Head in the clouds

On the way back from a trip last weekend, we spotted this amazing cloud. The lower frill resembled cascading water. I had to veer off the Bruce Highway and dash to Deception Bay to get a better look. Ever in search of a roll cloud (see below), I dared to hope this might be the moment. I think, in fact, this was a shelf cloud, but I'm not a hundred per cent sure, and would love some advice from a seasoned cloud gazer.

I love clouds, even grey ones. Huge billowing thunder clouds, while they may be deeply disconcerting, are at the same time irresistible. Benign grey skies can provide a wonderful respite from burning hot blue. But not formless Tupperware, thanks. That's as oppressive as ever it was.

Tonight, we have had the most extraordinary storm: no fork lightning, thankfully, but almost continuous sheet lightning, which appeared green as the storm approached. There was another shelf cloud. It went dark an hour early thanks to this mother.

Clouds represent meteorological drama: they are portents; prophets. In the UK, we used to look up with dismay at a mackerel sky approaching towards the end of a summer's day: it meant the end of warm sunshine for a while. I love advancing frontal lines that herald weather that may be still back over the horizon but is inexorably on its way.

The photograph immediately above is one of my favourites: it's Brisbane-on-sea.

There are all sorts of creatures among the clouds. There might be a crocodile lurking in the CBD; a tropical sea monster guarding South Molle in the Whitsundays; or a polar bear-Chewbacca cross giving chase. Even Abe Lincoln came to watch the cloud show one day. Oh, c'mon: use your imagination.

Layering produces great colours.

Sometimes there are light shows...

Or interesting lines...

And then there's plain old drama. Once I saw a cloud drowning.

 

I have great cloud ambitions – mammatus, lenticular, barrel. And the most famous roll cloud of all – Morning Glory. A roll cloud is a low, horizontal cloud like a tube. It differs from a shelf cloud by not being attached to another cloud or associated with storm clouds. Morning Glory is the only roll cloud that can be predicted, roughly. Its formation depends upon frontal systems over central Australia, high pressure over northern Australia, and high humidity and strong sea breezes over the Gulf of Carpentaria and Queensland's Pointy Bit. It occurs between late September and early November: there may be one cloud or a series, each up to 1,000 kilometres long. Sometimes it occurs over land, but your best bet is from over the sea. I wish I could say I'd taken this image. Maybe one day...

Thrills and spills

Yesterday there was a spill in Canberra. For those of you outside Australia, let me explain that a spill is 'a vacating of all or several posts of a parliamentary party to allow reorganisation after an important change of office' (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary). Spill is this week's word that was freely bandied about the media yet I, an English speaker, hadn't got a clue what they were talking about.

Of course, by that definition, it isn't exactly what happened in Canberra. Which was that, a Labor Cabinet minister and former Party leader, Simon Crean, called for an end to incessant leadership speculation and rifts within Labor by having a leadership vote that Kevin Rudd (former PM whom incumbent PM Julia Gillard ousted in 2010) could contest. Crean even offered himself as Rudd's Deputy. The PM immediately announced a 'spill' and a vote later in the day, following a much more newsworthy event that only managed secondary headlines, her apology on behalf of the nation to unmarried mothers who were forced to give up their babies for adoption over a 30-year period in the mid-twentieth century.

Rudd didn't put himself forward, however, standing by his commitment not to challenge for the leadership again unless the position was vacant and there was clear majority support for him in Caucus (the collective term for the parliamentary Labor party). Perhaps he is an honourable man, after all; perhaps he realised the best he could achieve was a very close win, which would neither have ended Labor infighting nor enhanced the Party's chances of winning the election on 14 September. So Julia Gillard won the vote unopposed, and declared the leadership issue done and dusted; Simon Crean was sacked and banished to the back benches; at least a couple of front benchers who had supported Rudd chose to fall on their swords; and political commentators went into a frenzy.

For years my friend and I have despaired increasingly about the quality of reporting, especially of politics. Even that of the BBC, whom I was raised to trust and respect and never doubt was both accurate and even-handed. We too, of course, are from a land subjugated by the megalomania of a media emperor. And now we live here, under the same corrupt influence of the 'Dark Overlord'. Please reassure me it was a coincidence that on the day that media reform laws might have been passed, Simon Crean saw fit to precipitate a distracting spill.

I am going to have to give up politics: listening to coverage – especially during an interminable election campaign dwelling on character-assassination rather than the analysis of policy; and attempting to decipher it all as part of my great Australian adventure. I love nothing more than a passionate political debate, but here the opportunities are few and far between. The most enjoyable seem to be between John Clarke and Bryan Dawe – try this one, http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3248532.htm – or on Mad as Hell.

Which I certainly was last night as I listened to 7.30 political editor Chris Uhlmann's analysis of the day in Canberra. He declared events 'unprecedented', 'a farce' that 'does defy any kind of rational analysis'. So he promptly resorted to irrational analysis. Carried away by his own rhetoric, he insisted that 'a kind of madness has gripped the Labor Party today as it stared down the barrel of electoral defeat'. The idea that it might have been a cunning ploy to slap down Kevin Rudd and leadership speculators so that Julia Gillard and her ministers can actually legislate in the months before the election, presumably never occurred to him or anyone else in the Canberra press posse, who simply cannot bear not to obsess about Labor's infighting and its performance at the polls, forcing their chosen subjects down voters' throats rather than, for example, dissecting the Opposition's unsubstantiated claims and 'policies'.

I would like a Labor change of emphasis, too. They don't have to rise to the bait. They could list their achievements despite being a minority government. Julia Gillard is still PM, nearly three years later and despite Tony Abbot's raison d'être, to remove her from office. His umpteenth vote of no confidence in the government failed yesterday, although you could be forgiven for not knowing about it. Or his language gaffe at the forced-adoption apology event.

Here are some different takes on yesterday's events, just in case your computer has been tampered with and you can only access the Dark Overlord's manifesto.
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/3/22/policy-politics/new-idea-journalism-lets-abbott-hook
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/judgment-of-history-will-be-kinder-to-pm-than-tv-news-cycle-20130321-2girw.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/australians-julia-gillard
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/murdochs-marks-all-over-labor-leadership-spill/

Seriously off road

As well as excellent regional maps, Hema produces 4WD Explorer Maps. We picked up the one for South East Queensland the other week when we visited a 4WD accessory shop – I can't believe I wrote that – to research a trip into the outback in June, when we'll need all sorts of equipment so that we don't do a Leichhardt and disappear into the Channel Country without trace. We bought the map for its suggestions for Straddie, Moreton and Fraser islands and Sundown National Park southwest of Stanthorpe. Being a broad-minded map, it also included Landcruiser Mountain Park.

Before I describe my adventures there last Sunday, I have to explain that I am not a petrolhead with a fat-tyred, massively-high-clearance, dust-doused, mud-spattered sport ute or pickup with a blue-heeler in the tray, fishing-rod array, Sahara bars and snorkel, side rails and roof-mounted intensity lighting. I don't plan to rock-crawl or desert race  – although I've always had a secret yearning to rally drive. I don't own anything like this...

I do, however, like to explore off the beaten track and reach places that ordinary cars, and therefore many people, cannot reach. Having researched Landcruiser Mountain Park, I was persuaded that it did have wilderness as well as 4WD 'events'. It claims to be a wilderness in the most important sense of the word; a fauna and flora sanctuary. Hunting and motorbiking are prohibited (mercifully).

So, off we went. Up the Bruce Highway to Caboolture, along the D'Aguilar Highway to Kilcoy, and then north up the Kilcoy-Murgon Road for 60 kilometres (16 km beyond Jimna). The landscape both along the D'Aguilar and up to Jimna was beautiful on a warm blue-sky day.

The Park is a working cattle station, although we didn't spot any cows. There are four camping grounds with gas hot showers and flush toilets. You are supposed to be able to access the camping grounds in 2WD vehicles as well as with caravans and motorhomes, but I found that hard to believe. Big rains since the end of January have chasmed even the easy 'green' tracks.

For your $25 daily entrance fee you get a map showing green, orange (rough tracks) and red (extreme), although not to scale. Zigzaggy lines along any of these routes means steep: so a zigzaggy red was probably an almost vertical, seriously rocky route. We had to keep turning back on the greens because slopes had been eroded into deep ruts and fissures, or they were muddy and rock-strewn and looked highly unstable. We had no two-way radio with us and had been told there was nobody to help if we got stuck. Someone had got bogged the previous day: the excessive rain has made creek floors unstable and/or rockier. You're advised to get out and assess a creek, even wade it, before attempting to cross, so you have some idea what lies beneath. We were never going to chance any crossings other than relative shallows.

Me not wanting to risk the crossing above  – it was sandy but how solid? – meant we were unable to find the head of the Brisbane River, one of the main attractions of Landcruiser Mountain Park for me, who has a thing about the sources of rivers (see Return to the Condamine, October 2012). I have long wanted to find this particular source. Some believe it is on the slopes of Mt Stanley to the west of here, but recently I've had reason to think it was further north and east than that, in the Conondale Ranges. On Landcruiser Mountain Park's map, the source is marked right on the western boundary of the property. On some maps the Brisbane appears to be intermittent in this area, which would perhaps account for Mt Stanley's claim to fame.

In any case, we couldn't get to the point where we could even start to look for it. We were increasingly thwarted in our plans: we couldn't continue along the 'main road' through the Park, Diaper Road, because of track damage; and we couldn't find the Cowah Falls. So we gave up. There were clouds gathering, and there had been mention of a storm later in the day. This was certainly not the place to be caught in a heavy downpour. We had tested the car over difficult terrain, although I doubt we'll be back for 4WD events.

The lanscape was lovely, the weather perfect, the grass trees magnificent and the Monitor Lizards well smart.

I had been concerned there might be convoys of undesirables, but there were few people at all. One or two campers and a couple of groups of... let's call them... off-road enthusiasts. If I tell you one lot each had a windscreen banner that read 'Hard-on-em 4x4 Club' then you'll get the picture. I know little of their world but I've seen enough circle-turning on Cooloolah Beach to know that some of their manoeuvres are particularly noisy, even worse for the environment and utterly pointless. Fast, tight, 360-degree turns are also known as donuts. Landcruiser Mountain Park were at pains to point out along the tracks that Queensland's road rules apply throughout the property, and that donuts were a no-no. There are trail ethics and they're expected to be observed.

Driving off road is a uniquely Australian experience, in a big landscape that I find fascinating and truly away from it all (most of the time). I'm still not sure why we waited so long to get the right car to do it in, but living here was bound to represent a learning curve. Last Sunday certainly was.

The public, the press and the pollies

Recently I attended a Walkley Media Talk at the Queensland State Library, entitled Trust Me, I'm a Journalist. Three journos – an activist (from Green Left Weekly), a senior political journalist (crickey.com) and a features writer (The Weekend Australian magazine) – debated the ethics of journalism in the context of current Australian disillusionment with the media and politics.

At one point, the features writer told of having a piece he'd written given back to him by his editor in order that he produce a more balanced account. Two things worry me about balance in the media.

This award-winning journalist seemed a nice enough chap and I'm sure his intentions are good. Fortunately his subject is not politics. Since he works for the Murdoch press, I would be seriously concerned about the aforementioned 'balance' had he worked on the politics news desk. In the UK, Murdoch-owned newspapers* have occasionally backed a Labour government during my lifetime, but for the most part they are openly for the right wing of politics. In fact, in 1992, one of the stable's rather unsavoury titles was allegedly more than a little responsible for a surprise Conservative general election victory after an infamous headline on polling day. It read: 'If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights'. At the time, the tits-and-bums rag was on its way to its peak circulation, in 1994, of 4.3 million†.

Then there's the other kind of balance: the one that says, if you are interviewing a proponent of one side of a debate, you should automatically follow it with the views of someone holding the opposite view. This is all well and good and noble, but when the research has advanced far beyond the investigative stage and the evidence for one side or the other is overwhelming, then you cross a line that makes your balanced reporting downright misleading.

Both these problems of balance are set to come increasingly into play during the lead-up to the federal election in September. Since Julia Gillard's announcement of the date of the election and her denial that the campaign would begin from that that point on – she has just made a rather unusual five-day tour of the suburbs of western Sydney – the media and politicians alike have started pumping themselves up. The 7.30 Report already seems to have started featuring key issues as if voting were just around the corner. I have a lot of time for anchorwoman Leigh Sales, but I would expect her to rise above election fever at this juncture.

The media have already decided the result is a foregone conclusion and that the LNP have it in the bag. This will either produce complacency, apathy, fatigue or despair in voters, none of which will encourage constructive political debate.

I think the Australian people get a pretty poor service from many of their political representatives. A cry from the heart was heard from one caller to 612 ABC Brisbane a couple of days ago. The Queensland Government's Attorney General and Minister for Justice Jarrod Bleijie had just been interviewed about his support – or lack of – for Federal attempts to deal with biker gangs across Australia. Since bikies can ride across state borders to do their business, legal or otherwise, it does not seem beyond the wit of man to work out that the same law extending across all states might enable law-breakers to be apprehended more easily. But no, Mr Bleijie doesn't trust the Federal Government to get it right, and in any case the Queensland State Government is already legislating its own solutions to the problem. Na na na-na na. The caller was not impressed by the Attorney General's performance and wearily pleaded with all politicians to lay aside petty party squabbles and abandon the states-vs-Feds preoccupation in the best interests of the country.

There are far, far bigger issues than bikies requiring a macro approach.

The media play a huge role in perpetuating parochial spats, seemingly oblivious of their responsibility to convey information and encourage meaningful engagement. They are part of the reason why Australians and Americans are hugely ill-informed when it comes to scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. A majority of the population on either continent still believes scientists are divided on this issue when in fact nothing could be further from the truth†.

Everyone seems to be in agreement, however, that the prospect of seven months of electioneering is a grim one. Enough to make you plan an extended trip into the outback.

* Murdoch owns most of the UK's newspapers. I am proud to say I have never worked for one of his publications
** its highest average sale was in week ending 16 July 1994, at 4,305,957. Highest ever one-day sale (at full price) was on 30 March 1996, at 4,783,359. Source: News International Circulation Reports Archive
† http://theconversation.edu.au/there-is-no-such-thing-as-climate-change-denial-11763