Not in Kansas Anymore

Overheard on the Nightly News just now:

"This campaign is going to last six weeks. That's quite a long time. Is there a risk that Australians will grow tired of it and tune out?"

Meanwhile, American primary season is barely three months away!

The Australian federal election has finally been called for November 24, and you can just feel the excitement! All of the advertising has suddenly become campaign commercials, and the Liberal Party (i.e., the conservatives) just announced their election platform of A$34 million in tax cuts. Labor leaders (including the uninspiring Kevin Rudd) are sitting on their perceived lead and trying not to make any mistakes. And the news this evening started a series of profiles of "swing districts" that are every bit as uninformative and boring as American profiles of Ohio or Florida (tonight we learned all about Eden-Monaro, and the beleaguered foresters of Queanbeyan). So, um, it's hardly foreign at all! In fact, one could say it's sort of a depressingly familair, albeit compressed, version of American politics...

Manly -- September 23, 2007

Another exciting day in the library today. This time, it was poring over the conference reports of the Australian Teachers' Federation from 1964-1978. Yes, it was exactly as exciting as it sounds. Summary: Give us more money, give us more money, give us more money. Don't give the Catholics money! Give us more money. Weeellll....OK, you can give the Catholics money, as long as you...Give us more money. The worst of it was that the reports were all bound up in an enormous hardcover volume that weighed about ten pounds and was extremely unwieldy, especially toward the ends of the volume. And naturally, I somehow managed to strain my left forearm manipulating it during photocopying. Who knew libraries were such dangerous places?!?

Anyway, it's not so bad that I can't type. But this is just much more pleasant:
That's the view from the ferry to Manly on the way out. On the way back, just before docking up at Circular Quay, I shot this composite of bridge and Opera House:
Manly, by the way, is gorgeous. I hopped right off the ferry and went to the Manly Fish Market, where within fifteen minutes I had a packet of fish and chips and plopped myself down on the beach. It was a beautiful sunny spring day. These last two pics are from Manly; the first is of the main (oceanside) beach, and the second is on the harborside strand near the ferry docks.