Cheap Chinese Knock-offs

When we first took our kayak out for a paddle, we took a small pair of binoculars with us. They're a nice little pair that we've used all over the world since Donna got them about five years ago. There's so much birdlife around our waterways, you'd be mad not to take a pair with you.

Because the pair we have is not cheap, we figured it would be a good idea to buy a couple of cheap pairs that we wouldn't worry too much about if we dropped them overboard. To that end, I logged onto eBay and had a look at a few. One set in particular was a pair of Tasco 8x21 with a buy it now price of just under $10 a pair. Tasco are a pretty good brand, they were just the sort of thing we were looking for, so I ordered two pairs, including postage for less than $30.

Bargain!

They finally arrived yesterday, but they won't be going out in the kayak with us.



This is the pair Donna took out of its packaging.

We grabbed a pair each and sat out on the back verandah to see how well they worked. It didn't take long for me to realise that my pair wouldn't focus properly. I could focus on some trees about 50 metres away, but adjusting the focus knob didn't change the focal point, it just went completely out of focus. By this time, Donna had already had a quick play with hers and put it in its pouch, remarking at the time that it didn't fit very well. I grabbed hers to see if they were the same as mine, and as soon as I removed it from the pouch one of the lenses came off in my hand. Shortly after, the focusing knob broke as well.

As you can see from the picture, there's no Tasco logo on them, that's because they're a cheap and nasty copy of these. In fact, they're not even marked as 8x21, they're marked as 10x25.

Am I going to try and get a refund? No, it's not worth it. I won't be buying binoculars that I haven't tried in the shop from now on though. Oh, and the person I bought them off, that's the first time I've ever given negative feedback on eBay.

You bought a what?

A boat.

Not a big one, a kayak to be exact.

Donna and I have been thinking of getting a kayak for a while. We live so close to the water here with so much opportunity for fishing and boating, that it's a wonder we haven't bought one years ago.

Our niece Katrina, and her husband Tony, told us recently that they had a couple for sale, one of them was a two-seater Q-Kayaks Sprite II. They've also just recently started up a business called Redlands Kayak Tours, doing guided kayak tours in our area, with everything included, even afternoon tea.

What better way to try before you buy, than to do a tour in the boat, especially since neither of us had kayaked before. So, with Wednesday being a public holiday and none of us having to work, we met up with Katrina and Tony and Katrina's mum and dad, Carol and Ray, for a paddle up Tingalpa Creek.



Tony took the above picture for their website at our turn-around point, around 3 kilometres upstream from where we started. That's Donna and I in the double kayak in the middle, Ray on the left and Carol on the right.

By the time we got back to our launch site Donna and I had already decided to buy the kayak. We're now looking forward to lots of exploring on the water. As Ray said on Wednesday, kayaking is the best way to get out on the water, it's cheap, you don't need a trailer as the boat can be carried on the roofrack of your car, you don't have to pay registration, there's very little maintenance to do, and while it's not being used you can hang the boat from the roof of yor garage or sit it on a couple of padded trestles.

If you live in Brisbane or the Redlands, or you're planning on visiting, why not look up Redlands Kayak Tours and come and explore the southern Moreton Bay. It's also a great way to try kayaking if you're thinking of buying one and haven't done it before.

Shark!!

When the flood waters started to recede last week, there were reports in the news that Bull Sharks had been seen swimming around the streets of Goodna, a suburb of Ipswich. They're often reported a fair way up the Brisbane river, even under normal conditions, and Goodna is on the Brisbane River.

I'm starting to think the reports may have been more than just rumour, after we came across this out the back of my step-daughter Jess's house in Ipswich during the clean up.



She and her husband live next to the Bremer River, which runs into the Brisbane River, and ended up with about a foot of water in their house.

I don't think it's a Bull Shark though.

The Water Recedes

The flood waters are receding now. Thankfully they didn't get as high as they did in '74, not that that's any consolation for people that have lost everything this time.

As I wrote in my last post, my step-daughter and her husband evacuated from their house in Ipswich on Tuesday morning. The Bremer river that runs past their house was predicted to get up to 22 metres, which would have been over their roof. It got to 19.4 metres, so hopefully there isn't quite as much damage there as we were expecting.

They originally evacuated to Jess's dad's place in Salisbury, a suburb of Brisbane. Yesterday morning the water started to come up at Salisbury as well, so Jess and Brett are now with us, high and dry with their animals.

Now, when I say animals; as well as our dog, cat, cockatiel, 16 lorikeets and 3 chooks, we now also have another dog, 4 more cats, 2 more chooks, several fish, a baby kookaburra, a turtle, a blue-tongued skink and last but not least, Cookie the scaley-breasted lorikeet who's sitting in our dining room imitating telephones and laughing at his own jokes. Jess and Brett are wildlife carers like us, hence the kooka and the turtle. They mainly do reptiles, so thankfully they don't have any snakes in care at the moment, else they'd be here with us as well.

It's good to see that people are pulling together to help out, like I knew they would. Jess and Brett have been getting calls with offers of help. We've also had calls from people that don't personally know Jess and Brett but know they've been evacuated.

It doesn't rain, but it pours

Back in 1973, my Mum, Dad, brother, sister and I upped sticks and emigrated to Australia as 20 pound poms. It was a huge undertaking for my Mum and Dad, going to the other side of the planet, with three young kids. Mum and Dad bought a small house in Sherwood, in the suburb of Brisbane about 3 months after we arrived and Dad managed to score a job in a local factory, things were looking good.



Six months later, this was the view down our street. Those two houses to the left of the power pole were our next door neighbours. You can't see our house because it was completely under water in between them.
Welcome to Australia.
Mum and Dad had been thinking of moving down to Canberra, since we had family down there. The locals in Brisbane were so good to flood victims that they decided Brisbane was where they wanted to stay. These were the kind of people we wanted to live with, and rightly so.
After the flood, the government built the Wivenhoe Dam, not only as a supply of drinking water, but also to help prevent future floods in Brisbane and Ipswich.

We'll never have another '74 floods we all thought.

As I write this, the Bremer River is at 16.9m. If it gets to the predicted 22m, my stepdaughter's house on the banks of the river will be completely under water, just like Mum and Dad's place in '74. If you saw their house a couple of weeks ago, you wouldn't believe the water would ever come up that high.

The Logan River, which is about 300m from the bottom of my brother's back yard usually is now at over 14m and lapping the back fence. Laurie reckons that if the river gets to 22m there, they'll be inundated as well.

Even though I was only nine years old back in the '74 floods, I still remember what the people of Brisbane, those not flooded, did for the victims of the floods. It brought the whole city together.
We lost pretty much everything we'd brought from England in the floods. Weaker people than my parents would have chucked it in and gone back home, but Mum and Dad stuck it out. We had mud in our ceiling once the water receded, and I'll never forget that smell, something I suspect I'll be experiencing soon when we help Jess (my stepdaughter) and Brett (her hubby) clean their house.

When it comes right down to it, as Brett said, the stuff in your house is just stuff. They got all their animals out, and their wedding photos, memories, etc are all on a hard-drive that Brett rescued. Jess's wedding dress is still in the house, and a lot of funiture they've bought and the renovations they've done since they moved in a couple of years ago wil quite possibly be chucked out. They'll miss that stuff for sure, but if this year is anything like '74, this disaster will hopefully bring the community together.

And to think, a couple of years ago we were in a drought and the Wivenhoe Dam was at around 16%, it's now at about 170%

How could I be so stupid?

I said in my last entry that I can now call myself a BSc.

Well I e-mailed the uni for conformation and they got back to me yesterday. Seems I should have read the course rules better. Even though I have enough subjects up (24 of them) to get a degree, not enough of them are at 300 level (third year).

Now you're probably thinking, how did you get that wrong? Surely you do your first year subjects first, then your second year subjects, etc. Well, yes ideally that's how you'd do it, especially if you're a full time student studying on campus. I started off part time, external, so my subjects have been all over the place. I actually did three first year subjects this year.

"Just do one more subject and get it out of the way", I hear you say. Well it's not as simple as that.

As I mentioned two posts ago, I have a good chance at a new job next year. That job would involve Donna and I moving to Melbourne for ten months, starting in March, while I do my training. This means I'm a bit restricted in what subjects I can pick, as there are residential schools and exams to take into consideration. My best option is a subject that has a res school in January/February and no final exam. It happens to be an interesting subject too. There are two minor problems with that option. Accommodation may be a bit hard to get then, as it's during the school holidays, that's the main problem, the other is that the subject isn't part of a zoology major. That means that, although I'd still qualify as a Bachelor of Science, it'd be without a major.

My next best option is to apply to do another subject at a different uni, like I did this year. I'd have to take time off for the exam, but there's no res school.

I haven't been camping in a long time, looks like I may be spending a week in a tent next year.

BSc

It's been a long time coming, but finally the exam results are out and I can now call myself a Bachelor of Science.

To think, that back in my school days the thought of going to university never entered my head. That was what the smart kids, with middle class parents, did. We were working class and I was going to have a working class job, so I did the technical stream at high school, rather than the academic stream. In fact, I didn't even finish high school. I left at the end of year 11 and went to technical college to study electronics, where I lasted about two and a half months before I dropped out, because I was having too much difficulty with maths.

Years later, as a qualified telecommunications technician, I decided I wanted to turn my hobby of writing into a job and so started a bachelor of arts degree majoring in Journalism and English. Well that cured me of ever wanting to be a journalist and I never finished the degree.

Fast forward to 2003. Donna and I had just got engaged when I told her I was going to do a science degree part time. The first four days of our honeymoon were spent in Armidale while I did a biology residential. The last seven years have meant trips to Armidale in April and September each year for res schools, and Donna driving me into the city each July and November for exams and sitting in the car with a book waiting for me to come out after each one.

When Michael Caine and July Walters did "Educating Rita" back in 1983, it was still a bit of a novelty, the idea of an older person going to university. Well I might have been the oldest person in some of my classes, but I certainly wasn't the oldest in all of them. You're never too old to learn something new.

I even did pretty well in maths this semester and it was at a higher level than the maths at college.