Todd flowed more than I can remember seeing in the 8+ years I've been here. Scroll down to see photos from this morning.

I would like the Alice Springs newspapers to lead with a story heading something like:

The evening the Rain brought the town together and washed away their troubles, if only for one day. It really was amazing to watch not only the river, but the amount of people down by the river. There were traffic jams, kids and dogs frollicking around and people set up with deck chairs to watch the river flow as the sun set.

    

  

The below show some of Annie's photos from this morning. As you can see, the river area looks beauitfully washed but the river level has decreased significantly overnight

    

  

Dan's Boat Race Clay Pans November 15 2008

    

    

    

    

    

      

    

November when the Todd River flows

    

   
Eventually it had to happen. After 6 years of very little rain, finally over the past month or so we have had some decent falls. The Todd River has now flowed two weekends in a row, and unlike last week, as I write this, it is still flowing, although quite diminished from when the photos were taken.

        

There have been some people who have been stranded on the outlying areas of Alice Springs but we were lucky not to be one of them this time.

What the Farthing Warings have been doing

As per usual life in Alice Springs is very busy.

The soccer season finished, only to be followed by swimming lessons for Ruby and Banjo. Ruby continues to go to Gymnastics each Wednesday night, and Banjo has started Under 9s cricket. I have become the cricket coach for his team and we are recruiting quite a few of the soccer team. I am about to re-launch my non-illustrious cricketing career in the C-Grade this weekend, my one hope is to still be able to walk the next day!

Annie helped with a Beanie Festival presentation at the Art at the Heart conference held a few weeks ago. She is busy with the presidency of the Steiner School Council. There are quite a few new buildings now out at the school so I'll take some photos and upload them in the next few weeks. She is also having some small wins at Hetti Perkins and seems to really enjoy the work, despite always wanting to be able to do more.

Both Banjo and Ruby seem to be enjoying school and have had positive feedback in the parent teacher/class meetings.

Moses continues on his merry way. His week consists of spending Monday at his friend Clancy's place, Tuesday is PlayCare, Wednesday is spent with Annie and Clancy at our house (or out and about), Thursday is spent in Family Day Care at Wendy's and then Friday mornings (before banjo gets home at lunch) is spent with Annie.

After a long haul of exciting events, hopefully there will be a slight lull before the Christmas celebratory events take place.

The main exciting development in town has been the opening of our very own Target store. Could have more in it, but it is a welcome change to the vacant shelves at KMart we have been confronted with over the past 12 months or so.

E-Nabling NT Roadshow

Starting out from Alice Springs on the morning of 20th October, 12 relative strangers embark upon a trip to demonstrate e-learning to the teachers and students of the NT. We took 2 big MALUs (Mobile Adult Learning Units)

We stopped at Ali Carung, Elliot, Katherine, Jabiru and Darwin Convention Centre. My role was to setup the laptops inside the trucks, and create a connection between the satellite dish on the back of the trailer, and the Optus

 Satellite. I had to tune the dish as best as I could, then call Syd

ney Optus and with their help, fine tune the dish further to receive clear transmissions via the NT DET School of the Air network.

Ali Carung - the visit itself was a test run for all of us, our first 

"show on the road". There was also a grand final to be played in the community as a fight the previous Saturday morning had

 postponed the game. Umpire (rather large) stood in the middle and blew his whistle, didn't move from that spot for the 5 minutes we watched. One player in jeans and work boots!

Then off to Tennant Creek for a rest for the night.

Day 2 was up to Elliot. Stopped outside the School, set up th

e satellite dish for over 2 hours,

 finally connected to the

 School of the Air Studio in Alice Springs and could see the Discovery

 Channel as clear as can be. Hot work, drove to Daly Waters for another well earned rest.

Day 3 was a strange day. We "paused" at Larrimah, "paused at Mataranka and then set up at the Katherine Training Centre campus. Compared to the pre

vious two days this was a fairly easy day for me. 

Day 4 was spent driving to Batchelor after a video conference in the morning from Katherine

 Campus. Batchelor was about 40 degrees 

with pretty high humidity. Can't say there was much of my clothes that were dry. We connected into Darwin and Alice Springs campuses of CDU,

 although the connection wasn't the best and we only had some short discussions. Pr

oved that it worked though.

Day 5 was a presentation at a conference on Darwin Campus, and then the final roadshow

 presentation at the Convention Centre by the wharf.

Trip home was interesting for me as we had to drive the satellite dish back to Alice Springs. We planned a few stops on the way and I visited Palmerston, 

Kather

ine Rural Campus and Mataranka Station (all part of CDU) for the first time. Some truly original characters in that lot!