Jan 31. We are now in Brisbane – the second day of a 3-day multilevel workshop that seems to be going quite well. Being entertained extremely well by Graham and Joy:







Melbourne was really interesting and professionally productive. The PISA factor modelling talk and a talk on cross classified-multiple membership models, created a lot of interest in what we are doing and useful discussions with various people such as Ray Adams. Also had dinner with Murray Aitkin and Irit who also both provided good contributions at my talks.

Ken and Kathy Rowe were great hosts all week and we saw and did plenty of things – including an outdoors performance of Twelth Night, a superb trip down the great Ocean Road for Barbara, and a visit to the old Gold mining area of Ballarat.
We arrived in Adelaide to a temperature of 460C which was down to 240 the next day when we started our cruise up the Murray river. Very pleasant two days although not enough walking for our liking. Here are some views etc:



Adelaide is a pleasant city with easy access to hills and seaside. A delightful tram ride


takes you down to the seaside town of Glenelg and a short train journey takes you to the Belair national park in the Adelaide hills. We spent one whole day – not enough – touring the Southern Flinders ranges and saw quite a bit of wildlife – yellow footed rock wallabies, emu and several types of Kangaroos:

For a relatively small city Adelaide has quite a bit of artistic culture. A good (free) art gallery, aboriginal collections and an interesting immigration museum – this last being curiously decontextualised ; for example a description of the ‘White Australia’ policy but no discussion of how and why it persisted (politically and socially) until as recently as 1958. Likewise a description of the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ but no mention of Australia’s role in the Vietnam war.
We were very impressed with our one contact with the Australian Health Service – Barbara had broken a toe and we were very well dealt with at the Royal Adelaide Hospital:

More soon: