Auspicious for three very good reasons. The first is because it was the day when my first two PhD students from Southern Cross University, graduated. Dr Monica Torland (who is from Norway) is on the left and Dr Mucha Mkono (from Zimbabwe) is on the right. Mucha also received the highly prestigious Chancellor's Medal for Outstanding PhD thesis. Shame none of us look especially happy, but we really were. Honest! We celebrated that evening with dinner at Bangalow Pub.
The second is because the 14 September marks the anniversary of the birth of Alexander von Humboldt (the 'father' of modern geography). The geography student group I was a member of when I was a student at University of Newcastle, SNUGS - you can work out what the letters stand for - adopted Alex as their mascot and we always made sure we celebrated his birthday. He wrote the 4 volume Kosmos and laid the foundations for the study of biogeography (in which I did my honours and masters theses). His appeal increased for me also, because he had been accused by one of his more pious travelling companions as 'frequenting houses where impure love reigned' and he developed a rather serious attachment for a young Prussian soldier, Reinhard von Haeften, with whom 'he could only be happy in your presence'.
Finally, the third and not unimportant reason is that it also marks the anniversary of my moving into Larnook. This year marks the fifth year.
What a day!!
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