Welcome to GekkoWeb

   Times have changed and the now Irrepressible Gekko has it's own website. You can access the Gekko from wherever you are in the world and see what's happening in our lives at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Village/6030 (make sure you type it exactly).
   The new Gekko includes colour photos and links to points of interest mentioned in the underlined text, and Bluff will shortly get his own fan page and gallery. You can now direct curious family and friends to the online Gekko so they can share in the experience.
   The only limitation is that we refuse to publish personal information such as addresses, birthdates, phone numbers etc. The family trees are online, and I will add plenty of details on dead ancestors but keep references to living members only general (year of birth).
   Telstra are currently installing internet access points throughout Adelaide, so it's only a matter of time until the internet comes to you and you can look at our site for yourself.

The South East Sojourn of Lakes and Limestone

   Kristie and I vanished without a word. We left Adelaide around 5pm on Friday 26th February, travelled to Tailem Bend and turned down to Meningie, passing enormous Lake Albert in time to watch the sun setting over its broad waters.
   From Meningie we travelled along the Coorong - very pretty coastal country that looked cold and wintery in the twilight, a haven for pelicans and the setting for Colin Theile's Storm Boy.
   The roads down here are studded with sobering accident markers - red for injuries, black for fatalities. We spotted them every few minutes until we were eventually flagged down by an SES crewman (State Emergency Services), just past Policeman's Point. A car had flipped and was pointing into the air, balancing on its hood and bonnet. Cars would have to be guided around the scene for most of the night.
   We arrived in Kingston after 9pm, pitched the tent and had sandwiches for tea. The sea wind banged a shed door all night.

Kristie at Blue Lake, Mt. Gambier
(click photo for a better view)

Wedding-cake formation in Princess Margaret Rose Cave

HISTOPLASMOSIS A lung disease usually mild in effect but known to be fatal. May be caught from guano in caves, caused by fungus, Histoplasmosis capsulatum.

Jase & the Millennium Bug

   Since October last year I have been working at CAMMS Automation & Electrical Services - a relatively stress-free company who are behind the automated machinery in big plants like BRL Hardy (wines) and National Foods (milk, juice, dairy products like Yoplait).
   I have been involved in collecting Y2K compliance information about each little part in the factory equipment that could be affected by the subtleties of Year 2000 date changes and shortsighted programming.
   This has increased my internet skills exponentially as I've scoured the world for information on equipment, when sometimes my only clue was something like RG3.
    Not only computers are at risk from the millennium bug - anything that uses dates (from the printer that puts the use-by date on food to traffic lights and communications satellites) has the potential to cause problems. The size of the problem depends on what the equipment is used for and connected to - but in a huge factory set to run on automatic I'm sure you can imagine the effect if one part turned on or off at the wrong time.
   I'm predicting there'll be quite a few salmonella cases in the first half of next year.

How an Apple Bites

Bite # 1 - The Lovebite
   Cath wanted a new Apple computer, so I did the research and haggling to get her the best deal, saving hundreds of dollars. And a pretty machine indeed is her new Blueberry-coloured iMac - very fast, very powerful, very cute.

Bite # 2 - The Severe Gnashing
   I wanted something too - a circuit board that would allow me to watch and capture TV on my computer. After I installed it the TV worked, but the hard disk refused to appear and, as a result, I lost absolutely everything. It took me a week to load all the programs back on, and thankfully I hadn't had the computer long enough to create too many masterpieces. Thankfully I had already printed out most of the work I had been doing, so things were salvageable.
   But the saga doesn't end there - we battled for over a month with technicians to solve the hard drive problem - replacing both it and the chassis (but there's still something amiss, though I've managed to fix things for now). Not having a computer to work with explains why this edition of the Gekko is so late - and talking about what happened at Christmas four or five months later just seems silly.

The Blueberry Flavoured iMac
(click picture to enlarge, click here for some great iMac graphics)

   Tantanoola Cave is a good example of the area with plenty of limestone decoration for a reasonably small cave, though the vault itself is probably 10 metres high. Decorations vary from the expected stalactites and stalagmites to pillars, flowstone, hollow straws and helictites which grow like tree branches. Some of the decorations still show breaks from eruptions at Mt Gambier thousands of years ago.
   It wasn't until we finally reached the Blue Lake at Mt. Gambier that we decided to ring people to tell them where we were.
   Blue Lake occupies one of the extinct craters after which the city was named. Every November the waters change from a dull grey to deep blue and remain so for several months. The circumference of the lake is over three kilometres and the surrounding cliffs rise to seventy six metres, forming a limestone bowl. The lake is the city's source of water.
   The volcanic district around Mount Gambier has numerous lakes, views and lookouts. We made the pilgrimage up the steepest path to Centenary Tower, which was opened in 1904. After climbing its narrow-hipped spiral staircase we got a view of Browne's Lake and Valley Lake which was remarkably similar to the view from an open area a little way down the path.
   We did want to check out Engelbrecht Cave, which lies within the city's limits and extends under seven streets - it's apparently a good example of the water filled caves common to the area and was formed thirty to forty million years ago - but we would have had to wait half an hour, so we drove down to Princess Margaret Rose Cave (3km inside Victoria and we were labelled as South Australians, which felt bizarre).
   Princess Margaret Rose, first explored in 1934, was by far the prettiest cave we saw on the whole trip. It travels for quite a way along a passage that was once carved out by flowing water. This cave contains fabulous examples of limestone decoration includes magnificent shawls, chandeliers of straws and rare cave coral from when the South East was under the sea millions of years ago. The cave formations are coloured by the minerals and soil leaching through the rock with last winter's rains. Some white areas high in manganese glow in the dark after light is shone on them. And there are tree roots dangling from above, some destroying exciting structures in their search for nutrients, others slowly being turned to stone by the process of the dripping limestone.
   Not wanting to stay in Mt Gambier we travelled North to Penola, bought a counter meal and stayed the night. Incidentally, it was here in Penola that Mother Mary MacKillop founded the Order of the Sisters of Saint Joseph and a school for the districts children irrespective of income or class in the 1860s.
   Kookaburras warned of rain in the morning and we packed a wet tent before travelling to Naracoorte, stopping by a desolate and dry Bool Lagoon on the way.
   Naracoorte is studded with a variety of caves and you could easily spend more than a day exploring. Kristie screamed at the anamatronic wildlife reconstructed from fossils found in the caves, then we went for a quick tour. What we saw wasn't very impressive - white hairy fungus grew from the areas overused by people and the caves had a rank smell of mildew.
   Exploring Wet Cave was an assault on the senses until we got down into the depths and the air cooled. Wet Cave has an enormous chamber and huge avens (domes dissolved from the roof by years of running water). It is sad that the oil on curious hands and the fibres, scales and bacteria we drop can have such disastrous effects on caves like these. This is why many areas are are preserved by declaring them off limits.
   We returned home through Keith and headed back through Tailem Bend to arrive in Adelaide around 5:30pm on Sunday.

Bec's Second Child

   So much for the doctor that diagnosed Riff as near infertile. Bec has recently discovered that she is pregnant for a second time. Talk about instant family.

Kristie Does Christmas

   Remember Christmas? It has been so long since the last issue of the Gekko. It's easy to tell when we are both working. Back to Christmas, the evening was spent at home with Cath & Joe. We ate a lot exchanged gifts and wore antlers. Atheists celebrating a Christian ritual with a Masonic touch.
   I told everyone that we were to go and look at Christmas lights. There are few things in life that inspire me as much as the old Chrissie Lights. OK it may sound a little bossy, but a girl needs to get her priorities right.
   Off we went, Joe driving with myself in the front seat and Cath & Jase in the back around Adelaide's suburbs gazing in wonderment at the vast array of tacky, poxy, lame and awesomely spectacular Christmas lights. We had quite a few waves and toots from people wishing us a Merry Christmas, possibly because of the antlers. We laughed.
   Christmas day Cath came over and we continued to eat. As always Christmas was great fun. I do miss the family stuff though. This year Jase & I are going to Mum's place, hopefully her new improved, renovated home.
   Although, with the world set to go stupid at the end of the year, we're planning to be home for New Year's Eve.

Sock Puppets in Canberra

   Do you remember that our friend, Joe, went to Canberra last year for a few months? Well, unable to go with him, Kristie and I decided to create surrogate versions of ourselves out of socks and have a vicarious holiday.
   Joe also took photographs of the socks at the Tidbinbilla Satellite Tracking Station, and New Parliament House (to the amusement of Japanese tourists who probably took photos of Joe).
   In any case, Joe returned to confirm our belief that there's more to do in your own sock drawer than there is in Canberra.

   Last time we came over to Victoria, we promised half heartedly that we would be over in May. Well, it is true. Although by the time you get this piece of information it may be too late arrange any visits other than family - but we would still like to visit you, so please fax us international on +1 (603) 462-9652.
   Work at the Corporate Fulfillment Centre (Telstra) was really patchy for a while. Then it stopped altogether, because of a restructure of that area, my services are no longer required. The work that I had been doing, I was contracted through Drake, then Telstra changed their service provider. This meant that if I wanted to work at the CMC again, I would need to join another agency. I did, and a big fat, smelly pox on Kelly recruitment. Bunch of toffy-nosed, slacked-jawed time wasters.
   Anyway, I got a phone call one day from an employment agency, they wanted to know if I was interested in being short listed for a casual position in a call centre. Finally I decided that yes that would be OK.