[AstralTraveller (David)]

I'm enjoying this thread; it's a bit like 'Why I Live Where I Live' on Australian All Over, and that is a topic we might visit in the future.

After I left school I went to uni, because that's what bright kids do, but without any clear view as to what i wanted to do. The memories of exactly what I did are a bit hazy but, anyway I failed. So I joined the public service and wound up in DSS dispensing the dole. After a few years it became apparent that if I stayed I would get an ulcer and/or become an alcoholic. My wife's job was likewise at a dead end, so we bought a 4WD and set off to travel and work around Oz. That was great but eventually it had to end. We returned to Wollongong and both went to uni.

I had seen plenty of pollution and land degradation so I majored in physical geography and chemistry with the idea of fighting the good environmental fight. In second year I did a subject called 'Environmental Prehistory of Australia' and it changed my life. The third year geomorphology subjects all bought home how much we explain the present and predict the future by understanding the past.

I ended up starting a PhD in geochemistry, specifically using stable-isotope ratios in palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. This may sound an obscure field, and in a way it is, but it the one of the few techniques that provides quantitative information about past environments - the temperature record for the past several million years was obtained from stable isotope ratios in of marine micro-organisms extracted from deep-sea cores. (BTW isotope techniques have a great variety of other uses, from plant breeding to detecting drugs in sport.)

Unfortunately I had a major nervous breakdown while doing the PhD and it is now gone. About 8 months later,as I was picking myself up, the technician in the lab I worked in quit to move to WA and I wound up getting the job.

That was in 2002 and at that stage we had one stable-isotope mass spectrometer (IRMS). My workaholic, high-flying boss now has two IRMS, doing different types of work, an ICP-MS, a HPLC, one of the few GC-GC-PFC in the world, a new prep lab and next year a state-of-the-art 'clumped-isotope' mass spec, but still only me. The place could easily justify 3-4 tech staff. And that brings me to the only real gripe I have with the job; I could work 24/7 and still not do all that needs to be done. So I (basically) draw the line at 7/5, with only a few unpaid weekends. However, it makes me feel bad when perfectly good students can't get there thesis completed on time because I can't do something they need done. The situation isn't my fault but it's my door they knock on.

On the up side I get to participate in really interesting (to me anyway) research, meet lots of interesting people and keep up with recent developments. I knew about the Hobbit of Flores a year before the paper was published, but we were sworn to secrecy (I don't have any scoops at the moment but Mike is in Indonesia now digging for the next discovery.) I am, or have, analysed samples as part research that has looked at the past climate of Flores during the time the Hobbit lived, the environment of northern Oz over 12,000 years, the sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific and Indian oceans over the past 5-6000 years, the movement of organic matter from land to sea and what caused the mass extinction at the Permian-Triassic boundary etc etc.

It is also a pleasant place to work. Even though people work really hard the place maintains a pleasant ambiance. No one clock-watches me, I organize my time to achieve the tasks I am set and I get respected for my abilities and knowledge. Although our undergrads are almost all Australians the postgrads, which is who I deal with, come from every continent. It would be nothing to be talking to a Brazillian, Chinese and Iranian at the same time. And I really enjoy meeting all these people.

I can also walk to work. The campus is known as one of the most beautiful in the country and is pleasant to walk around, especially when the students aren't about. Of course when they are around there is another type of beauty an old man can apprecialte .

One skill I have not mastered is brevity. Good night.