A conference in Darwin is just the chance for me to re-charge the academic batteries and take stock of where my role in the company I am a part of is going (there is also the added advantage of getting a bit of sun and restoring the vitamin D levels in the body-its 10am and already 28C outside without a breath of wind- whew!).
I flew into Darwin last night (all flights to/from eastern australia go through around midnight, so as to coordinate with landing curfews out east (it’s a 4ish hour flight)… anyway, I am sitting on a crowded bus transferring between intl and domestic terminals at Kingsford Smith airport in Sydney, when someone down the back calls out the rugby score between the All Blacks and the Lions… woman beside me smiles, and we start to chat… she asks if I am a canook- which is odd as most people suggest ‘yank’ first… anyway, she is ‘from’ Napier (on NZ east coast) but is also a canuck… we chat a bit more then find out that she is from Shediac… I spent 7 years in Sackville (not far away), and we start talking about things like we were long lost buddies….
…small world; a friend has a blog about this he calls the 'coincidentalists blog'...
Went for a stroll to nearby botanic gardens, where there is a memorial to the USN ship USS Peary which was sunk in Darwin Hbr during WWII. Call it a moment of clarity, but here is the reason (part anyway) why Aussies and Americans are so close. While US forces were stationed in NZ, none were killed there as a result of an enemy attack… in Australia, they were killed in the direct defence, and it seems to me the difference is epitomised by the memorial to that day, February 19 1942, when 188 Japanese aircraft attacked Australian territory.
